Virus pushing families over the edge
Workers already struggling with high costs of living wonder if it’s time to pack up and leave
It wasn’t long ago that Satel Medina thought she and her husband might finally be able to find something bigger and more comfortable than the one-bedroom apartment they share with their 1-yearold son and her mother in Campbell
“We felt stable because I had my job, she said. “We were thinking of the future, buying a house.”
Then the novel coronavirus pandemic hit Silicon Valley, devastating what was once one of the hottest economies in the world and bringing work to a screeching halt for thousands of service workers who were already hit hard by the Bay Area’s high rents and cost of living.
Now, families like the Medinas
are facing a daunting choice: Do they try to hang on or do they pack up and leave?
“We have to put a pause,” said Medina, whose hours have been cut because the bank she works at is only open three days a week now. Even a party for her son’s first birthday has been postponed.
As she sat in her minivan
in the St. John Vianney church parking lot in East San Jose, she detailed the financial crisis the family is facing. Her husband works low-wage construction jobs but hadn’t had any work since the lockdown orders started in mid-March. And her reduced income isn’t enough.
“Thank God the bank didn’t close,” she said. “But we still got bills to pay.”
At the bank, she hears from other people who are struggling. Now, she said, she sees herself in their stories. They’ve been living off savings to keep up with bills and their $1,400 monthly rent, and going to the food bank to save money on groceries. Medina tried to apply for California’s financial assistance program for immigrants who aren’t eligible for the federal CARES Act stimulus checks, but after 100 calls she still hadn’t gotten through to anyone earlier this month.
“We’re even thinking of going back to our country,” she said.
If they leave, they’ll be joining thousands of lowwage workers who have been moving to cheaper states or commuting from as far out as Tracy and Stockton to jobs in Silicon Valley. The noel coronavirus crisis, which has hit the food, retail and hospitality industries particularly hard, could be the final straw for many workers.
“We saw a complete collapse of the service sector and the gig economy, and those were the folks that were living paycheck to paycheck,” said Tom Myers, executive director of the Community Service Agency in Mountain View. “We’ve been inundated with unprecedented need.”
Myers said his organization has gone from providing rental assistance to about 20 households a month to helping more than 500 in just six weeks, thanks in part to a huge
boost in funding from the city.
A similar explosion of need is happening in San Jose. The Rev. Jon Pedigo, who helps run the food bank for Catholic Charities of Santa Clara County where Medina was waiting her turn, said now he sometimes sees his parishioners in line. Once he saw a parish minister waiting for food. She had been laid off from her job with her church.
“It was just heartbreaking,” he said. “She now has nothing; she has to go to the church to survive.”
The pandemic, Pedigo said, has exposed deepseated issues of wealth and access that people in poor neighborhoods were already familiar with. Now, others are realizing how deep the struggle has become for those at the bottom of the economic ladder. St. John Vianney is in one of four heavily Latinx and Vietnamese ZIP codes where the virus has exploded and where more than a third of the first 100 people to die of COVID-19 in Santa Clara County lived.
“We all know the communities that are being affected the most are the communities that are always struggling more than others,” said Kelly Batson, senior vice president for community impact at the United Way Bay Area, which earlier this month gave $4.3 million in grants for coronavirus relief to 90
organizations, and received $28.9 million in grant requests from nonprofits who need help meeting increased demand.
In Concord, the Monument Crisis Center normally provides food for about 85 families a day, along with programs for teens and seniors. The first Friday after the Bay Area’s shelter-in-place order, the nonprofit served 300 families, according to Executive Director Sandra Scherer.
“It just kills you when someone is excited because they got pasta and pasta sauce,” Scherer said, watching her staff and volunteers hand out groceries, masks and pet food one recent Tuesday morning. “It shouldn’t be that way.”
The groceries are a big help, said Erlinda Paterno, who was picking up food for herself and some pet food for a friend. The 72-yearold, who is originally from the Philippines and now lives in Concord, had been coming to the center’s senior bingo night for years, picking up a couple of bags of groceries every time. When she has extra food or money, she sends it to family in the Philippines, she said.
Now, Paterno said, she’s worried about the virus, praying she won’t get sick while working the night shift as a caregiver in the East Bay.
“At least I have money,” she said. “At least I earn a little.”