Here’s how CARES funds are helping Bellingham and Whatcom Housing Authorities
More federal money is headed to Whatcom County from the pandemic-relief bill known as the CARES Act, with these funds aimed at housing agencies across Washington state.
A grant of $390,000 announced Tuesday, Aug. 11, is the second of two awards totaling about $500,000 for the Bellingham and Whatcom County Housing Authorities, Executive Director Brien Thane told The Bellingham Herald.
Thane said the first award of about $100,000 allowed the housing authority to buy laptops and modify its software so that its employees could work from home and clients could apply for aid and research housing options online.
“Before the pandemic, we had been developing online portals. With the pandemic dragging on, we’ve really accelerated that,” he said.
Like most other government agencies, the housing authority’s office in downtown Bellingham has been closed to the public since late March because of the new coronavirus pandemic.
Funds from the CARES Act also will help the housing authority make its offices safer.
“We will get to the point where we can start reopening our physical offices to the public,” Thane said. “We’re assessing what modifications we might make to our buildings so that we can facilitate opening and work safely the old-fashioned way.”
This second grant is helping the housing authority provide cleaning supplies and personal protective equipment such as face masks and gloves for maintenance crews in its public-housing units such as Lincoln Square, Chuckanut Square and Washington Square.
“In buildings the housing authority manages, we have crews several times a day wiping down stairways and hallways” and other common areas such as lobbies and mail rooms where residents mingle outside their apartments, Thane said.
Bellingham & Whatcom Housing Authorities owns and manages several affordable housing developments, and helps about 3,500 low-income, disabled and older families apply for aid and find affordable housing, according to its website.
Whatcom County and its cities received a combined $16.3 million from CARES, a $2.2 trillion measure that passed Congress in March.
Some of that money was directed toward helping businesses, as well as for food and housing, help for homeless people and other social services.
Whatcom Transportation Authority bus agency, Whatcom Community College, and Western Washington University also received CARES Act funds.
