Atlanta Mayor Creates $7M Emergency Fund To Help Hourly Workers

ATLANTA, GA — Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance-Bottoms issued an executive order Tuesday to create a $7 million emergency fund to provide assistance to those impacted by the coronavirus. The resources are designed to fund emergency assistance to food programs for children and seniors, and support small businesses, hourly wage earners and others in need.

“Our communities are in need of help and we are listening,” Bottoms said in a statement. “This is one step to provide relief and we are going to continue to look for opportunities to help those in need as we go through this together.”

The funds will be allocated as follows:

• $1 million to provide emergency assistance to child food programs
• $1 million to provide emergency assistance to senior food programs
• $1 million to provide emergency assistance to homeless preparedness
• $1.5 million to support small business continuity
• $1 million for the purchase of technology to support the City’s full telework deployment
• $1.5 million to assist hourly wage earners of businesses engaged with the City of Atlanta

Globally, more than 205,000 people have been infected and more than 8,000 people have died from the COVID-19, Johns Hopkins reported Wednesday. Of that total, more than 81,000 confirmed cases are in China, while the entire United States has 6,500 confirmed cases as of Wednesday. There have been 150 deaths in the U.S. tied to the virus outbreak.

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