“The Seat­tle Office of Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment (OED) announced the debut of its Neigh­bor­hood Eco­nom­ic Recov­ery Fund, which will sup­port com­mu­ni­ty-led strate­gies such as pub­lic and com­mer­cial space acti­va­tion, dig­i­tal equi­ty, out­reach and oth­er eco­nom­ic recov­ery projects that respond to the spe­cif­ic eco­nom­ic and com­mu­ni­ty needs of neigh­bor­hoods across Seat­tle.” As report­ed by Natal­ie Bick­nell Arg­e­ri­ous, the fund “will invest over $6 mil­lion through direct grants to neigh­bor­hood busi­ness dis­trict orga­ni­za­tions and oth­er com­mu­ni­ty-based orga­ni­za­tions,” $1.2 mil­lion of which will be award­ed through a Request for Pro­pos­als (RFP) process. Accord­ing to a press release from Pamela Banks, Inter­im Direc­tor of OED, “[t]he Neigh­bor­hood Recov­ery Fund is aimed at ‘part­ner­ing with our orga­ni­za­tions already doing this work and wel­com­ing the new ideas of oth­ers that are will­ing and ready to con­tribute to our col­lec­tive recov­ery efforts.’ ”

In Seat­tle, “low­er-income and BIPOC (Black, Indige­nous, peo­ple of col­or) res­i­dents have been dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly impact­ed by the pan­dem­ic, a trend that extends to the small busi­ness­es they own. Experts fear that the pan­dem­ic recov­ery is exac­er­bat­ing income inequal­i­ty — sim­i­lar to what occurred after the Great Reces­sion.” In addi­tion to pub­lic space acti­va­tion and dig­i­tal equi­ty, the grants will focus on com­mu­ni­ca­tions infra­struc­ture devel­op­ment, phys­i­cal improve­ments, com­mu­ni­ty safe­ty, and out­reach projects. “Accord­ing to the OED, eli­gi­ble appli­cants include busi­ness, com­mu­ni­ty, cul­tur­al or arts orga­ni­za­tions, cul­tur­al dis­tricts, and small busi­ness­es such as com­mu­ni­ty event pro­duc­ers, artists, con­sul­tants or a col­lec­tion of indi­vid­u­als sup­port­ing neigh­bor­hood strate­gies with broad­ly shared ben­e­fits.”