If you would like help the Martha's Vinyard community care for the new arrivals

[Thunderbeast]

A GO FUND ME campaign has started to help with the care and feeding of these DeSantis kidnapping victims.


https://www.gofundme.com/f/f5tae-help-marthas-vineyard-migrants

[Sympthsical]

1. Why would Martha's Vineyard need a Go Fund Me?

Doesn't that seem like the one place in America that doesn't need people of lesser incomes donating money?

[mahatmakanejeeves]

2. There's a food pantry on Martha's Vineyard.

Island Food Pantry

Intro
The Island Food Pantry strives to cultivate a healthy, hunger-free community on Martha’s Vineyard.

Page · Nonprofit organization

137 Vineyard Ave, Oak Bluffs, MA, United States, Massachusetts

[phone]

[e-mail]

igimv.org/about-island-food-pantry

Closed now

Rating · 5.0 (5 Reviews)

Fri Sep 16, 2022: In Martha's Vineyard, even the doctors can't afford housing anymore

SOCIAL ISSUES

In Martha’s Vineyard, even the doctors can’t afford housing anymore

Essential workers can’t afford to stay on the island, putting basic services in jeopardy

By Marissa J. Lang
September 16, 2022 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

MARTHA’S VINEYARD, Mass. — The stacks of chicken broth and shelf-stable milk were dwindling as the food pantry entered the last minutes of the day and a 63-year-old woman in a Boston Red Sox mask hurried through the door. {snip} This is the part of Martha’s Vineyard most people never see. An island known for its opulence and natural beauty, a playground for presidents and celebrities, it is kept afloat by workers for whom America’s housing crisis is not an eventuality. It’s here.

Even before Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) sent two planes full of asylum seekers to the summer haven this week to make a political point by funneling migrants to liberal communities, the dearth of affordable housing on the Vineyard had pushed the year-round community to a breaking point. Policymakers have chronically underinvested in affordable housing and allowed investment properties and short-term rentals to proliferate unchecked. ... Schools have struggled to staff classrooms. Indigenous people whose families have lived on the island for centuries have been forced to leave their homeland. Firefighters and government workers can’t afford to stay in the communities they serve. People juggling two, three, even four service-industry jobs say they live each month knowing they are one rent hike away from moving into their cars or tents or onto a friend’s couch.

{snip}

Even doctors can hardly afford to live here. Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, the largest employer on the island and home to its only emergency room, has for months been operating with a quarter of its staff jobs left unfilled. In January, CEO Denise Schepici offered 19 jobs to doctors, nurses and other workers ahead of the busy summer months, during which the island’s population swells from roughly 20,000 to 100,000 and emergency calls skyrocket. ... Each was turned down. ... “How do you recruit when rents are doubling from $3,000 a month to $6,000 a month, which is what happened to one of my nurses living in a one-bedroom apartment?” Schepici said.

{snip}

“We’re hemorrhaging people who are our infrastructure, who hold this community up,” said Laura Silber, the coordinator of the Coalition to Create the Martha’s Vineyard Housing Bank, which led a successful effort this year to win support for a new fund for affordable housing. “If you don’t have municipal workers, if you don’t have teachers, if you don’t have emergency workers, if you don’t have someone to help families who are struggling and run the food bank, how does a community keep functioning?”

{snip}

By Marissa Lang
Marissa J. Lang is a reporter with The Washington Post's social issues team; she is focused on housing, gentrification and the changing face of American cities. She has also covered protests, activist movements and the rise of extremism in the United States. Twitter https://twitter.com/Marissa_Jae

[Sympthsical]

4. I'm sure, but residents there have plenty of money

Feels like locals can manage it.

I think GFM is vastly overused these days in general, and it's become kind of a contest to see which story can pluck on heartsrings to get the most clicks for the most money. It's kind of . . . macabre. A lot of the time we're playing, "How much is each tragic death worth?" Like an Oscars In Memoriam with money instead of applause.

But in this case, it seems really weird that a place known for the fabulously wealthy wants money from . . . me.

Uh, maybe I'll just deal with my own local food pantry instead? (which I already do)

And that's what I'd recommend here. If you want to help the hungry, donate locally. Martha's Vineyard will be just fine without you.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

6. I understand. There are people where I live who rely on food banks too. NT

[sarisataka]

5. The median income on MV is

Over $85k with an average income north of $130k. The median is near double the US average and the average income is about 50% higher than the rest of the country.

I have seen "other" news sources ridiculing the go fund me and the people of MV calling it a humanitarian crisis. They point out the relative wealth of the community and that an area that sees tens of thousands of tourists saying they can't house 50 people during the off season.

Putting aside the why those 50 people are there, it is difficult to argue those points.

[Sympthsical]

7. There's no question using people like this is supremely shitty

But a GFM just hits very strangely given the location. And it's for $30k.

Literally call anyone on the island for their pocket change.

It just feels oddly exploitative to me. Asking the have littles for cash while the haves are standing right there.

[if..fish..had..wings]

3. Really should be to charge DeMantis with kidnapping

That I would donate to.

[Croney]

8. According to the GFM, the migrants have left for the Cape.

I always assumed they would be off the island as soon as accommodations were made available to the north.

[OAITW r.2.0]

9. Here's a suggestion.

Why don't the States who incur these migrants handle the costs. Then submit these incurred costs to the Federal Government who will then redirect reimburse these funds by with holding payments made from the Federal general revenue funds paid to the States doing the grandstanding?