For organizations like Clermont County Community Services, the support of the COVID-19 Regional Relief Fund did more than just fund a shift in operations, it provided an opportunity to keep families safe and healthy for the duration of this crisis.
Clermont County Community Services, located in Batavia, provides essential health, housing, and prevention services to families and children with low to moderate income. They provide one of only two homeless shelters in Clermont County.
When Clermont County Community Services got the call about receiving a grant, they had already decided to move families from the communal shelter to local hotels. Within 48 hours of that decision, they received money from the grant to fund the initial move and were able to keep their staff and clients safe in the short term.
But the long-term safety of their clients was another issue. After the move, Clermont County was able to leverage the Regional Relief Fund grant to earn other matching grants and ensure their families could stay safely at the hotels until the “stay at home” order was lifted.
“If our families moved back into the shelter too quickly, the virus might follow us there,” says Billie Kuntz, executive director of Clermont County Community Services. “Without these funds, we wouldn’t have been able to get other funding support and we would be scrambling to try to protect our workers and our families.”
The Regional Response Fund has allowed the team at Clermont County Community Services to leverage their allocation to get matching grants from other organizations — yet another example of our community coming together to help each other during this crisis.
The COVID-19 Regional Response Fund has distributed more than $7 million into the community to support residents who are most disproportionately affected by — and most vulnerable to — the health, economic, education, housing, and social impacts of the crisis.
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