Kay Crowder Changes Mind, Wants to Rescind $30K Grant to Clinic With Ties to Anti-Abortion, LGBTQ

Kay Crowder Changes Mind, Wants to Rescind $30K Grant to Clinic With Ties to Anti-Abortion, LGBTQ-Conversion Organizations


Raleigh City Council member Kay Crowder, who last week pushed her colleagues to give $30,000 to a faith-based health clinic with ties to an anti-abortion organization and a pro-LGBTQ-conversion church, now says she wants to rescind the grant.

“It is clear that not using the normal grant application process has resulted in a lot of confusion for the community and the city council,” Crowder wrote in a statement posted to her Facebook page Tuesday. “I truly regret that this has occurred and will join fellow city council members in rescinding the grant to the NeighborHealth Center. I want the community to know that I take their concerns and need for more information seriously.”

The council voted unanimously to fund the clinic last week. The item was not originally on the agenda, but Crowder proposed funding the clinic because it provides much-needed healthcare to an underserved portion of the city. The nonprofit had missed the city’s deadline for grant applications, so Crowder proposed awarding it money left over in the city’s contingency fund.

NeighborHealth started last year as a nonprofit health clinic in Northwest Raleigh, where it offers services to low-income residents on a sliding fee scale. So far, it has seen seventeen hundred patients, about 70 percent of whom do not have insurance. Reproductive health care makes up about 10 percent of the services at the clinic, according to CEO Sue Ellen Thompson.

Read more: https://indyweek.com/news/wake/kay-crowder-raleigh-council-neighborhealth/