Who Receives Economic Stimulus Payments?

"There are no poor people at home engaged in Zoom conferences and Zoom meetings."

- City Council Vice President Jason Williams

Dear Friend:

I spent last week researching how you can receive your $1200 check if you don't have internet access. Here's what I found - if you don’t file taxes because your income is too low and you don’t receive certain benefits like Social Security by direct deposit:

YOU CAN'T.

That's it. There is no way to receive your payment without internet access. The IRS blandly reports that "live phone assistance is not available at this time" - and gives no alternative. In short, the lowest-income among us, who disproportionately don’t have internet access, and are disproportionately African American and elderly, won’t receive an Economic Impact Payment.

Here’s what we’re doing at the L9WHA:

Advocating at the federal level to require the IRS to figure out how to get these payments to people without internet access.

Developing a way to help our neighbors apply—without calling them and asking for their Social Security number.

Our policy work will help low-income people in every urban neighborhood and rural farming town in this country. Our direct service will bring some justice to a community that's never recovered from Katrina largely because the programs that were supposed to help them instead discriminated against them.

If you've recently received your payment and you've been thinking about who could use it more than you,

I INVITE YOU TO CONSIDER THE LOWER 9TH WARD.

We pray that you and your family are all well, physically, emotionally, and economically.

With deep gratitude to you for being part of our Lower 9th Ward family,

MA