{"id":48605,"date":"2021-05-27T15:59:19","date_gmt":"2021-05-27T22:59:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eltecolote.org\/content\/?p=48605"},"modified":"2021-07-16T13:48:00","modified_gmt":"2021-07-16T20:48:00","slug":"rent-stress-drove-sfs-immigrant-latinx-community-to-work-during-the-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eltecolote.org\/content\/en\/rent-stress-drove-sfs-immigrant-latinx-community-to-work-during-the-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"Rent made sheltering-in-place impossible for many of SF’s Latinx immigrants"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Rent stress drove SF’s immigrant Latinx community to work during the pandemic<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This report is the first in a series that will cover the wealth and health stripping effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Latinx immigrant people of San Francisco. Our report is informed by the results of the \u201cEl Tecolote Survey 2021: Rent, Stress and the Pandemic in the Latinx immigrant community of San Francisco.\u201d The survey was developed and gathered by El Tecolote with the support of the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism 2020 Impact Fund, and in collaboration with Mujeres Hacia El Conocifacmiento in alliance with Excelsior Works. Adriana Camarena and Alexis Terrazas (editor of El Tecolote) co-led the project.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are endlessly grateful to the women of Mujeres Hacia El Conocimiento, as well as to the survey respondents, who took the time\u2014often at the end of a long work day or on their one free day\u2014to develop, gather or answer our survey. The El Tecolote Survey 2021 gathered 391 responses in a two week period. Nearly all respondents are foreign born Latinx immigrants, nearly all are tenants. Slightly over half are women. Most respondents are in the age group of 24-50 years old. The vast majority of respondents live in the five San Francisco neighborhoods most impacted by COVID-19 case rates: BayView\/ Hunters Point, Visitaci\u00f3n Valley, Tenderloin, Mission and Excelsior. Our survey responses were gathered from May 10-26, 2021.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We invite readers to visit our El Tecolote Survey 2021 webpage<\/a> that will be continuously updated over the next two months with key findings and related El Teco news stories. We also provide more information about our survey methodology. We committed to respondents that we would deliver survey results back to our community, and raise up the voices and experiences of the Latinx immigrant people of the City during the pandemic. This is our first report.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rent defeated the shelter-in-place order<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As San Francisco began to shelter-in-place in March of last year, in an attempt to brace for a global pandemic that would go on to kill more than 591,000 people in the United States, Marta Salinas Cruz was giving birth to her second child, Joshua Emanuel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Two-year-old Deborah Arleth plays with her baby brother, Joshua Emanuel. Photo: Alexis Terrazas<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Giving birth amid the rampant spread of a novel coronavirus was surely stressful, but it paled in comparison to the stress of paying the rent to stay sheltered. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The day after her son was born, Marta\u2014who migrated to San Francisco from El Salvador four years ago\u2014was shooed out of the hospital by a nervous medical staff, back to her single room in a Bayview apartment, where her family of four would live: Marta, her husband Melvin Zuniga, their one-year old daughter Deborah Arleth, and the new baby. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The room was rented to them by the main tenant of the apartment\u2014the Casera, or Landlady\u2014 who despite job losses resulting in plummeting wages, demanded that their $1,200 rent be paid in full. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Marta Salinas Cruz, her husband Melvin Zuniga and their two children, Joshua Emanuel and Deborah Arleth, pose for a portrait. The entire family was sick with COVID-19 during the pandemic. Photo: Alexis Terrazas<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was something very extreme, very worrying, because my husband’s wages went down. And unfortunately, the person we lived with didn\u2019t give us a chance and say, \u2018I’m going to give you a break.\u2019 We had to be paying them. So that caused us extreme stress,\u201d Marta said. \u201cThe lady who rents us the room said she didn\u2019t want to get into trouble with the owner. And in order not to get in trouble, she demanded 100 percent rent from us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sheltered in place in a single bedroom and caring for two infants, Marta\u2019s family relied on the lone grocery store income of her husband Melvin. Melvin\u2019s work had come to a sudden halt with the shelter-in-place order, but a few months later he was working part-time, and since then has kept working a reduced schedule at a warehouse that supplies food to Bi-Rite, a beloved niche supermarket in San Francisco.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Melvin Zuniga and his one year old son, Joshua Emanuel, both fell sick to COVID-19 during the pandemic. Photo: Alexis Terrazas<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

In December, Marta, Melvin and the babies, but also the main tenants (the landlady and her husband) became sick with COVID-19. It\u2019s unclear who brought the contagion into the apartment. The contract tracers never provided a clear answer. For purposes of this article, where the main tenant acts as landlady or landlord to subtenants we will call them the “casera” or “casero”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their landlady was the first to fall sick, then the landlady\u2019s daughter and husband. The landlady became ill enough to need hospitalization, but her husband refused to be interned. Quietly, and alone in the night, the casero died in his bed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c[The landlady and her daughter] went to the hospital because the landlady had trouble breathing. Her husband stayed home, but still had a big cough, all kinds of problems, he couldn’t breathe. But he didn’t want to go to the hospital,\u201d Marta said. \u201cUnfortunately, one night he went to sleep, and didn\u2019t wake up. Maybe it was COVID-related, but we don\u2019t know for sure. After that, we became infected. And the fear, the horror that it caused us. Like, what is going to happen. It was very stressful.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Marta Salinas Cruz holds a polaroid photo of her family. Photo: Alexis Terrazas<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Baby Joshua is over a year old now. In the early years of his life, Marta and Melvin fell behind nearly three months’ rent, but today they are all caught up. They worry most about the next rent check, sending remittances back home, and paying the debt they took on with family and friends to survive the first year of the plague.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Working to keep up with the rent<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Marta\u2019s experience is similar to that of the majority of the Latinx foreign-born people who answered the El Tecolote 2021 Survey. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the peak year of the pandemic, the large majority of the Latinx immigrant respondents living in the five neighborhoods hardest hit by COVID-19 case rates kept up or in earnest tried to keep up with their rent payments. Over half of the survey respondents mentioned that they paid their rent in full during the first year of the pandemic, while another 20 percent, at most, owed three months back rent or less.<\/p>\n\n\n\n