ARPA aims to respond to the negative economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Final Rule outlines that ARPA resources can be used for assistance to households, small businesses, and nonprofits, as well as to offer aid to impacted industries such as tourism, travel, and hospitality.
The pandemic has had a severe impact on households and small businesses, particularly low-income workers and communities and people of color. While eligibility is flexible to respond to a recipient’s needs, the intent of this portion of ARPA is to remediate the impact of the pandemic on these households, businesses, non-profits, and workers in communities disproportionately affected.
Eligible instances of economic impact responses to the COVID-19 emergency include:
- Build internal capacity to implement economic relief programs, with investments in data analytics, targeted outreach, technology infrastructure, and impact evaluations
- Responding to households and communities that were negatively impacted by the pandemic:
- Food assistance & food banks
- Emergency housing assistance: rental assistance, mortgage assistance, utility assistance, assistance paying delinquent property taxes, counseling and legal aid to prevent eviction and homelessness & emergency programs or services for homeless individuals, including temporary residences for people experiencing homelessness
- Health insurance coverage expansion
- Benefits for surviving family members of individuals who have died from COVID-19
- Assistance to individuals who want and are available for work, including job training, public jobs programs and fairs, support for childcare and transportation to and from a jobsite or interview, incentives for newly-employed workers, subsidized employment, grants to hire underserved workers, assistance to unemployed individuals to start small businesses & development of job and workforce training centers
- Financial services for the unbanked and underbanked
- Burials, home repair & home weatherization
- Programs, devices & equipment for internet access and digital literacy, including subsidies for costs of access
- Cash assistance
- Paid sick, medical, and family leave programs
- Assistance in accessing and applying for public benefits or services
- Childcare and early learning services, home visiting programs, services for child welfare-involved families and foster youth & childcare facilities
- Assistance to address the impact of learning loss for K-12 students (e.g., high-quality tutoring, differentiated instruction)
- Programs or services to support long-term housing security: including development of affordable housing and permanent supportive housing
- Certain contributions to an Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund
- Responses to disproportionate impacts of the pandemic on households and communities:
- Pay for community health workers to help households access health & social services
- Remediation of lead paint or other lead hazards
- Primary care clinics, hospitals, integration of health services into other settings, and other investments in medical equipment & facilities designed to address health disparities
- Housing vouchers & assistance relocating to neighborhoods with higher economic opportunity
- Investments in neighborhoods to promote improved health outcomes
- Improvements to vacant and abandoned properties, including rehabilitation or maintenance, renovation, removal and remediation of environmental contaminants, demolition or deconstruction, greening/vacant lot cleanup & conversion to affordable housing
- Services to address educational disparities, including assistance to high-poverty school districts & educational and evidence-based services to address student academic, social, emotional, and mental health needs
- Schools and other educational equipment & facilities
- Providing assistance to small businesses, non-profits, and impacted industries
- Offering loans and grants to mitigate financial hardships caused by the pandemic
- Offering technical assistance, counseling, or business planning
- Offering aid to tourism, travel, hospitality, and other impacted industries
- Addressing public sector capacity:
- Provide payroll and benefits for public health, public safety, or human services workers
- Rehiring public sector staff (up to rates 7.5% above pre-pandemic levels)
To determine whether a program or service “responds” to the public health emergency, the recipient must do the following:
- Identify a need or negative impact of the public health emergency
- Identify how the program, service, or other intervention addresses the need or negative impact
- To be eligible for ARPA funds, the program, service, or other intervention must be in response to the disease itself or the harmful consequences of economic disruptions from or exacerbated by the COVID-19 public health emergency
Investment in capital expenditures, including property, facilities, and equipment, is allowable under this category for certain instances. Applicants must include written justifications for any expenditures over $1 million. This justification should include how the capital expenditure is “related and reasonably proportional to the pandemic impact identified and reasonably designed to benefit the impacted population or class.” Ineligible capital purchases include construction of correctional facilities as a response to increased rate of crime, construction of new congregate facilities to decrease spread of COVID-19 in facilities, and construction of convention centers, stadiums, or other large capital projects for general economic development aid to impacted industries.
The application will require that the recipient provide supporting documentation for the expenditures incurred.
