Help bring St. John residents home.

In December 2019, the novel coronavirus changed lives on a global scale. Amid the fear and uncertainty, Love City Strong has made every effort to react as quickly as possible to the changing landscape of the pandemic response in order to better serve our community. 

On March 6th, we held a team meeting to discuss the known facts about this emerging threat, including the hygiene and social distancing guidelines recommended by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Virgin Islands Department of Health. We discussed the ways in which we might help the community, and talked openly and honestly about our fears, concerns, and anxieties regarding the virus. Creating a space in the workplace to share what is on our minds and in our hearts is something that we have always believed makes an organization that much stronger. Our plan to alter our existing programming and pivot to fill gaps in the response to this emerging threat was formed at this meeting.

Shortly after this meeting, we purchased PPE to give to medical professionals, first responders, and essential workers on St. John in anticipation of a global shortage. We gave gloves, surgical masks, tyvek suits, hand sanitizer, antibacterial soap, cleaning supplies to the Myrah Keating Smith clinic, Cruz Bay Family Practice, and Island Health and Wellness as well as to employees of grocery stores, pharmacies, and gas stations across the island throughout the month of March. The federal government's push packagaes did not arrive in the Territory until a week after Easter.

On March 10th, we began to distribute informational flyers in English and in Spanish about COVID-19 across the island in both public spaces and door to door to seniors and individuals with chronic health conditions, including all of our clients from the Resilient Housing Initiative (RHI). Over 500 flyers were distributed over the course of a few days before the virus’ presence in the Territory was announced.

On March 13th, we then made the difficult decision to limit or suspend operations on our existing programs, including RHI. This decision was not made lightly, but we feel that the overall health and safety of our community, our clients, our contractors, and our employees must always take precedence. We closed our office to the public, and asked our aministrative staff to work from home. On March 14th, the first case of COVID-19 was reported by health officials in the US Virgin Islands.

In the mean time, our teams have kept busy partnering with World Central Kitchen to directly deliver hot and cold meals every week to seniors, families with children, and individuals with a disability or chronic health condition. On average, over 600 meals are delivered every week, and we have been involved in this program for 8 weeks as of June 1; with the territory set to reopen its doors in early June, we will be brinigng this temporary program to a close at the beginning of July. 

While RHI was originally designed to end in 2020, with 40 homes belonging to St. John seniors, families, and persons with a disability or chronic health condition all completed by July, the safety concerns and economic conditions that emerged as a result of this pandemic have made our original goal impossible.

However, we still believe in the RHI mission, and we are committed to seeing it through.

To that end, we have extended our contracts with the 3 St. John-based construction companies and the myriad of vendors that we partner with as part of RHI until Q1 of 2021, so that they can make necessary adjustments to their business operations and, eventually, recoup lost revenue when it is safe for them to begin work on the remaining homes in our queue. We hope to begin work on the final 6 homes in our queue by the end of June.

Our final 6 clients have been waiting for nearly 3 years to have their home rebuilt, and unfortunately the COVID-19 crisis has meant that they have had to wait a little longer. But we know that RHI is their only hope for returning to a safe and healthy home that they can call their own, and we will do everything that we can to give them the stability that they deserve.

2 multigeneraitonal families and 4 seniors comprise our last 6 rebuilds, and each one requires a full rebuild, and in some cases brand new foundation work--The most costly of RHI's endeavors.

Your support is more critical than ever as we approach the Atlantic Hurricane Season, when security and shelter matter the most to those in need. We look forward to providing you more updates as RHI gets moving once again. Thank you for your support and encouragement during these unprecedented times.