Mayor Kim Janey announced on August 10 that she had proposed a $50 million emergency relief plan “to support an equitable recovery and reopening for Boston residents, workers and small businesses, using funding the City of Boston has received from the federal government following the passage of the American Rescue Plan (ARP),” according to a press release from the City of Boston. Boston is expecting to receive
Over $500 million through ARP through the end of 2024. While many Chinatown community members are hopeful about what this could mean for the immigrant community, they have also targeted structural challenges that will still make recovery hard for this population.
The $50 million emergency relief plan will focus on a few key areas. These include the public health response, communities impacted by COVID, housing, the arts, food access, and small business relief, among others. The City’s Chief of the Equity and Inclusion Cabinet Celina Barrios-Millner wrote in an email that the plan will aim to help people who are in ethnic minority groups. This includes residents of Boston’s Chinatown.
“The pandemic has been very hard on everyone, and immigrants and people of color unfortunately have been disproportionately impacted due to systemic health, social, and economic inequities,” wrote Barrios-Millner. “That’s why equity is key in the City’s recovery efforts, and our strategy in distributing American Rescue Plan Act funding is to help those who need it the most, including those in Chinatown.” She added, “We’re already putting ARPA funds to use and I encourage all residents to take advantage of these opportunities because it is for them and their communities. For example, there are funds for rental relief, foreclosure prevention, small business relief, restaurant revitalization, cash relief, and grant opportunities for community organizations for food access and arts and culture. This money is to build our communities back even stronger and more equitably.”
Suzanne Lee is a member of the City’s COVID-19 Health Inequities Task Force. She stated that while funding from ARP sounds positive, it is still only “a drop in the bucket,” when it comes to helping small businesses in Chinatown.
“With some of the issues that we are dealing with, money is only a small piece of it. A lot of it is structural, that you have to change. Otherwise, no amount of money is going to help you,” said Lee. “For example, it’s ridiculous to have the rent be so high for some of our small businesses.” She added, “A lot of the time, it’s big businesses that set the tone, and they win out. Structurally, why the rents in a city like Boston are so high is for businesses to make their profits. It’s not addressing everyday people who are trying to survive. … When we have a society that, for small restaurants, which depend on tourists, students and office workers to survive … Those sectors are diminishing. How do you fix that? [We have to be] thinking about what should be driving the city economy.”
Lee added that anti-Asian racism has also led to business challenges in Chinatown. Debbie Ho, executive director of Chinatown Main Streets, said that at the beginning of the pandemic, Chinatown was almost deserted.
“Nobody was eating in the restaurants. Nobody was coming to Chinatown to buy their bakery goods,” said Ho. “There weren’t any people. It was like a ghost town, back when the pandemic started. … I was here every day. When I walked around, everything was closed.” When it comes to how things are looking now, Ho said, “They’re not 100% back to normal. But it’s been bustling, especially during the weekends. Chinatown Main Streets has brought in so many different programs into the city, so people can come out for shopping or seeing the lion dance parade.”
Lee said that she hopes money from ARP will address the need in the community now, but she added that Chinatown is nowhere near what it was like before, pre-pandemic.
“People still equate Chinatown as not being part of the United States but as part of China,” said Lee. She added, “Because people are afraid, including our own folks who live on the outskirts, they don’t come to Chinatown. That kind of thinking, it is more than just non-Chinese or non-Asian that think like that. Even our own people think like that.” Regarding ARP, she said, “If they apply, they can get some relief, but how long does that last? Most of the owners I’ve talked to, even if they open up, they don’t have enough people to open up the way that they did before. There’s not enough business to support that many people. Some businesses were down 80%. How long can you hang on?”