Johnson County’s pandemic direct assistance program begins

IOWA CITY — Johnson County’s direct assistance program helping low-income county residents affected by the COVID-19 pandemic opened this week.

The online application will be open for a month and close at noon May 23. The application should take about 15 minutes to complete, and it’s recommended to have all required documentation ready before starting the application.

County and local groups are holding application clinics to help eligible residents apply for the one-time $1,400 check. About 2,500 residents will be randomly selected to receive payments. Applying for the program does not guarantee an individual will receive assistance.

Escucha Mi Voz and the Iowa City Catholic Worker House will hold two application clinics to help eligible excluded and essential workers apply.

The clinics will run from 5 to 9 p.m. on Friday, April 29, and Sunday, May 1, at St. Patrick Church, 4330 St. Patrick Drive, Iowa City. There will be bilingual volunteers at the application clinics.

Johnson County will host an application clinic on May 5 from noon to 6 p.m. in room 203B/C in the Johnson County Health and Human Services Building, 855 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City.

Individuals needing interpretation services at the county’s clinic should email daprogram@johnsoncountyiowa.gov.

The direct assistance program is intended to help low-income county residents negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, including those previously excluded from pandemic relief payments.

The Board of Supervisors decided the one-time payments will be $1,400 checks mailed to eligible applicants selected by a lottery-based system. Iowa City is contributing $1.5 million of pandemic relief dollars to Johnson County’s direct assistance program, bringing the program’s total to $3.5 million.

The main eligibility qualifier for the county’s program will be having an income that is 65 percent or more below the area median income — less than $45,370 a year for an individual. Once income is established, additional eligibility markers can include food or housing insecurity, unemployment or exclusion from previous federal stimulus payments.

To be eligible for the payment, individuals must be 18 or older and have lived in Johnson County since March 1, 2020.

Immigrant workers — including members of Escucha Mi Voz and the Iowa City Catholic Worker House — have been advocating for excluded workers to get priority in direct assistance payments because they have been disproportionately affected during the pandemic. They worry the lottery system will exclude them again.

The county has a website — johnsoncountyiowa.gov/direct-assistance-program — with application steps, eligibility criteria, accepted documentation and the selection process. A Spanish translation of the website is available at johnsoncountyiowa.gov/programa-de-asistencia-directa.

The application is available in multiple languages, including Spanish, French, Arabic and Swahili.

Comments: (319) 339-3155; izabela.zaluska@thegazette.com