San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
The most basic aid — paying the rent
First of the Month helps keep families housed in a crisis
When millions of Bay Area residents were ordered to shelter in place at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, Karol Martinez panicked. Her husband, a painter, had just lost his job because of the shutdowns, leaving the family with no income.
Martinez, who stays home to care for their two children and 80yearold father, made pupusas and tamales to earn extra cash. Her husband, Rafael Arevalo, started making food deliveries. But
it wasn’t enough to cover the couple’s $1,360 rent in East Palo Alto.
A friend told Martinez about the First of the Month fund, a grassroots initiative by activist Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca and two Palo Alto nonprofits that provides rent relief to families devastated by the pandemic.
The campaign covered the family’s rent for three months, totaling more than $4,000.
“With that money, we were able to stabilize ourselves a bit,” said Martinez, 41. “We thanked God. My dad even cried.”
Martinez and her husband were among more than 300 lowincome families who received rent assistance as part of the campaign. Espinoza Salamanca, 31, joined the nonprofits Live in Peace and Kafenia Peace Collective to create the fund to help families in East Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Redwood City with up to three months of rent or mortgage assistance.
The fund amassed $1 million in donations after its soft launch in April and had collected a total of $2.4 million in donations by last month, covering rent for more than 370 families, according to Espinoza Salamanca.
“We’re thankful for the support that they’ve given all of these families during this crisis,” Martinez said. “There are so many people in need of help, whose rent is backed up.”
The fund’s more than 600 donors included tech giants like the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, the Anne Wojcicki Foundation, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s #startsmall initiative and Zoom founder Eric Yuan.
“In the beginning the conversation was a little foggy, like, ‘What’s going to be the biggest need out there?’ ” said Espinoza Salamanca. “But I told them, ‘You don’t even need to think about that. The biggest need is going to be rent.’ These people have no savings, they live paycheck to paycheck, they have no cents in the bank.”
Espinoza Salamanca, who was once undocumented, first made a mark in 2016 when she created DREAMers Roadmap, a free mobile application that helps young, undocumented immigrants — often called “Dreamers” — find scholarships for college. They are ineligible for federal aid.
When the pandemic hit, Espinoza Salamanca said her first instinct was to help “Dreamers.” But she realized the need in the community was far greater.
“As soon as the pandemic hit, the first thing for me was, ‘Oh my God, people are going to lose their job, they’re going to lose their homes and they’re going to become homeless,’ ” she said.
Black and Latino households are more likely to have been hurt by the economic impacts of the pandemic, according to a July report by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. More than half of Latino (58%) and Black (53%) households have experienced a decline in job income since midMarch, compared with 44% of Asians and 39% of white people, the report said.
Renters were more vulnerable: 52% of renters said they lost employment income in the past two months, compared with 39% of homeowners.
California in September passed legislation that extended eviction protections through 2021. The measure bans landlords from evicting tenants for unpaid rent between March and August. It requires tenants to pay 25% of their rents between Sept. 1 and Jan. 31. Renters who fail to make the payment could face eviction as early as Feb. 1.
Community advocates worry the policy won’t be enough to protect lowincome families, many of whom are also facing food insecurity, they said.
“We’ve had several families break down weeping and say, ‘Can we get food?’ People are really without,” said Heather StarnesLogwood, executive director of Live in Peace, which helps atrisk youth succeed in school through a variety of enrichment programs. “We’ve had elders say, ‘We’re afraid; we haven’t been out of our house. We’re hungry.’ ”
Espinoza Salamanca and StarnesLogwood said they vetted each family — many of whom they already knew — closely and took an “organic” approach with the campaign fund. That allowed them to distribute the money quickly, they said. The families received donations in two days.
“The really unique power (we had) was having two sides of a community on opposite ends of the freeway coming together in a very organic way,” said StarnesLogwood. “We know that there’s other people giving out money. They have all this red tape because they’re not in relationships with the people they’re giving to.
“We were writing checks, and they were coming to our house to pick them up,” she continued.
The rent campaign is set to end this month. Espinoza Salamanca has also organized several donation drives for farmworker communities throughout Northern California and the Central Valley with support from Bay Area Rising Above and Chase Love, including Gilroy, Sonoma, Napa and Stockton. Another is planned for Christmastime.
Volunteers deliver personal protective equipment, clothing, food, toys and backpacks to farmworker families, who are among the most affected by the virus.
Espinoza Salamanca said the idea was born in September from a viral video that showed farmworkers in the fields as the Wine Country Glass Fire burned in the background.
“I was like, ‘Wait a minute, why are they there? They should be home or running away.’ But they were there,” she said.
After that, the project grew by word of mouth.
“Seeing the injustice of how these people live, how they are treated, I think is what fuels me to continue to try to fix that gap or bridge that gap,” she said. “I ask myself, ‘What is in my power to fix or to alleviate a little bit of their hardship?’ ”