coronavirus aid

After the end of COVID-era benefits, 70k older Ohioans struggle to fight hunger

BY: - April 13, 2023

After Congress ended pandemic food assistance in February, 70,000 older Ohioans have seen food benefits slashed to $23 a month, in some cases down from $280. That has many making excruciating choices between food, medicine and utilities like electricity and gas, Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, executive director of the Ohio Association of Foodbanks, said Wednesday. And while […]

Ohio foodbanks get $15 million from the state

BY: - October 5, 2022

Faced with the prospect of a punishing winter, the Ohio Association of Foodbanks is lauding Gov. Mike DeWine’s decision to award them $15 million in unspent federal coronavirus funds to buy protein-rich food for their clients. Supply bottlenecks, increased fuel costs, commodity inflation and a lack of farm labor have strained the foodbanks’ ability to […]

Government programs mostly responsible for record lows in child poverty, uninsured, report says

BY: - September 16, 2022

Despite all the economic dislocation caused by the coronavirus pandemic, child poverty and uninsurance were at record lows last year, Census data show. And those lows are largely the result of large government interventions, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said in a statement that was published Tuesday. The percentage of Americans lacking health […]

Ohioans go hungry as state sits on a huge stack of money

BY: - May 24, 2022

Some food banks are slashing the amounts of food they give people. At the same time, Ohio and many other states are sitting on enormous piles of cash, and a spokesman for Gov. Mike DeWine was vague last week when asked how the governor would like to use that money.

Stimulus checks tied to overdose spike, but that doesn’t make them a mistake, Yost says

BY: - February 18, 2022

It was an epidemic within a pandemic.  April 2020 was a time when the Covid-19 pandemic tightened a grip that still hasn’t really eased. It also marked the beginning of a year that would see 100,000 opioid deaths in the United States. That was the most since the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention […]

Housing advocate: Worker crunch due to a lot more than federal supplements

BY: - May 25, 2021

Federal unemployment supplements are not the sole reason Ohio employers are having a hard time finding workers, an Ohio housing advocate said Monday. Gov. Mike DeWine earlier this month announced that on June 26 he would end Ohio’s participation in a federal program that provided $300 a week in additional unemployment pay. The money was […]

A year into pandemic, DeWine says Ohio on the right path to lift restrictions but can’t ease up yet 

BY: - March 5, 2021

A year into pandemic, DeWine urges Ohioans not to ease up 

Half a million deaths later, Ohio gov says he didn’t foresee magnitude of pandemic

BY: - February 23, 2021

The coronavirus pandemic has been grinding on for so many months that it’s easy to become numb to its staggering cost. But now, as the United States is crossing the grim milestone of 500,000 dead from the disease, it seems as if February 2020 marked the end of a different, easier era. In Ohio, where […]

On the front lines of the poverty fight, the struggle for resources continues

BY: - February 11, 2021

On the front lines of the poverty fight, the struggle for resources continues

Extend eviction moratorium to slow covid spread, advocates say

BY: - December 16, 2020

Ohio’s local courts should stop eviction proceedings, a group that advocates for the poor said Tuesday. Not only are thousands of Ohioans going to be forced out of their homes in the dead of winter, the proceedings and the evictions will make the covid crisis worse, they say. The coronavirus pandemic has hit low-income Americans […]

Trying to buy time. Vaccine is coming but covid spread is “red hot”

BY: - November 25, 2020

The long-awaited coronavirus vaccine is expected to begin flowing into Ohio in about three weeks, but state officials worry that the coming holidays will act as gasoline on a pandemic that is already burning out of control.  For caregivers already stressed by the demands the virus has placed on them, the coming weeks are critical. […]

Agencies helping the poor fear a dreadful new year

BY: - November 17, 2020

The Nov. 3 general election has garnered most of the public attention lately, but officials on Monday warned that the coronavirus pandemic continues to squeeze the growing ranks of low-income Ohioans.