Editor’s Note: The following article is the fourth and final of a four-part series, “The COVID Money Map: Where do we go from here?” The series seeks to explore and document how billions of dollars in government money – earmarked for COVID relief – was actually spent in Seattle.
By Barrington M. Salmon, The Seattle Medium
Living Well Kent (LWK), founded in 2014, was only 6 years old when the U. S. was hit with the deadly COVID-19 virus.
The organization was deep into its mission to enrich the community with health and wellness; food access; youth empowerment and early education among other services. But then the pandemic hit like the ultimate test as community health needs sored beyond all expectations.
“We had to go virtual; everything was shut down,” recalled Living Well Grants Manager Pooja Kumar in an interview. “We organized vaccine events, fought misinformation and encouraged the community to adhere to mask mandates. At the same time, there still was a need for the community to have food so we kept the food hub (open).”
The City of Kent mirrored what was happening nationally.
“The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic fallout caused significant hardship. In the early months of the crisis, tens of millions of people lost their jobs,” the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reported. “While employment began to rebound within a few months, unemployment remained high throughout 2020…Near the end of 2021, 20 million households reporting having too little to eat in the past seven days and 10 million households [were] behind on rent.”
Unemployed families flocked to food banks which had long lines and limited food stock, unable to meet spiraling demand.
The staff at Living Well Kent was challenged to meet the demands for which the organization was founded. It would be daunting. But help was on the way. During the height of COVID, Kumar said Living Well Kent leadership and staff were able to take advantage of significant increases in funding – COVID money from county, state and federal governments as well as grants.
Kumar, who has been in the grant management position for 18 months, said Living Well Kent’s resilience was sorely tested by COVID-19 as the global pandemic spread across the world and the United States.
Living Well Kent and its partner organizations added money to rapid-response grants they had received during the initial round of funding from the COVID-19 Response Fund, the organization said on its website: “These grants helped further address mounting food insecurity in our region.”
Food security grants totaling $850,000 were awarded to organizations that helped families and individuals who lacked transportation. They linked immigrant families with culturally specific foods and helped those observing Ramadan to continue observing their religious dietary restrictions.
Living Well Kent received an array of grants from donors including the Digital Equity Grant, the Seattle Foundation, Kent Community Partners and MultiCare Health System’s Community Partnership Fund.
Living Well Kent was one of five King County-based nonprofits among 421 statewide that received $9.4 million in CARES (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act) Act federal funds for youth development programs. This one-time allotment helped nonprofits stay open and handle COVID-related challenges.
The money also provided crucial funding to bolster the lives and activities of young people who were vulnerable to falling behind or suffering the assorted physical and emotional impacts of the pandemic. Living Well Kent received $25,000.
Among the chief issues during the pandemic was how to deal with the negative impact on youth. The pandemic caused lengthy school stoppages and social distancing, both of which deepened isolation, inequities and hardships for young people. Living Well Kent and other organizations across the state had to move quickly to respond with youth development programs.
The organization said on its website that it provided hundreds of boxes of at-home COVID tests and personal protection items to local youth and families; helped more than 200 members of the community to get COVID-19 vaccinations; and provided basic needs for hundreds of local children.
Living Well Kent leaders and staff are aligned with entities like The Blueprint for Impact whose primary goal is to work to reveal and correct the glaring racial inequities that were a regular part of life for African Americans, Indigenous, people of color and marginalized communities. Even as the need for food escalated, organizers and staff spoke online of troubling increases in racial and wealth disparities. In the end, several studies show that COVID-19 compounded already existing racial, economic and social inequities.
Now that the threat of COVID-19 has lessened considerably, COVID funding is slowly winding down, Kumar said.
“It has slowed down, but we are watching for outbreaks,” Kumar said of the appearance of several COVID-19 variants. “We thrive on personal contact and after a time, we came back to being fully in person. Individuals and households are coping with the effects of ‘long COVID.’ There are not many opportunities to focus on it but we prioritize households still dealing with it.”
As funds have also diminished, Kumar said the organization is searching for money to fund additional programs.
“We hope to bring back programs such as summer programs, have more field trips and we’re having to find money to sustain these programs and projects,” she said.
In three-to-five years, Kumar said, organization leaders and staff hope to expand in several areas including by getting greater access to land.
“We’re in a very metro area. We want to increase the food access team and really provide a greater quantity of provisions to the community,” she said.
Kumar said Living Well Kent hopes to enlarge its early learning and home visit programs, be able to work on increasing housing affordability and provide more utility and rental assistance to families and individuals in need.
“We work with other childcare entities, promote health and wellness and youth empowerment. We’re also working with students to go on to college. We want to be more of a support for mental health and behavioral health and substance abuse initiatives,” said Kumar.
Kumar said Living Well Kent continues to be a safe haven; providing food, housing and rental assistance to families and individuals; promoting health and wellness; childcare, programs geared to young people and encouraging people to exercise.
“We see a combination of people – Somali, Latino/LatinX, Ukrainian, Dari and Punjabi,” she said. “We have an open-door policy.”
