Coronavirus relief fund launches
Over $13M of public, private funds set aside
The economic repercussions of the coronavirus crisis on the state budget and on residents could be felt for years, Gov. Charlie Baker said on Monday as he announced the launch of a Massachusetts COVID-19 Relief Fund with $13 million in initial support.
“There are a lot of communities across Massachusetts where even in the best of times, people struggle, and these are communities where families live paycheck to paycheck, and they’ve been particularly hard hit by this COVID-19 crisis,” said Massachusetts first lady Lauren Baker, who is spearheading the fund effort.
Speaking from Eastern Bank’s Corporate Headquarters in Boston, the first lady said the fund would help people “in every corner” of the state, especially health-care workers, frontline responders and vulnerable populations in the state, including residents and immigrants facing food and housing insecurity.
“The goal here is simple, which is to create a statewide fund that can … help those who are going to have the hardest time working through and dealing with all of the economic consequences and public health consequences that’s associated with this particular virus,” the governor told reporters.
Launched with an $1.8 million “anchor” contribution from Boston’s One8 Foundation, the Bakers said donations from philanthropists and private industry as well the public have been pouring in. Anyone can donate by visiting ma covid19 relieffund.org.
Eastern Bank is executing the fund for free. The fund will rely on local charities and nonprofits to distribute the cash, the Bakers said.
The first lady said “the sky is the limit for what we would like to raise” but said there is no specific goal for how much they hope the fund will raise.
A record-setting 330,000 people in Massachusetts filed for unemployment during the final two weeks of March as the coronavirus pandemic escalated, according to federal statistics, signaling that many businesses have boarded up. The tax revenue hit is likely to fall somewhere between $5 billion and $6 billion dollars, according to the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center and the governor said the ripple effects would play out in state budgets over at least the next two years.
“We’re all kind of scratching our heads about what the last three months of this year have looked like and what the beginning of next year is gonna look like,” he said.