Rent assistance efforts among uses for COVID-19 economic relief to Evansville area

EVANSVILLE, Ind. — Millions of dollars in emergency economic relief for the COVID-19 pandemic is finding its way to the Evansville area from both federal assistance and a private foundation.

Much of the funding is in the form of grants from the CARES Act, a $2 trillion federal relief package passed by Congress in March. The City of Evansville and Evansville Regional Airport will both receive CARES Act funding in coming months. 

The city is set to receive more than $700,000 for rent assistance and other homelessness prevention efforts and to support homeless shelters via an annual Housing and Urban Development (HUD) grant three times larger than usual, said Kelley Coures, executive director of Evansville's Department of Metropolitan Development.

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In normal times, Coures said, most of the annual grant is required to support homeless shelters with only a small portion available to direct toward homelessness prevention.

"The bottom line is these funds will help keep people housed and augment our homeless shelter operations for COVID-19-related needs," he said.

Coures said when City Council meets Monday he will ask it to approve a fiscal ordinance to appropriate the grant funds so the city can move ahead with HUD's process to obtain the assistance.

Also, Coures said he is finalizing the necessary process for the city to receive a $1.6 million extra allocation of its federal Community Development Block Grant, money which also is available because of the CARES Act. He anticipates having an ordinance to appropriate those funds ready for City Council in May.

Although it won't come via the federal government, the COVID-19 Relief Fund of the Greater Evansville Region has been approved to receive a $1.95 million grant.

The United Way of Southwestern Indiana joined with the United Ways for Posey and Gibson counties to apply for the grant, which is through a partnership of the Lilly Endowment and Indiana United Ways, a professional association for local United Ways.

It is meant to boost efforts of human and social service nonprofits at the forefront of relief efforts from the COVID-19 pandemic, said Amy Canterbury, president and CEO of United Way of Southwestern Indiana, in a written statement.

The grant will increase the amount raised for the COVID-19 Relief Fund of the Greater Evansville Region to more than $4.5 million, according to the release. The fund is expected to support relief, recovery and restoration efforts in the Evansville area over the next 18 months.

The fund began allocations to its first nonprofit recipients this. week.

The largest single boost in emergency economic relief to the area so far will be to Evansville Regional Airport. It will receive more than $19 million in funding from the Federal Aviation Administration through the CARES Act.

The federal legislation provided money to increase to 100 percent the federal share of the FAA's Airport Improvement Program and other supplemental grants already planned for 2020, according to a release from state Sen. Vaneta Becker, R-Evansville. Normally, airports receiving the grant are required to provide matching funds.

"Providing this additional funding and eliminating the local share will allow critical safety and capacity projects to continue as planned regardless of airport sponsors' current financial circumstances," according to the statement.

Leslie Fella, director of marketing for the airport, said air passenger traffic is down 96 percent nationally compared to the same time last year, and Evansville is seeing the same trend in reductions.