Focus on Community: Coeur d'Alene, Idaho
Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, was the second of six locations we visited to hear directly from local program administrators, government officials, and other community members about their experiences during the pandemic. Coeur d’Alene is one of the top ten largest cities in Idaho with a population of 56,733. Coeur d’Alene recipients, including city government, small businesses, and individuals, received more than $314.4 million across 45 pandemic relief programs and subprograms during the first 18 months of the pandemic. This report provides a closer look at eight of the federal programs that aimed to respond to and ease the effects of the pandemic on the community.
Coeur d'Alene's unique experience
The Idaho Governor’s reopening plan, or Idaho Rebound stages, resulted in Coeur d’Alene gradually reopening in the summer of 2020 before many other communities in the area. Likely because of this, the city experienced a significant influx of people from other states and regions of the country during the pandemic. This created a high demand for housing, which, along with inflation, increased the cost of housing and other necessities. At the time of our visit in June 2022, Coeur d’Alene still struggled to address the increased housing demand caused by the considerable increase in population.
Federal programs’ impact on the Coeur d’Alene community
From programs supporting transportation to housing, small businesses to education, city officials used this additional federal funding to help respond to the pandemic. For example:
Nineteen subrecipients, including the city government, the public school system, and the medical center, received $16.8 million from the Department of the Treasury’s Coronavirus Relief Fund (CRF). The subrecipients used the funds to pay public health and safety employees, facilitate distance learning, increase the capacity of hospitals to treat COVID-19 patients, and address the shortage of skilled healthcare workers by providing training in fields such as medical coding.
Kootenai County Transit System officials used $4.9 million in formula grants from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) to continue free bus and on-demand van services.
The Coeur d’Alene public school system struggled to find staff for their programs due to teacher burnout. According to the Coeur d’Alene school system, teachers experienced a high rate of physical and mental exhaustion due to the extra demands of teaching during the pandemic. In response, the school system used the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Program (ESSER) funding to increase teacher pay and retain staff.
A city official said the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding from the CARES Act helped the city respond to COVID-19, especially at the beginning of the pandemic when services and businesses shut down. Several nonprofit organizations proactively contacted the city to help explain community needs. This coordination helped focus the city’s efforts to effectively address specific needs.
Working with nonprofit organizations, the city used $446,799 from the CDBG program to expand childcare access, provide food for families and seniors, provide housing and utility access for workers, and provide rental assistance.
The federal government funded these programs to ease the effects of the pandemic that posed a serious threat to the health or welfare of the community. Read the full report on Coeur d’Alene’s experiences.
Impact on Communities
To truly understand how the pandemic impacted people on the ground across the country, you have to get out into communities—both big and small, rural, urban and suburban—to appreciate the unique circumstances Americans faced. We did just that, examining six communities across the U.S. The report we reference on this page highlights one of those six communities’ experiences.
