Add the City of Brotherly Love to the states and locales looking for aid to help weather the economic storm brewing as a result of the novel coronavirus outbreak.

Like many private-sector businesses across the United States, city and state governments are reeling from the economic fallout caused by the lockdown conditions in place to slow the spread of the virus.

New York Gov Andrew Cuomo (D) last month slammed the enormous $2 trillion rescue package approved by Congress because it failed to address the massive shortfalls which cities and states are facing.

Philadelphia, Pa., Mayor Jim Kenney (D) said cities like his certainly need their own funding.

“We need direct funding. We love our state governments but we need money directly to cities so that we can utilize them without any type of loss of money or handling charges or anything like that. We need the money straight to us,” he said.

In a television interview, Kenney went on to paint a picture of how the COVID-19 pandemic–which has killed more than 26,000 Americans and sickened more than 620,000–has affected his city.

Like many other US cities, Philadelphia needs more personal protective equipment (PPE) to keep front-line medical professionals safe while they tend to the sick, and Philly’s “housing needs are really serious,” the mayor said.

“We have a lot of people facing eviction, although the eviction courts are closed and they’re not executing any writs, people are getting behind in their mortgage, getting behind in their rent,” he added. “We’ve served a million meals plus since this started. We’ve set up 80 sites in our schools to feed our kids because a lot of our kids live in poverty and they depend on going to school to get their meals and get their health care. So we are continuing that.”

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