Tyler Perry made a $750,000 donation to help low-income seniors in Atlanta

Tyler Perry is as soon as once more serving to town he has known as residence for many years. The filmmaker and actor is donating $750,000 to assist low-income seniors in Atlanta now that property taxes have been elevated. 

Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens introduced the beneficiant donation this week, saying rising property taxes have displaced many residents – particularly seniors, who’re on mounted incomes, and should really feel the consequences of even reasonable will increase. 

“Atlanta’s development and prosperity shouldn’t come on the expense of our legacy residents—lots of whom have been priced out of their houses in earlier years,” Dickens mentioned in an announcement. “Tyler Perry has been engaged in our ongoing conversations round legacy resident retention, and he informed me he wished to do one thing to help these efforts. Due to his generosity, extra Atlantans will be capable of stay within the communities they constructed.”

His $750,000 donation will assist repay again property taxes for the greater than 300 low-income seniors who presently owe taxes. The donation may also fund a pilot program that can repay the distinction between present taxes and the rise for greater than 100 low-income seniors. 

Make investments Atlanta Partnership, town’s financial growth authority with a objective of accelerating “alternative and prosperity for the folks of Atlanta,” will administer the funds. 

Perry has launched into numerous philanthropic endeavors to assist his neighborhood. In 2009, he created The Tyler Perry Basis, which helps a variety of initiatives around the globe. 

Through the pandemic, he paid the grocery invoice for aged and at-risk consumers at 73 grocery shops in Atlanta and his hometown of New Orleans. He has additionally used his platform to induce folks to get protected agains COVID-19 with the vaccine. 

Perry typically covers funeral and different bills for households who’ve suffered tragedies. In 2020, he paid for the funeral of Rayshard Brooks, a black man killed by Atlanta cops in a Wendy’s parking. That very same 12 months, he donated $100,000 to the authorized protection fund of Kenneth Walker, the boyfriend of Breonna Taylor. Taylor was fatally shot by police inside her residence and Walker was sued by one of many Louisville Police Division officers who was wounded through the capturing.

On the 2021 Academy Awards, Perry was introduced with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for serving to the meals insecure through the pandemic. He used his speech to urge folks to “refuse hate.”

And in 2019, he opened 330-acre film studio complicated in Atlanta, which employs hundreds of individuals.