In November, just before Thanksgiving, ONE Neighborhood Builders paraded through the streets of their community with an announcement, posted on signs and shouted from the back of a truck. "Free WiFi," they said. And then in Spanish, "Gratis WiFi."

The announcement was for the community's new WiFi network, providing about 3,000 households in the Olneyville neighborhood of Providence, Rhode Island, with free high-speed internet.
 

NeighborWorks America's network organizations pivoted quickly over the last year to make sure their residents were safe. They provided rental assistance. They provided food. And some even partnered with health departments to respond directly to the pandemic. 

Sometimes the thing you really need is breathing room, says Malcom Yeung, executive director of Chinatown Community Development Corporation. His organization got a bit of that through funding from NeighborWorks America, in partnership with the Wells Fargo Foundation. Grants from NeighborWorks America's Critical Relief Fund and Rental Resilience Fund allowed staff to focus on their work and on their residents. 

On a typical weekday, Rollin Wood, executive director for the Native Partnership for Housing (NPH) might be on a Zoom conference call, where you'd expect to find an executive director in 2020 – or he might be driving down Interstate 40, with a load of construction materials for a home being built on or near the Navajo reservation in New Mexico.

In Texas, Foundation Communities, a NeighborWorks organization, is working hard to keep residents housed with the help of an emergency fund. So far, they've helped more than 700 residents with rental assistance. A grant from NeighborWorks America, in partnership with the Wells Fargo Foundation, made a difference. 

Just before COVID-19 hit, and with it, the stay-at-home orders, Dora Kellogg was in a car accident. Her car was totaled, she says. She had pain on her right side. She had pain on her left side. Kellogg also has asthma and heart disease. The combination prompted her doctor to insist that she stay home from her daily job.

At Rural Communities Housing Development Corporation (RCHDC), a NeighborWorks America organization in Northern California, tenants were struggling. About three-fourths of the organization's residents have their housing subsidized, and those subsidies are adjustable, so it wasn't so much that they needed help paying their rent during the time of COVID as it was that they needed contact – even at a distance.