What to Know
- The Mayor's Fund for Los Angeles will distribute prepaid debit cards to residents of the city who qualified for the assistance.
- The cards are preloaded with $700, $1,100 or $1,500, depending on the size of the household of the recipients.
- Debit card applications were accepted April 14-16, and on the first day, at least 56,000 people applied for them.
Prepaid debit cards to qualified applicants will be distributed Wednesday at 16 sites across Los Angeles as part of an assistance plan for families struggling to make ends meet due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The Mayor's Fund for Los Angeles will distribute the cards to residents of the city who qualified for the assistance. The cards are preloaded with $700, $1,100 or $1,500, depending on the size of the household of the recipients.
More than 455,000 people, including some from outside the city of Los Angeles and California, applied for the cards, which are valued at about $10 million in total.
Debit card applications were accepted April 14-16, and on the first day, at least 56,000 people applied for them, Mayor Eric Garcetti said. The website to apply experienced frequent crashes due to the high volume of people trying to access it.
The Mayor's Fund for Los Angeles is a nonprofit organization separate from city finances.
Officers will be stationed at the sites. The locations were made available only to those who will receive cards.
"These locations are on an invitation-only basis," LAPD Chief Michel Moore said. "Unfortunately, the supply does not meet the demand."
"Our presence at these locations will be just to ensure that there's orderly process," Moore said. "If people go to these locations and they have not been selected … unfortunately, they will not be allowed to continue, and we'll hold that line."
Calls to the mayor's office regarding the debit cards were directed to the Mayor's Fund for Los Angeles, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
