Eyes on the Horizon

Agency directors are watching several areas and asking key questions to prepare for future events:

• It is anticipated that some industries may close as a result of the impact of COVID. How will those closures impact the availability of jobs and overall employment, especially in areas where some industries are major employers in a community?

• What are likely to be the short-and long-term impacts on landlords who have a high percentage of non-paying tenants, and on the availability of affordable rentals?

• In the event of another major crisis, what can the state do to prevent a cash crunch or lack of cash flow for community action agencies so that they can maintain the services their residents need?

• How do we balance increasing service delivery and the administrative help needed to coordinate it?

• Staffing sustainability may have some unavoidable fallout in 2023 and 2024 as the workforce expands and contracts. Some agencies may face shortages because of staffing demands and constraints. Added to those issues is the fact that COVID changed the face of the workforce. How will the current appeal of, or distain for, working from home play out in a few years?

• Many agency directors report that staff pay simply is not high enough. How can community action agencies expect to compete for people who have the skills the agencies need if agencies can’t offer higher wages?

• There are many questions around data collected during 2020, especially accuracy of the census and whether we will ever know how many people in Michigan died from COVID. With the lack of access to convenient COVID testing for so many in rural Michigan, how many got COVID and died at home without being diagnosed or treated?

• How do we move away from the narrative of helping “poor people” and create a modern narrative around poverty and prosperity that explains how helping people creates a more prosperous community for everyone?

• Mergers of non-profits could be helpful to streamline services, reduce costs, and make management more efficient. Corporations understand the concept of economies of scale. How can we explore this option?

• What will be the fallout from students trying to learn at home instead of in school?

• What funding will be available to cover long-term COVID-related problems?

• What federal and state cuts will be made in order to rebalance budgets?

• Can the Bureau of Community Action and Economic Opportunity have a technical team to assist agencies? Is it possible to standardize the schedule for filing community needs assessments or stagger them and give structured support?

• What will we remember two years from now? What lessons will we have learned?