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Domestic violence is rising as cities and states go into COVID-19 lockdown, with families trapped at home with their abusers. Resources for domestic abuse survivors are stretched at the best of times, but current events have left charities and social services in crisis mode.
Rihanna‘s Clara Lionel Foundation and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey just stepped in to help and donated $2.1 million each to the Mayor’s Fund in Los Angeles. The money will help to fund emergency housing for people escaping domestic violence.
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Overall, that $4.2 million should cover 10 weeks of food, housing and counseling for 90 people in L.A., a number that really highlights how much more government support is required. As of 2018, there were an estimated 52,000 homeless people among L.A.’s population of 10 million, and that’s likely to have risen during the widespread unemployment caused by the pandemic. Emergency housing was already in extremely short supply.
This isn’t the first high-profile example of pandemic-related philanthropy from Dorsey and Rihanna, with Rihanna’s foundation already donating protective supplies to New York State and $5 million to a variety of relevant charities, and Dorsey promising to donate $1 billion of his Twitter and Square shares to unspecified relief efforts.
H/T to ABC News