Chicago Uses $95 Million in COVID-19 Pandemic Aid to Staff Migrant Shelters; Deaths of Pa. Seniors After Abuse Reports Rose Sharply During Pandemic, and other C-Virus related stories

By admin On Jan 11, 2024

Chicago uses $95 million in COVID-19 pandemic aid to staff migrant shelters:

The City of Chicago spent more than it planned to care for asylum seekers and had to dip into federal COVID-19 funds. With just a few days left in the year, Mayor Brandon Johnson also said the city is running out of room to house people.

CBS 2’s Sabrina Franza had the latest on Chicago’s response to the migrant crisis.

Chicago had to take $95 million in federal pandemic aid funds via the American Rescue Plan, sources said, to help cover staffing at migrant shelters.

Johnson’s office wanted to repurpose the pandemic relief money without putting it to the City Council for a vote.

“We have infrastructure in our local communities that are not designed to carry such a burden,” Johnson said this week.

He and other mayors asked the federal government to help their response to a crisis that he said is costing Chicago around $40 million a month.

“Local municipalities are not structured to be able to carry the weight of a crisis like this,” Johnson said.

With just days left until the new year, the Johnson administration told CBS 2 the city took in more tax dollars than they were expecting in 2023. That allowed them to use $95 million of pandemic relief funds for day-to-day government operations to cover migrant expenses instead. —>READ MORE HERE

Deaths of Pa. seniors after abuse reports rose sharply during pandemic:

Pennsylvania recorded a steep increase in the deaths of older adults following an abuse or neglect complaint the last few years, as COVID-19 ravaged the nation, complaints grew and agencies struggled to keep caseworkers on staff.

The staggering increase shown in state data — from 120 deaths reported in 2017 to almost 1,400 in 2022, a more than tenfold increase — may have had several contributing factors, and the state and county-level agencies that field and investigate complaints gave varying answers explaining why.

Mostly, Pennsylvania’s Department of Aging and county-level agency officials speculated that it had to do with a growing population of people 65 and older, an increase in complaints and the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on older adults.

One county said errors in its data entry procedure — now corrected — led to undercounting in the initial years. Another pointed to cases staying open longer.