Montgomery County has opened $800,000 in grants for faith-based organized and other nonprofits to increase security measures, after a spate of hate crimes in recent months.

“We’ve had so many deeply disturbing incidents that’s it’s hard not to act,” County Executive Marc Elrich said at a press conference highlighting the grants on Monday morning. “It is really unfortunate that we’re doing this. If you think about this money, where it could’ve [gone]; into feeding programs in Montgomery County or rental assistance in Montgomery County…instead we’re diverting resources to protect people from people who are just driven by hate. That’s a sad commentary on where this is, but we have to fight.”

In order to be eligible, a nonprofit or faith-based organization must have facilities that have experienced — or are at a high risk of experiencing — hate crimes, which have become more and more frequent in the county over the past several months. More than 90 organizations, most of them faith-based, will be receiving a grant that can be used for security support and the installation of additional security cameras.

The announcement of the grant program came less than a week after antisemitic graffiti was found at Magruder High School — the fourth antisemitic incident at a Montgomery County Public School this month. The week prior, school officials announced that swastikas were drawn on desks at three different high schools, and in December, administrators discovered antisemitic graffiti in front of Walt Whitman High School.

And reports of hate crimes are not just coming from school campuses; on Jan. 25, a Jewish man was attacked in a Gaithersburg grocery store in an assault that police described as a hate crime. In November, swastikas were found at Old Georgetown Road and Tuckerman Lane, and the Bethesda Trolley Trail was tagged with “horrific” antisemitic and white supremacist messages. A similar incident had occurred on the trail just a few months earlier in August.

The Scotland African Methodist Episcopal Church, a historic Black church in Potomac, was vandalized in November, in what church leaders believed was a racist attack. Earlier last year, one of Montgomery County Council’s own members — Will Jawando — was harassed with racist slurs on a Zoom call.

“There has been a rise in anti-semitism, racism, anti-Asian hate, homophobia, transphobia,” Montgomery County Council president Evan Glass said during a call with reporters on Monday. He added that according to Montgomery County Police, nearly 12 bias incidents have been reported per month over the last several months. “Nearly one bias incident is occurring every three days. It is scary for so many of our residents, and we have to do everything we can to combat hate.”

Glass told reporters he plans to create an “anti-hate task force” in the the county. He could not provide specifics and said it has not been shared with Elrich yet, but imagines the group to consist of a diverse number of community members who will convene to discuss how they can reduce hate crime.

The grant program was funded in 2022, and Elrich said he expects more money to put be funneled into the grants in the coming year. D.C. instituted a similar program in 2021, allowing faith organizations to apply for additional security funding following several racist attacks on historic Black churches.

At the Monday morning press conference, an exasperated Elrich said the $800,000 program won’t solve the problems of antisemitism, racism, or homophobia that exist in the county, but rather make it easier for organizations to protect themselves. The only real solution, he said, is it to stand up to hateful sentiments “live and in person.”

“People have to stop being silent,” Elrich said. “It would not be able to fester here if people were less tolerant of its existence among us.”