How cities are utilizing ARPA funds to address equity.

By Jacob Ewing

For many marginalized and underserved populations, the pandemic only exacerbated existing problems. The passage of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) in March 2021 provided $1.2 billion in direct funding to Washington cities that have since mobilized—using their broad discretion—to spend ARPA recovery funds to address equity in their communities.

Opportunities to serve these groups through the lens of pandemic recovery led to local investments in low-income housing, support for houseless individuals, infrastructure improvements, and in education and information services. Some cities hired an equity officer or contracted specific outreach services to help identify and get feedback from impacted members of the community. Quite a few also focused part of their funding on finding new ways to address language or technology barriers.

Here are select examples of how cities used ARPA funds around issues of equity:

City of Lakewood

Lakewood began to consider ways to identify needs through early outreach efforts. As a result, they developed an internal plan to further engage with cultural groups and organizations, faith-based communities, public partners, neighborhood councils, the military community, and human and social services partners through surveys, stakeholder meetings, and one-on-one interviews. The feedback they received was vital to inform and identify the needs of heavily impacted people and to guide the city’s decisions on how funds should be spent.

City of Kenmore

Kenmore identified that their low-income population had grown due to the pandemic, whether through job loss or other hardships. They used recovery funding to launch “Kenmore Cares,” in partnership with the Northshore Schools Foundation, to identify households negatively impacted by the pandemic and provide an application for one-time cash assistance for households making 50 percent or less of the area median income. This direct cash assistance to qualifying local residents was a way of addressing clear and urgent local needs.

City of Walla Walla

Walla Walla determined that local seniors were being heavily impacted by the pandemic. Early on, they invested in providing help—including daily food distribution through the senior center, which became a lifeline for many. As a result of the increased activity at the center, the city found that infrastructure improvements, such as resurfacing the parking lot to improve ADA access, were needed to allow pandemic support activities to continue.

With the population of Washington growing and becoming increasingly more diverse, there’s clear urgency for cities to be explicit about addressing equity. ARPA offers cities the opportunity to be innovative in addressing the recovery needs of marginalized or underserved parts of their communities—and to be more successful as a result.

Jacob Ewing is a special projects coordinator at AWC.

For more information: wacities.org