The City of Columbia Housing programs receive more funding to help with impacts from COVID-19

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

The City of Columbia Housing and Community Development Commission is set to discuss on Wednesday the third round of the city’s program receiving Development Block Grant from federal CARES Act funding to help aid impacts caused by COVID-19.

According to the city’s memo, The City of Columbia is receiving an additional $737,588 in CDBG-CV funds through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Recovery (CARES) Act, Round 3 CDBG-CV funding. 

Randy Cole, the city’s Housing Programs Manager said Wednesday’s meeting will focus on these items:

• Communicating with the public and the commission about the amount of money that the city is receiving
• How it can be used
• How the city received similar funds in the past
• What all the requirements are
• What kind of a process and timeline for how the city plans to engage the public, identify community needs
• Put recommendations to the council for their final approval.

“The first part is really me just summarizing all those things to make sure all of our commission and all the community is aware of everything,” said Cole. “And then also for me to answer any questions they might have.”

The memo states that these funds were allocated by Congress on March 27, 2020, in direct response to the impact of COVID-19.

That CDBG-CV funding must be allocated for activities that directly address the impacts of COVID-19, not towards projects that are not direct impacts of the pandemic. 

According to the memo the legislation calls for $5 billion in CDBG-CV funding to be allocated in 3 rounds. 

• Round 1: $2 billion traditional formula allocation to entitlement jurisdictions
• Round 2: $1 billion to states based upon a HUD determined formula for the impact of COVID-19
• Round 3: $2 billion to entitlement jurisdictions based upon the impact of COVID-19 

The memo states, that during the first round of CDBG-CV funding provided $573,473 to the City of Columbia in Round 1 and in Round 2 provided $17,913,300 in CDBG-CV funds to the state of Missouri.

The city has not heard back on the state’s process yet said Cole in the meeting. 

Cole said for the Round 3 funding the criteria is based on how vulnerable the community has been to the pandemic. 

Some of the main points the funding goes off are child poverty rates, the elderly population, as well as code case counts per capita. 

Cole said Columbia is getting a higher allocation amount.

“We're gonna have more resources to help meet the needs in our community,” Cole said. “But that's also an indicator that our communities are feeling the impact of COVID-19 a little bit higher than the than the average community across the country.”

Cole said the second part of the meeting is for the public that is interested in being a part of helping the city determine how it extends these funds on response and recovery efforts related to the impact of COVID-19.

“It's vital to have good public input and public process to make sure that we're meeting community needs,” said Cole. “And then we're having good process and then people know we're putting funds in the right places. So we've got to have public input because it adds a lot of value to our work.”

Cole said that the city is hearing a lot of need for rental assistance, job training and some of the basic needs like utility assistance. 

“There's a lot of families that just need that extra help getting by,” said Cole. “As far as the nonprofit's that serve families in need, a lot of nonprofits are overwhelmed at the moment with requests for assistance.”

Cole said a lot of our nonprofits need help staffing to meet the additional demands that have been placed on them. 

Cole said the city will release a survey to help guide the decision making process of the funding. 

The city released a similar survey on the first round of funding to see what was going on in the community. 

Cole said this survey will have similar questions as the Round 1 survey, but also add questions related to internet access, vocational training, and homelessness due to concerns and information gathered around those key items.  

The commission asked to add a question on food security. Cole said he would add that question to the list.

Overall Cole said the most important thing for this meeting to accomplish to make sure the commission and public have a good understanding of what the city can do with the funding, but also to take the information and apply it towards directing the city on how it can best meet the needs of the community.