When Chief Development Officer Monica Lamboy told a City Council committee last month that Everett’s pandemic relief money was nearly gone, she named a few of the nonprofits that got it and moved on. The full list is a public document, posted on the city website in February 2025, and it answers a question councilors did not ask: who, exactly, was each dollar meant to help?
The document, titled “COE Subrecipient Grant Awards,” runs 13 pages. For each of 22 awards it gives the amount requested, whether the group had other funding, the score a city committee gave the application, the amount recommended and the amount approved, and a summary of the program in the applicant’s own words. We reported earlier this week on the full $47.2 million program. This story is about the $10.5 million the city routed through outside organizations.
Four pots, 14 organizations
The city split the money into four competitive categories and spent each to the dollar: $4.3 million for public health, $3.7 million for housing, $1.4 million for education and child care, and $1.1 million for food. Fourteen organizations won at least one award. Three of them, Cambridge Health Alliance, Eliot Community Human Services and For Kids Only Afterschool, won several and together account for about $6.6 million, or 63 percent of the total.
Public health, $4.3 million. Eliot Community Human Services received four awards: $352,926 for the NAN Project, a peer mental health and suicide prevention program in Everett middle and high schools; $409,407 for mental health and healthy relationship workshops; $665,026 for a clinical treatment and case management program; and $360,000 for its Family Resource Center’s children’s programs, including playgroups, diaper distributions and an internship program with the schools and the police department. Cambridge Health Alliance received $688,824 for wellness programs for Everett residents 60 and older and $464,722 for a behavioral health program run with the Everett Haitian Community Center. Smaller awards went to Arts for Everett ($200,200), Portal to Hope ($178,400 for a youth violence intervention program in the schools), the Joint Committee for Children’s Health Care ($377,850 to enroll residents in MassHealth and Health Connector insurance), For Kids Only ($437,146 for behavior support specialists) and the Association of Women in Ministry International ($165,500 for a counseling and acculturation program for migrants).
Housing, $3.7 million. The biggest award in the whole program, $1,131,271, went to Cambridge Health Alliance for its Career Pathways program, which trains Everett residents ages 16 to 24 for health care jobs. A note in the document explains that the city counted job training as a housing use because a steady job helps people afford rent. Housing Families Inc. received $591,624 for free eviction defense lawyers, including a lawyer-of-the-day program at Malden District Court. Latinos Unidos en Massachusetts, known as LUMA, asked for $500,000 for rental assistance for “the immigrant community of Everett” and was approved for $250,000. La Comunidad received $73,200 to pay $300 utility bills for low-income renters and homeowners, a program it said “targets Latino and Haitian residents” and requires proof of residency and income. The Malden Warming Center received $39,935. Action for Boston Community Development scored lowest in the category and was recommended for $448,442, but the city gave it nothing and moved the money into its own rental assistance program “to avoid duplicating benefits.” Another $1,165,528 was held back for a second housing round in the spring of 2025.
Education and child care, $1.4 million. For Kids Only received $540,985 for scholarships to its after-school and summer programs. Housing Families received $381,632 for EnrichEd, a therapeutic program for children who have been homeless. North Shore Evangelical Missionary Church received $347,500 for a 12-month English and job placement program “to support migrants aged 18-64.” La Comunidad received $129,883 for two years of free English classes for about 340 students a year.
Food, $1.1 million. Eliot received $700,884 to hand out $100 grocery gift cards, 4,545 of them, to clients of its Family Resource Center. Cambridge Health Alliance received $324,116 for a produce prescription pilot at the Everett Care Center. The Food Drive received $25,000. La Perle Caribbean Restaurant, a for-profit business, asked for $209,550 for cooking classes, scored lowest of any applicant at 21.67 points, and was approved for $50,000.
Who the programs were written for
Most of the money is tied, in the applications, to a place or an age rather than to a nationality: students in Everett Public Schools, residents over 60, children in after-school care, tenants in Malden District Court, patients at the Everett Care Center. The largest single award trains Everett residents for hospital jobs.
Four awards, totaling $1,227,722, describe their clients specifically as migrants, immigrants or refugees. They are the Association of Women in Ministry’s RISE program ($165,500, “designed to support migrants, particularly those who have experienced trauma”), the Cambridge Health Alliance program with the Haitian Community Center ($464,722, for “Haitian refugees, immigrants, and their families in Everett”), LUMA’s rental assistance ($250,000, for “the immigrant community of Everett”) and the North Shore Evangelical Missionary Church’s English and jobs program ($347,500, for “migrants aged 18-64”). La Comunidad’s two awards, $203,083 together, serve Latino, Haitian and Indian residents through English classes and utility payments. Counting those, about $1.43 million, or 14 percent of the $10.5 million, went to programs whose stated purpose is serving immigrant communities.
None of the documents says whether the people served are citizens, legal residents or in the country without authorization. The city’s grant application asked organizations to estimate how many Everett residents they serve, broken down by race and by language community: Portuguese, Haitian, French, Vietnamese, Nepalese and Hispanic. It did not ask about immigration status. The March 2024 notice of funding tied eligibility to income, to living in a federally designated low-income census tract, or to enrollment in programs such as SNAP, Medicaid or free school lunch.
The federal rules are silent on the question. The Treasury Department’s 108-page final rule FAQ for the program, which governs every dollar Everett spent, does not contain the words immigration, citizenship or undocumented.
The city’s own rental assistance program, which absorbed the ABCD money and which Lamboy said has paid out more than $1.44 million, requires an applicant to be a current Everett resident with a lease in their name, a household income under 65 percent of the area median, and a government photo ID. The guidelines list a driver’s license, passport, state ID card, senior Charlie Card or military ID as acceptable. The payment, up to $5,000, goes to the landlord.
What is still unknown
The document is a snapshot of what was approved in February 2025. It does not show what each group has actually spent. Lamboy told the council the programs ended September 30 and that an outside accounting firm is reviewing final reports now; groups that did not spend their full award will lose the balance, and whatever comes back is going into construction at the former high school.
The city has not published the equivalent list for its small business program, the 42 awards of about $17,800 each that Lamboy handed to councilors on paper. We have asked the city for it.
The full awards document is on the city website.
