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A Safe RV Parking Program aiming to respond to an increase in people living in recreational vehicles on Redwood City streets received unanimous support by council Monday.

Council directed city staff to move forward with the $650,000-per-year program that will prohibit overnight RV parking on city streets with the exception of RV residents who are issued city permits, and will also establish an off-site parking facility for up to 30 RVs at a county property located at 1402 Maple St., near the Maple Street jail, the city said. The program includes a 2-year effort to connect all participating RV residents to permanent housing. The local nonprofit LifeMoves is expected provide caseworkers to operate the off-site facility and support all program participants.

City staff aims to introduce the parking ordinance amendments and the Safe RV Parking Program at the council meeting on July 27. Implementation of the program is slated to occur in late August or September.

The on-street parking permits will allow RVs to continue to park within city limits for 72 hours but with restrictions, such as no property stored outside their vehicles, no dumping of wastewater and no staying in one location for an extended period of time, according to the city.

The city is negotiating with the county over the off-street facility at 1402 Maple St. The facility will include portable toilets, garbage disposal, wastewater disposal voucher availability and a security attendant. Families with children, seniors, individuals with disabilities and veterans will be prioritized to reside there, the city said.

The program is a response to an explosion of RV residency on city streets. Over the last few years, due in large part to the affordable housing crisis, the number of people living in RVs countywide increased by 44 percent in 2017, by 46 percent in 2018 and by 127 percent in 2019, according to the San Mateo County One Day Homeless Count conducted annually in January.

In 2018, Redwood City municipal code was amended to no longer restrict RVs from overnight parking. Limited restrictions have made the city a magnet for RV residency on city streets, according to city staff. On May 13 of this year, a survey in Redwood City counted 102 RVs used for housing within the city. Hotspots have included the 200 block of Cedar Street, Douglas Court, Maple Street, Oddstad Drive, Shasta Street, Stafford Street and Walnut Street.

Local businesses say the increase in RVs degrades business districts and impacts their revenue. A number of residents who spoke during public comment at Monday’s meeting, however, believed the Safe RV Parking Program penalizes RV residents.

Councilmembers Giselle Hale and Diana Reddy were part of an ad-hoc committee that worked for months on the Safe RV Parking Plan. Building upon research already developed by the Housing and Human Concerns Committee (HHCC), the ad-hoc committee gathered data,  studied up on best practices in other cities and met with neighbors, business owners and RV residents.

“The longterm goal has always been to reduce the number of RVs on the street and to identify permanent housing solutions for the city’s RV residents,” Hale said. With working residents forced to live in vehicles due to the high cost of housing, the city must continue to work to increase affordable options in the city, Hale added.

As part of the plans, the city intends to establish a two-hour parking limitation for all vehicles on Oddstad Street between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m.

This summer, Second Harvest will provide food assistance for all San Mateo County children 18 and under at multiple locations throughout the county.

Meals will be “grab and go” style to ensure proper social distancing. For a list of locations and hours of service, text 876-876 or visit here.

With schools closed for the summer, food assistance is crucial for families relying on school-provided meals, and food security is on the rise due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

For additional food assistance services available in San Mateo County, visit here.

San Carlos is set to launch its weekend-only bike loop plan on Saturday that aims to promote exercise while providing an alternative means to travel downtown.

The bike loop will run along streets including Cherry, Elm, St. Francis, and Cedar with intermediate connections to Arroyo, Brittan, and Howard, according to the city. The loops will connect to downtown, where the 600 and 700 blocks of Laurel Street are now temporarily closed to vehicular traffic to allow for extended outdoor dining and shopping.

While streets in the bike loop will continue to be open to vehicular traffic, street signage and changeable message boards situated along the route will notify community of the Bike Loop’s availability and advise motorists to share the road, the city said.

The bike loops will continue every Saturday and Sunday through the end of December. Additional bike racks will be available downtown.

For the Class of 2020, it’s celebration without “the sizzle”.

The prom. The awards dinners. The senior trip, the yearbook-signing, and the cherry on top, a star turn picking up a diploma at commencement. This is the time of year when tradition rolls out red-carpet moments and lifelong memories for graduates—a rug, sadly, that was yanked out from under them in March. All over America, from middle-schoolers moving up, to high school and college students ready to move on, Covid-19 wronged the Class of 2020 of a normal rite of passage.

That left everyone from the students and their parents to their teachers and school administrators doing their best to turn lemons into lemonade. Education went online. So did maintaining connections with friends. Likewise, graduation ceremonies this year are digital productions assembled from prerecorded speeches and hundreds of selfies of graduates at home in their caps and gowns, all dressed up with no place to go.

“In a lot of ways,” says Sequoia High School Principal Sean Priest of the June 5 cyber-ceremony, “it’s the same general format as a live in-person graduation, you just don’t have the crowd and the sunshine and the football field and the band and all that stuff.” There’s nothing inherently fun about distributing caps and gowns, he adds, and “what makes it cool is all the pomp and circumstance.”

The circumstance behind the de-pomped graduations arrived via a delayed-action fuse, as restrictions ordered by San Mateo County Health Officer Dr. Scott Morrow deepened. Schools initially were to close from March 16 to April 3, but the whole semester imploded with the extended shelter-in-place order. The Friday the 13th when students and school officials went home, they didn’t know they were saying goodbye.

This story was originally published in the June edition of Climate Magazine. To view the magazine online, click on this link.

“There’s a genuine relationship that students and staff form over the course of four years together,” Priest continues. “And the end of the year there are so many different activities that provide an opportunity for both the students and the staff to have closure to that relationship.” Everyone is always excited to see the graduates move on, he adds, but “there’s a lot, I think, of trauma and mourning about these relationships being severed really unexpectedly and instantaneously.”

Virtual Graduations

Andres Raddavero, 18, is a Carlmont High School senior who is a student trustee to the Sequoia Union High School District Board. “It hurt a bit at first because that last day, we thought we’d be back in three weeks from then,” he says. Many of his classmates have been together since elementary school, he notes. “We’re going to have a virtual graduation. It’s better than nothing but it’s not what we were expecting a couple of months ago.”

Before school ended, Tara DuBridge, 18, did track and was on the basketball team at Summit Preparatory Charter High School, as well as serving as a volunteer mentor to 11th graders in a cultural exchange program. “I can’t participate in most of the things that I really enjoy doing as a high school student,” says the Belmont resident, who has to content herself with practicing the clarinet and oboe at home. “So having it kind of taken away so quickly, it was shocking really.”

Students like Sequoia High’s Student Body Vice President Anika Huisman, 17, try to put their disappointment in perspective.

“I’ve been like trying to really get myself to think about the big picture rather than the few events that we’ve been missing,” she says. “… I know it’s important to stay inside and to stay apart from everybody. But I think we’ve all worked really hard for these moments and we’ve kind of used them to motivate us to keep going. So just like knowing that, it just feels like all the hard work that we put in doesn’t really count for anything.”

Woodside High School senior Jack Cruzan, 18, of Redwood City has tried to focus on activities he enjoys including skateboarding, working on his car and playing video games, rather than on not being able to “walk up and get a diploma and shake hands … I can’t really change that. There’s not really a big point in dwelling on that. It is what it is.”

Since normal school life went into suspension, administrators, teachers —and parents—have tried to do what they can to adapt to remote learning, keep up morale and provide year-end alternatives to make 2020 memorable, in a different way.

Adrian Dilley, who teaches tennis, weight-training, track and field and other sports to ninth graders at Sequoia, found technology “tough to say the least” in teaching PE. Kids were given suggested workouts with fitness logs to track their activity and submit reports weekly. YouTube was useful in teaching golf history and technique, but both teachers and students missed the face-to-face interaction.

“It’s our routine,” Dilley says. “When people are out of their routines, motivation, interest and communication declines. It’s just not the same.”

Academic and sports awards nights were all canceled, along with assemblies and graduation night trips. “It’s all gone,” says Sequoia district trustee Georgia Jack. “It’s really sad because April and May are huge both on high school and college campuses, the spring events that bring the community together.”

A Windows Tradition Broken

Woodside High graduates didn’t get to write their names and future plans on windows overlooking the quad, as is the tradition, so an Instagram website was created, according to Zorina Matavulj, the school’s college and career advisor. She and other staff were printing and assembling 200 to 300 certificates in May to mail to students for a “virtual” awards ceremony.

Kids won’t get to sign each other’s yearbooks. Woodside’s won’t arrive until September and will be mailed, Matavulj says, though Sequoia High principal Priest hopes to be able to distribute the 2020 book the week after graduation, along with diplomas.

Drive-up Distribution

Caps and gowns were given out to 400-plus graduates at the two schools in early May. At Sequoia, a team of staff and parents led by Linda Burt tried to juice up the distribution with balloons, signs and music, cheering on the students driving up in their cars. Sequoia’s Alumni Association slipped a flyer into each graduation packet with a lifetime membership offer at no charge. It would have cost $20.20, according to association secretary Nancy Oliver. “We decided this year that the seniors have missed out on so many things, and we feel really bad for them.”

Says Priest: “It’s not the steak, it’s the sizzle. We’re trying to find the sizzle in these activities. They’re in a different format but I think we can still make them special.”

Fifty-three students in Taylor White’s advanced dance class at Sequoia had spent months choreographing and rehearsing routines for the 51st annual show, only to see the campus close before she had a chance to at least record it. Tradition calls for presenting each senior with a rose bouquet at the end of the performance.

Taylor decided the show must go virtual. “Pop your parents down in a chair in front of you when you’re on stage,” she instructed the students, “turn your camera on and when you go off stage, just turn it off.” The “stages” were living rooms, garages and yards, but thanks to Zoom technology, the dancers not only got to perform, the show will live on video. Digital and Performing Arts Boosters and parents made sure the 30 seniors got their roses, home-delivered. In a post-event chat, one senior thanked Taylor for creating memories: “Even though they’re different, we’re still going to cherish them very much.”

Transitions Stalled

Though businesses and activities in the county are emerging from life on hold, for the Class of 2020, moving on to a next stage presents unique dilemmas. Starting with the graduation party.

Monica Cryan isn’t sure how to celebrate son Jack’s graduation. “I don’t think any of his friends’ parents will let any of them do anything because it’s like taboo right now to socially congregate,” she says. Jack has been able to get out of the house to tinker on his car and work part-time at Trader Joe’s. “He’ll go to work extra hours because it’s the only place he’s allowed to go without getting his hand slapped,” his mother says.

She feels badly because 18 should be a time of transition to independence, but Jack, who has been accepted at UC Santa Cruz, may be stuck at home if classes aren’t in person. His senior trip to Europe this summer got cancelled as well. “It’s like they have nothing right now to really look forward to,” is his mother’s regretful summation.

Raddavero, the Carlmont senior, speculates that his family will do what they did for Mother’s Day—visit his grandparents at their home in Palo Alto, gathered on the patio, talking to them on the phone. “We hang outside,” he explains. “They hang out inside. We eat on the outdoor table.”

Matavulj says some of the kids she counseled at Woodside who were undecided between a two- and a four-year college will now opt for community college. A few say they are going to take a year off. But with a crashed job market and travel prospects sketchy, “it’s almost like they are more nervous about that because that’s more unknown even than college.”

The Redwood City council on Monday unanimously endorsed the Obama Foundation Mayor’s Pledge to review the city’s policing policies via a community engagement process, and aims to revise the city’s budget in October with agreed upon changes to existing policies.

The decision comes amid ample calls in the community to transition funds away from the Redwood City Police Department to other community services, from affordable housing to teams of unarmed professionals that can respond to noncriminal calls instead of officers.

RELATED: Redwood City criticized over community policing town hall

A public engagement period will run from July through September, the city said. An ad-hoc committee with two members on council will work with the Peninsula Conflict Resolution Center and city staff to plan community engagement opportunities and ensure progress on the review process and agreed upon reforms, according to Mayor Diane Howard.

“It’s a beginning, it’s a start,” the mayor said.

The council expressed an openness to reevaluating traditional public safety in the city, such as the use of unarmed professionals in certain calls. A few members said they’ve also heard community opposition to reducing police funding.

“…We need to revisit what we think is working, what isn’t working and what we can improve on,” Councilmember Janet Borgens said, adding that a mental health component to service calls should be examined as a possibility.

Supporters of reducing policing in the city said they won’t stop advocating for changes until they happen.

“What we want is not more training, different equipment or better PR,” said Ian Walker, a Redwood City resident. “We want less policing and a transition to non-police services.”

RELATED: Thousands attend Redwood City protest in wake of George Floyd killing

Councilmember Giselle Hale told the public to hold her accountable if their concerns go unheard.

“Let’s all get comfortable with being uncomfortable,” Hale said. “Black Lives Matter, that’s not something we said in Courthouse Square and spray-painted on a board just to forget. It must be something we reflect in our policies and our budgets, which are ultimately the expression of our values.”

In addition to the public outreach process, the city is taking immediate steps to respond to community concerns over policing in the wake of the killing of George Floyd while in Minneapolis police custody. It has increased frequency of racial and cultural diversity training for city police from every five years to every two years. And it is returning a military tactical vehicle donated by the federal government in 2013. It will also prohibit the use of carotid restraint by police officers, a type of vascular neck restraint, except in cases where deadly force would be authorized.

The city is also working to increase transparency by publishing more information about policing online. Info for 2019 was recently posted on the city’s website. Last year, there were 93,854 calls for police service and officer-initiated incidents in Redwood City, the data showed. Of them, 5,826 involved law enforcement contacts with members of the public. Of those contacts, force was used in 57 cases, or less than 1 percent of the time, the city said.

On an annual basis, police in Redwood City handle 20,000 more calls for service than 2008-9. The city has grown since then by about 12,000 residents, the city said.

SamTrans and Caltrain have launched customer surveys to gather input on how to best provide service as COVID-19 shelter-in-place restrictions are lifted.

The surveys launched on June 22 will provide SamTrans and Caltrain a better understanding about how to change transportation needs and ensure the best possible rider experience. Each survey takes about five minutes to complete, and every participant will be entered to win a $50 Visa gift card. There are five gift cards available per survey.

A few questions on the surveys include:

• How often did you ride before COVID?
• How often are you currently riding Caltrain/SamTrans?
• Why have you stopped riding (if applicable)
• Other modes of transportation
• When will you start riding again?

“These unprecedented circumstances warrant a fresh, data-driven perspective on how we can serve the public,” said San Mateo County Transit District Chief Communications Officer Seamus Murphy. “Results from these surveys will help inform how we provide transit service and communication strategies as we welcome back riders.”

To take the SamTrans survey, click here.

To take the Caltrain survey, click here.

Redwood City’s historic Union Cemetery wants its missing headstones back. Return them with no questions asked — even if swiped.

Kathy Klebe, a member of the cemetery association’s board, issued a public appeal for the return of the tombstones. She promised they will be installed properly, adding she would be “forever grateful.”

Some of the headstones may have been taken by people who thought it “would be cool to have real headstone from the 1800s.” Others motives may have been less frivolous. Some families may have removed the stones for safekeeping. “We think there may be headstones lying around in people’s garages that have been forgotten.” She told Climate that she was “very disappointed that so far” no one has come forward.

Homeless Headstones

Missing headstones can pop up just about anywhere. Eight years ago local historian John Edmonds wrote a story about a stone found in a little park on Main Street that had the initials “G.B.” on it. His best guess was that the stone marked the final resting place of Genevieve Badie who was buried in Union Cemetery in 1904. He conceded that there is “no way of knowing for certain” that “G.B.” stands for Genevieve Badie. Badie’s family lived in Redwood City at 912 Arguello St., according to the census. Her father was a laborer and her brother was a hod carrier, someone who carried bricks to bricklayers on a construction site.

This story was originally published in the June edition of Climate Magazine. To view the magazine online, click on this link.

Historic Union Cemetery Association President Ellen Crawford says the marker has been returned to the cemetery but she, like Edmonds, is not sure it belongs to Badie. “I’m skeptical,” she said. “As I recall, Genevieve’s family was very poor and I’m not sure they purchased a marker. And there are several other unmarked graves with those initials.”

Klebe said many headstones and markers disappeared in the latter part of the last century when the cemetery was in “a disheveled state” from neglect.

It is difficult to understand that the lovingly cared for cemetery, which dates back to 1859, was in such a state of disrepair that in 1966 the Redwood City Tribune supported moving the remains elsewhere so a park could be built. The park was a good idea because the cemetery was no longer “attractive,” the newspaper said in an editorial.

In retrospect, the Tribune’s stand does not seem all that shocking when one considers the cemetery’s history. In 1911 newspapers reported the cemetery was in a “disgraceful state, fences torn down and children playing around the gravesites.”

Even the statue of the Union soldier that stands over the Grand Army of the Republic plot was a target. By 1983, the year Union Cemetery was nominated for the National Register of Historic Places, the statue had been destroyed three times.

Soldier’s Rightful Place

Thanks to concerned citizens, the statue was replaced and today stands at parade rest over a plot that has 46 headstones honoring Civil War veterans. The last headstone in the GAR plot was placed in 1984 to mark the final resting place of James Baxter, who was wounded at Gettysburg. Baxter died in 1936 and was buried at the foot of the statue. His place was unmarked until relatives put up the stone.

The highlight of the cemetery’s year is the Memorial Day ceremony, called off this year because of the coronavirus. The observance usually attracts hundreds of people, many drawn by the event’s “firing of the anvil,” a Gold Rush tradition. One anvil is placed on another and a small charge set between and lighted, sending the top one high in the air. Not loud enough to wake the dead, but enough to get your attention.

With businesses reopening, parking enforcement is set return to San Mateo on Wednesday, July 15, according to the city.

Enforcement of all parking meters, pay stations, street cleaning zones, and residential parking permit program areas will resume on that date.

Residents and visitors will need to move their cars for street sweeping, which resumed its normal schedule on June 15.

Downtown monthly parking permit holder can expect a prorated fee for July, the city said. To locate your street cleaning schedule, click here. For information on parking garages, go here. And for residential parking permit details, go here.

Photo credit: City of San Mateo

Spring is here, and with it plans for golf tournaments, auctions and dinners for the Peninsula’s many nonprofit organizations – all up in smoke because of the coronavirus and its associated shelter-in-place orders.

The economic loss could easily top $1 million to dozens of local charities, including Redwood City’s Kainos Home and Training Center for intellectually and developmentally disabled adults; LifeMoves, which helps the homeless in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties; the Upper Peninsula League of the San Francisco Symphony; the San Mateo County Historical Association; Adelante Selby Spanish Immersion School in Atherton; and Upward Scholars, which assists largely minority adults who are headed back to school.

Moreover, at a time when local nonprofits are being squeezed financially, they’re also being strained operationally. Second Harvest of Silicon Valley, which normally provides food to around 270,000 monthly clients, has seen that number surge by 100,000 per month since the outbreak began and people started losing their jobs because of the economic shutdown. At Samaritan House in San Mateo, which aids the poor in numerous ways, requests for financial assistance have jumped more than tenfold, from $140,000 per month to more than $1.5 million, according to Chief Executive Officer Bart Charlow.

This story was originally published in the June edition of Climate Magazine. To view the magazine online, click on this link.

“We’re seeing an awful lot of people who desperately need help that didn’t before,” Charlow says. Adds Chief Executive Officer Leslie Bacho of Second Harvest, “We’re seeing completely unprecedented demand for our services. As soon as the shelter-in-place began, we started seeing 25-, 50-, 100-percent increases in the number of people at our sites right away.”

Bacho observes further that daily phone calls for food have increased from around 280 to more than 1,000. More than half of the people currently seeking help, she says, are coming to Second Harvest for the first time.

Houses of worship are also being pinched, although not as painfully as many nonprofits. Local Jewish and Protestant clergy report only a slight decrease in offerings. The relatively mild drop, they say, has resulted from members’ mailing in checks and giving through electronic services such as PayPal, instead of the offering plate.

It’s a different situation, though, for the Muslim congregation of Masjid Ul Haqq in San Mateo. There, Imam Hamzah Palya says the month of Ramadan, running this year from April 23 to May 23, is traditionally a significant time of giving. Palya says this Ramadan was expected to bring in noticeably fewer offerings than usual.

Among Catholic churches, the 90 parishes in San Mateo, San Francisco and Marin counties initially took a hit of up to 50 or 60 percent of offerings, according to Rod Linhares, director of development for the San Francisco Archdiocese. Linhares says the shortfall has now leveled off at between 25 and 30 percent, in part because of a quick modernization of many local churches’ giving practices, which had relied heavily on the Sunday-morning collection basket.

Others Meeting in Churches

Other revenue streams for religious organizations have also dried up during the stay-at-home order. Many congregations rent their fellowship halls and Sunday school classrooms to associations ranging from 12-step groups to garden clubs and scout troops. In an example of how the coronavirus shutdown has rippled through the economy, the current absence of such tenants – as well as worshipers – has led Sequoia Church in Redwood City to discontinue its janitorial and gardening services.

A greater setback to religious organizations, local clergy agree, is the loss of fellowship.

“So much of Jewish life is done in community,” says Rabbi Nat Ezray of Congregation Beth Jacob in Redwood City. Ezray points to what he calls “life-cycle events” – bar and bat mitzvahs, weddings and funerals, as well as the traditional Friday-night observance of the Sabbath, as times when Jews gather to worship, celebrate and say goodbye to loved ones.

Pastor Paul Schult of Redeemer Lutheran Church in Redwood City concurs.

“We’ve done our best to use technology such as Zoom to put worship services and Bible studies online,” Schult says. “But it’s not the same as being face-to-face.”

Adds Dennis Logie, retired pastor of Sequoia Church, “When you take away community from a church or a synagogue or a mosque, you have really hit people with a hard blow. This kind of quarantine is really difficult for people who are used to going to church. We miss each other.”

On the other hand, Ezray says, online broadcasts of temple services have widened Beth Jacob’s congregation. It’s a similar story at Redwood City’s 1,000-member Peninsula Covenant Church, where Lead Pastor Gary Gaddini says broadcasts have been joined by worshipers in the South, Midwest and Canada.

“We grieve at not being able to be at bedsides and be together in the world,” Gaddini says. “There’s a lot of pain in our community from not being in the same room. But (with online services), there’s a lot of opportunity, as well.”

Canceled Fundraisers

Opportunity lost, however, is the common theme for many nonprofits. Kainos Home and Training Center in Redwood City voluntarily scrubbed its annual dinner, scheduled for March 6, which was expected to draw up to 350 donors. An April 27 golf tournament to benefit the home was also canceled, and along with it an anticipated $150,000 in revenue. In jeopardy now is a fashion show currently set for the fall, which organizers say could bring up to $250,000.

Even if today’s shelter-in-place orders were relaxed by then, Kainos Executive Director Andy Frisch says, “I don’t know if people will be willing to sit at a banquet table.”

Major fundraisers have also been lost at LifeMoves, which helps people in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties overcome homelessness. A canceled luncheon scheduled for March 20 was anticipated to pull in $250,000. The organization’s annual breakfast in September, which Vice President of Programs and Services Brian Greenberg says typically attracts 1,100 guests, was expected to raise $850,000. Greenberg says the organization “is probably not going to do it in person,” and is currently considering whether to hold the event online.

At the San Mateo County History Museum in Redwood City, the Sanchez Adobe in Pacifica and the historic Woodside Store, now all closed, the stay-at-home orders have had a pronounced effect. President Mitch Postel of the San Mateo County Historical Association says the sites are losing $25,000 in revenue every month from foregone school programs, rentals, admissions and souvenir sales. Postel says 50 percent of the association’s $1.6-million budget comes from two big fundraisers – a now-threatened “history-makers” dinner in September and an annual campaign scheduled to launch in January. Postel adds that nine of the museum’s 11 part-time staff have been laid off, with nine full-timers keeping their jobs through at least July.

When it comes to lost fundraisers, Adelante Selby Spanish Immersion School in Atherton has been luckier than many organizations. Irma Zoepf, treasurer of Unidos y Adelante Selby, the school’s parent-teacher organization, says the group’s two big events, a party and an auction, were expected to raise $30,000 or more. Even though the programs were canceled, parents and other donors still contributed $20,000.

Another local educational charity has been less fortunate. Zoepf is also president of the board of Upward Scholars, which provides economic and academic support to low-income, mostly immigrant adults who return to school to earn a General Equivalency Degree and, in many cases, continue on to college. This is the organization’s tenth year, and Zoepf says Upward Scholars had invested more than $10,000 in a gala scheduled for March 28 that was expected to bring in more than $50,000. Zoepf hopes the event can still be held toward the end of the year.

The Upper Peninsula League of the San Francisco Symphony has also come up short. Vonya Morris, the organization’s leader, says the group’s annual “Hats Off to the Symphony” event would have raised $20,000. In addition, in March, the League had to cancel its annual bus-and-bag-lunch trip to San Francisco for Peninsula senior citizens to watch the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra.

A National Crisis for Charities

Nationwide, many nonprofits are facing potential closure, according to a May 12 article in The Wall Street Journal. The newspaper quoted Antony Bugg-Levine, CEO of the New York-based Nonprofit Finance Fund, as saying the coronavirus and its economic effect on charities was “an unprecedented calamity.”

Chief Executive Officer Jan Masaoka of the California Association of Nonprofits also paints a gray picture. She says many of the nonprofit leaders she speaks with are talking about going out of business, or at least entering a period of hibernation.

Those who depend on the stretched – or sometimes closed – services of nonprofits are also feeling the strain. As one example, Masaoka cites the situation of parents in essential-service jobs who used to rely on nonprofit childcare providers.

“If you’re one person whose kid was in an after-school program (that’s currently shut down), now you don’t have that opportunity,” she says. “Thousands and thousands and thousands of kids are like that now. Parents are scrambling to find where they can put their kids.”

A Ray of Hope

Especially among religious leaders, however, there rings a voice of hope throughout the tremendous difficulties. Ezray notes that Judaism teaches about the power of kindness, which he, other clergy and nonprofit leaders have observed through the generosity of donors and volunteers since the pandemic began.

“I think when you experience kindness during times of great upheaval, it gives you a sense of purpose,” Ezray says. Noting that the Jewish people “have gone through tough times,” he adds, “I’m sure we can get through this.”

Still, charities such as Samaritan House, which Charlow says has received many donations since the start of the outbreak, worry about what he calls the long-term “fundraising cliff,” where giving falls off after the initial urgency wears away.

“We’re in a reasonably good position in the short run,” Charlow says. “No one knows what the long run will be. It’s been quite a ride, and we’re just at the beginning of the wave.”