Photo: American Red Cross of Eastern New York Facebook page
Sep 22, 2020 — The coronavirus pandemic has stretched on for more than half a year now, taking its toll on people's health and economic well-being. It's also straining the network of not-for-profits that look out for those people’s basic needs of food, health, and housing.
Tim Schwob is a volunteer for the American Red Cross, and chairs Community Organizations Active in Disaster (COAD) in St. Lawrence County. It’s a network of agencies that typically helps people with short-term disasters – house fires, floods, that sort of thing.
He told David Sommerstein those agencies are now having to keep up their stamina during the months-long disaster of the pandemic. Their conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
TIM SCHWOB: They're all strained. It has been a long, long haul. But what I'm seeing when they respond to my questions is that they're hanging in there. They are in it for the long haul.
Their mission may have shifted a little bit. For example, many of the agencies were doing feeding for a while. That was for the children when they were out of school [at the beginning of the pandemic]. Now it's shifted to families. But they've been very flexible. And because of that, they're still able to meet the needs that their agency is designed to meet.
DAVID SOMMERSTEIN: What are the agencies telling you is the biggest need right now?
SCHWOB: I'm sure some agencies have experienced volunteer loss for a couple of reasons. It has been a long experience, and also often times the volunteers in these agencies may be the ones more susceptible to the virus. So we have to be very careful with that. But they are doing well.
One of the big problems that the agencies have expressed to me is that their funding has become impacted by this. Many of them run fundraisers and rely on that for their support. And, of course, a lot of that has been canceled. So that's hurt them.
SOMMERSTEIN: What are you hearing about the most basic needs that were such an issue during the depths of the stay-at-home orders, people having enough food, people having a home or shelter? How are they? What's your sense of those basic needs?
SCHWOB: Those are indeed the things that were mentioned: food and housing. Obviously, there are concerns because people have lost their jobs and their ability to pay their rent. While the eviction notices are still been essentially stalled for a while, they're still concerned about that.
Transportation is a big issue for them, getting to where they need to go either to pick up the food or the other resources they're trying to access. That's hard.
And, of course, Internet for those that have been working at home and who may have their children home with them. So those are the big things that they just are worried about. All of those things.
SOMMERSTEIN: What most worries you at this point?
SCHWOB: I think what worries me is the perfect storm — losing a job, being worried about your house, and not being able to feed your family. Those are the things that I think about the most.
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September 22, 2020 at 11:00AM
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Six months into COVID-19, St. Lawrence County helpers still providing the basics - North Country Public Radio
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