When disaster strikes in Cambridge, residents receive compensation from a “disaster relief” fund which helps provide immediate cash as part of a transition. For example, in response to the recent Cambridge St. fire, each person was given $600 in cash (up to $2400 per household), in addition to resources from disaster relief organizations like the American Red Cross. I support this effort to help ensure that people are able to transition safely to new housing, and I appreciate the city’s effort to maintain these efforts.
That said, these funds appear to be funded at least in part from citizen donations in response to disasters: effectively, the city is acting as a GoFundMe operator, acting on behalf of residents to collect money from residents.
In a city with a notoriously low property tax rate, this seems an odd choice. If the disaster relief fund is low on dollars, does Cambridge simply not support these residents? Is there really a requirement from residents that these donations be made, or is this just a way to give Cambridge residents a sense of feel-good activity in response to an event, a way to feel included?
With the total money being given out typically being in the tens to hundreds of thousands, depending on the scale of the disaster, I understand that there’s some motivation to not simply spend willy-nilly, but I truly hope that the city would not choose to leave these residents (literally) out in the cold if this were to not be funded, and would instead choose to fund it out of city funds. Maybe this is done, maybe it isn’t, but it certainly isn’t the impression the City of Cambridge gives when soliciting these donations.
If the fund were to be tax deductible in some way – that is, if it were set up explicitly as a charity run by the city for these causes – that would be another potential way in which it might make sense to have separable funds: in that case, residents donating would be able to write off the amount given on their taxes. (In reality, I think charitable giving deductions are way less impactful than they are considered to be by most, but I do believe they have some impact.) However, there is no mention of tax deductible status, and the funds are paid through the standard invoicing system used by the City of Cambridge for all other payments.
In short: Cambridge is a wealthy town, with notoriously low residential property rates. Begging residents to help support one another after a disaster, when the city has the legal and moral authority to fund this activity directly out of taxes instead, is a very weird thing to do in my opinion.