New York (AP) – The necessary summer day children jump between the rocks along the Bronks River, while cyclists pedal on newly paved paths. The kayaks are based on what was once a industrial dumped location, now turned into a bustling promenade along the only freshwater river in the city.
Bronx River Greenway, a lot of stitched quay parks built at the top, once abandoned and contaminated with a desert, is a hard-to-beat victory for the poorest Congress areas, which the locals call a “lighthouse of environmental justice” built by federal dollars and water yields from richer neighbors.
Now, as the thousands of non -profit organizations across the country, the future of this organization is in danger. The Major Federal Grant of the Trump administration has left non -profit organizations across the country and communities for which they serve insecurely. However, few places are confronted with the “bronx” where federal funding has proven to be necessary for revitalizing green spaces, protecting survivors of domestic violence and preventing young people from violence.
According to the city institute analysis, more than 84% of 342 non -profit organizations are based on Bronx. This has significantly increased from 70% of groups that have been violated by government destruction across the country.
In all 437 Congress areas except two, typical non -profit organizations could not cover their expenses without government grants. Non -profit organizations have increasingly served as government service contractors, such as the operation of homeless shelters.
Bronx, if such grants completely disappear, the campus for non-profit organizations can lead to almost 30% collective deficit-matures that have begun to forgive and save dozens of groups that combine bronxites with cheap health, food and pre-school.
“When America sneezes, Bronx gets a flu,” said a US spokesman for Ritchie Torres, who represents the district. “I think we feel that we will continue to affect Trump’s presidency.”
From the rebirth to the cancellation
The Bronx River Alliance’s headquarters is in the corner of Parkland, on an abandoned entertainment park, is one of the most environmentally friendly buildings of the city with nature cabinets, river flora and fauna examples, and storage facilities with kayaks and canoees.
March The group officially announced that last year it will lose federal grants to improve water quality and climate and climate and climate and climate. After many years of growing acceleration, the cabins are now sitting empty. Leaders did not follow the rent in the hope of reducing, and now they do not know if they will be able to play those roles.
“I met some people who were pulling cars out of the river in the 1970s and 1980s,” said Daniel Ranells, Deputy Director of Group Program. The area was then a “dumping place”, thus flooding with industrial waste, tires, abandoned cars, stoves and microwaves, whose “people really did not realize there is a river.”
In recent years, this has changed dramatically, partly due to decades of federal investment. To the south of its headquarters, the organization restored the salt wetlands along the shore of the lock concrete factory rivers.
2007 The first beaver appeared on the Bronks River for over 200 years, named after the former congressman José E. Serrano, “José the Beaver,” which helped millions of federal federal funds to federal funds for the restoration of the river.
“The Bronx River is a shining light of environmental justice,” Ranells said, and millions of federal funding have helped to “turn it into a goal” after many years of negligence.
Progress frozen
Now, the Bronx River Alliance staff describes the feeling of “beating” when you see how hard -to -overcome funds have dried up and give a language aimed at avoiding any clues to racial or environmental justice.
The Bronx River Alliance has joined other non -profit organizations by bringing an action for the short administration to free up funds, but uncertainty has already disrupted the planning year – a reality that slowed throughout the neighborhood, leaving few organizations untouched.
On the street from the Alliance, the Osborn Association Bureau, a group of groups that for almost a century sought to prevent youth violence. April Email of the Justice Assistance Bureau The letter states that the remaining $ 66,000 $ 2 million. The USD grant is “no longer a priority of the department”.
Osborn’s president Jonathan Monsalve said a small -profit organization in the TRIAGE regime, who was forced to lay off three employees and reduce the number of participants in the Diversion program, offering young adults who are threatened with prison charges.
“This is a rescue line for young people and there are no more of them anymore,” Monsalve said. “Among other alternatives, 25 young people will see prison or prison time, and it is extremely frustrating.”
Why bronx carry brunt
The Department of Justice abolished more than $ 810 million. USD similar grants for non -profit organizations working in violence prevention. The Environmental Protection Agency tried to cancel $ 2 billion grants for environmental justice work.
Non -profit executives say that reductions are the most difficult to suffer in places that can afford the least. Almost 30 percent of the population live in poverty, the vast majority of which are black or Latino, and almost one of six students experience homelessness each year.
“In these communities, we have had decades of non-investment and we have begun to notice some meaningful investment and community-based solutions that actually worked,” Monsalve said. “And suddenly that support is just sinking.”
The federal government says he basically says to the following communities: “You are no longer a priority. You don’t meet the plan.”
For decades, a million dollars federal grant allowed the victims and service organization Safe Horizon to carry out a program that deployed a family violence in the Borough Criminal Court.
When the grant was updated this year, there were new restrictions that CEO Liz Roberts described as “such an extreme, so extensive, so radical” that the organization chose to withdraw, not to agree to the conditions that would ban transgender survivors or treat domestic violence as a systematic problem.
Roberts said it was a tedious solution based on the scope of family violence in Bronx.
This means that hundreds of survivors “may not have the opportunity to talk to a lawyer about their possibilities, their rights or their security,” she said.
Fills the void
Roberts said it was seeking more reductions – federal funds make up about 24% of the group’s budget – which could force the closure or reduction of shelters to the special line of the entire city.
As a non -profit organization struggles across the country with similar losses, Roberts said private philanthropy and local authorities will have to “make several smart and thoughtful and principled decisions about where they can help fill those gaps.”
In places such as Bronx, alternative funding is particularly difficult. “The non-profit sector is often fragile and nowhere than Bronx,” Torres said of his representative area, where organizations are more dependent on government funding than richer enclave.
“The organizations have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to apply for a contract and hire employees, and made all these plans to see the written contract,” Torres said. “It’s a very destabilizing.”
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Sara Herschander is a senior journalist in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, where you can read the whole article. The Associated Press has been submitted by the Chronicle of Philanthropy as partnerships to cover philanthropy and non -profit organizations supported by the Lilly Foundation. The chronicle is only responsible for the content. To get all AP philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.