City of Bend announces 5 Community Assistance Grant recipients

BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) -- The city of Bend has selected five local nonprofit organizations that will be receiving a combined $200,000 in funding through the federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) – Community Assistance Grant Program.

The recipients were Family Kitchen, Shepherd’s House, Family Access Network, Relationship Empowerment Action Compassion Heart (REACH), and Dawn’s House. The grantees, which were selected by the City Council’s Stewardship Subcommittee, met the U.S. Department of Treasury’s requirements as well as the city’s criteria to prioritize houselessness service providers as beneficiaries of the grant.

“Central Oregon is seeing a surge in houselessness, which was made worse by the negative impacts of COVID-19 and has resulted in increasing demand on our local service providers,” said Mayor Pro-Tem Gena Goodman-Campbell. “These grants will make meaningful progress towards addressing Bend’s growing houselessness crisis by getting more resources into the hands of local organizations providing direct services to houseless community members.”

The program was launched to help qualifying nonprofit organizations recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. It is designed to assist nonprofits that provide services to individual members of the community who were negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, especially our houseless community members. The program is initially funded with $200,000 in American Rescue Plan Act funds. Program information can be found at bendoregon.gov/community-assistance.

The Stewardship Subcommittee is scheduled to revisit the remaining applicants who were not funded at the next Stewardship Subcommittee meeting on March 28. At that time, the Subcommittee may elect to request additional ARPA funds from the Council to fully or partially fund the remaining applicants. If additional funding is available, the Subcommittee will make recommendations on disbursement amounts.