More than one month after statewide eviction protections expired on June 30, less than 4% of rent relief funds requested by San Francisco households remain unprocessed, with 55% of funds paid out. 

Over 20,600 San Francisco households had asked for almost $340 million in rent and utility assistance from both state and local COVID-19 rent relief programs as of the week of July 11, government figures show. The amount requested declined 9% between April 11 and July 11 as the state continued to weed out ineligible applications. The state stopped accepting applications on March 31, more than a year after it opened a financial aid program to cover housing debt incurred by tenants due to pandemic hardship. 

Households whose applications have been approved can stay an eviction even if they have not received payment yet; however, those with applications under review or pending applicant information — a category that applies to 1,154 applicants in San Francisco — are vulnerable to eviction.  

California passed legislation to ensure all eligible households who applied by the March 31 deadline will receive funding. Recent budget proposals would earmark additional money for rent relief. 

The following figures include San Francisco residents’ requests from California’s COVID-19 Rent Relief Program and San Francisco’s original Emergency Rental Assistance Program, which stopped taking applications in September 2021. It does not include requests from the city’s newest rent relief program, which began accepting applications April 1. 

Over $140 million in rent and utilities requested from the state program by San Franciscans had been denied as of the week of July 11. Almost 1,000 San Francisco applicants appealed their denials. 

On July 7, an Alameda County Superior Court judge barred the state from denying any more pending applications or any appeals of denials that occurred in the previous 30 days until a hearing is held to determine if applicants’ rights to due process were violated in the application review process. 

In 2021, California received $5.2 billion for emergency rental assistance funds from the federal government. The state has since acquired nearly one out of every three dollars of federal reallocations of unused funds from other states, for a total of $198 million.  

Tenants who had previously applied to the program and were awaiting rent relief were protected from eviction through June 30 for rent due between April 2020 and April 2022 under AB 2179. Under the same bill, local eviction protections passed unanimously by the Board of Supervisors in March were voided until July 1, but have since taken effect.  

In response to the state’s move to cease accepting applications, the city reopened its own rent relief program for tenants who are seeking funds for rent debt accumulated in April and beyond. So far, it has distributed close to $4.3 million in funds to 713 of the 4,415 households that have applied, and residents who need help are encouraged to apply. 

In its previous rent relief program, San Francisco assisted over 3,200 applicants with $22.8 million in relief. An additional $243,878 in requests from 53 households are yet to be processed. 

The statewide eviction moratorium, protecting tenants who could not pay rent because of COVID-19 hardship, was originally scheduled to end Jan. 31, 2021, but lawmakers extended it twice. Following the moratorium’s final end date, Sept. 30, San Francisco tenants became vulnerable to eviction for nonpayment of rent if they had not paid at least 25% of the rents due in the preceding 13 months, as well as October’s rent. 

However, California lawmakers did create some protections for renters who were unable to pay back rent after the moratorium expired. Tenants who applied to the state’s rent relief program before the deadline and were waiting on relief were protected from eviction through March 2022. State lawmakers in late March extended those protections through June 30. 

Even though they may have been barred from evicting some tenants, starting in November 2021, landlords could sue tenants to obtain unpaid rent that was due from March 2020 through September 2021. If a landlord pursues the debt in small claims court, they and the tenant must represent themselves in the courtroom. 

Are you facing eviction? Call the Eviction Defense Collaborative at (415) 659-9184 or send an email to legal@evictiondefense.org as soon as possible. The organization advises that tenants respond within five days of being served with court papers to avoid the risk of a default judgment against them.

Is your landlord suing you to recover pandemic rent debt? Go here to read our guide on how small claims court works, and how to argue your side of the case.

The post San Francisco Rent Relief Tracker appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

Over the past several months, health care providers have been warning San Francisco officials that while the city was focused on fighting COVID-19, rates of HIV infection and related illnesses were creeping in the wrong direction.

From the very beginning, and throughout the HIV epidemic, which began in 1981, San Francisco led the way in prevention, care and treatment that came to be recognized around the world.

But that reputation is lagging, according to HIV activists and health care professionals in San Francisco, where more than 15,800 residents live with HIV. On March 21, dozens of HIV survivors, activists, politicians and health care providers held a die-in rally on the steps of City Hall to draw attention to the suffering among one of the city’s most vulnerable populations.

“We have people dying from HIV,” said a speaker named Junebug. “This is a reality. We can’t be silent. And sometimes you feel trapped and stigmatized. And even though it’s 2022, ignorance is so real. But how do we fight ignorance? Well, one way is we’re going to break the silence.”

Rally co-organizer Michael Rouppet, executive board member of the Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club, said that the San Francisco Department of Public Health’s 2020 HIV epidemiology report revealed the need for renewed efforts in the fight against HIV.

“I’m a long-term survivor with HIV,” Rouppet said. “We’ve survived, now, two pandemics. And what we’re seeing happening with the recent epidemiological report is that San Francisco is losing the opportunity to be a trailblazer.”

In 2016, the city launched an initiative called Getting to Zero with these goals: zero new HIV infections, zero HIV deaths and zero HIV stigma by 2025. The strategy calls for three initiatives. The first is expanding the awareness about and use of pre-exposure prophylaxis — aka Prep — a daily pill that reduces the risk of HIV infection by 99%. The second is Rapid — the Rapid ART Program Initiative for HIV Diagnoses — which allows newly diagnosed HIV patients to quickly access antiretroviral therapy through several clinical hubs around the city. The third focuses on retention — making sure patients with unstable housing or mental health issues, or who are suffering from addiction, still regularly engage in HIV care and treatment.

The strategy was showing signs of success every year. By 2019, the Department of Public Health’s Annual HIV Epidemiology Report revealed that new HIV diagnoses had dropped to a record low of 166 — down 19% from the previous year. Nearly all the cases were linked to care within a month, and 78% were virally suppressed within six months after receiving a diagnosis.

This is important because high viral loads can lead a patient to progress to AIDS. Virological suppression means that the amount of HIV in the body is minimal enough to keep the immune system working and to prevent illness.

But that viral suppression trend began reversing course during the COVID-19 pandemic, said Dr. Monica Gandhi, director of Ward 86 at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, one of the oldest HIV clinics in the country.

The number of virus-related deaths had been consistently declining until last year when it rose to 160 from 137 the previous year. That reversal may be linked to the shelter-in-place order issued on March 16, 2020, Gandhi said. It meant that in-person care was converted to telephone medicine. And for patients who have substance use issues or are marginally housed, finding a quiet, private space to call a health care provider can be challenging.

Prior to the pandemic, 75% of city residents with HIV were virologically suppressed. That went down to 70% during the pandemic. And among the homeless population, it fell from 39% to 20%.

“We saw a lot of people being admitted to the hospital with opportunistic infections and who were quite ill because their viral loads were up and subsequently their T cells were down,” Gandhi said. “So, the slippage was very obvious.”

Higher viral loads can also lead to higher rates of HIV infection in the community. It remains to be seen whether the rate of infection has gone up because testing rates plummeted by nearly half during the pandemic.

“I will say, anecdotally, we’ve seen a lot of new diagnoses at Ward 86,” Gandhi said. “Many of these new diagnoses are in women and populations that we haven’t seen so much before. And so now, only with systematic testing, will we know the impact of transmission.”

CORRECTION 06/02/2022: Deletes incorrect reference to Hepatitis C at top of story.

The post While SF Fought COVID, HIV Prevention Stalled appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

If state lawmakers don’t act fast, tenants across California will become vulnerable to eviction next month for rent debts they accumulated during the pandemic.

Amid increasing calls for Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature to avert an eviction wave, the San Francisco Public Press held a live panel discussion Wednesday about how the state got to this moment and what comes next. The Public Press spoke with Ora Prochovnick, director of litigation and policy at the Eviction Defense Collaborative, which provides free legal aid to people facing eviction, and Shanti Singh, communications and legislative director at Tenants Together, a statewide coalition of tenant-rights groups.

“We are definitely facing a serious crisis,” Singh said, adding that if tenant protections expire, “you’re going to see a lot of people who incurred rental debt during COVID who will be left effectively defenseless.”

The main takeaways:

• Tenants who have struggled to pay rent because of COVID-19 hardships should immediately apply for rent assistance. Qualified applicants will receive financial aid, though it may take months for the money to arrive.
• Applicants for rent relief cannot be evicted for their pandemic rent debts while they await a decision from the government. That protection expires March 31, which is also the state’s deadline to apply for rent aid.
• Multiple organizations, as well as San Francisco Mayor London Breed, have called on the state to extend eviction protections beyond March.
• Tenant advocates are worried that the state will override protections recently passed at the local level. Unless that happens, San Francisco tenants facing COVID-19 hardships will be shielded from eviction for unpaid rents due in or after April.

Eviction protections are complex, and tenants can better understand them by checking this Public Press flow chart.

Are you facing eviction? Call the Eviction Defense Collaborative at (415) 659-9184 or send an email to legal@evictiondefense.org as soon as possible. The organization advises that tenants respond within five days of being served with court papers to avoid the risk of a default judgment against them.

Is your landlord suing you to recover pandemic rent debt? Go here to read our guide on how small claims court works, and how to argue your side of the case.

The post ‘A Serious Crisis’ — Experts Discuss Expiring Eviction Protections appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

As encampment fires spiked in Oakland and San Francisco during the first year of the pandemic, they fell by half in the Rangers community to just six. One reason for the disparity? The Rangers beefed up fire precautions. The community’s last tent fire occurred 18 months ago, and when a vehicle caught fire in December 2021, residents were prepared. They used fire extinguishers to put out the blaze.

A mother of three who was caught under a freeway overpass in San Francisco’s Glen Park neighborhood didn’t have the good fortune to live in a community with the Rangers’ tools and preparation. A February fire killed her and severely injured three others.

Encampment fires are a fact of life due to the exposed conditions unhoused residents live in, and have led to painful consequences for residents of encampments like the pair of sites along a freeway exit in Berkeley known as Seabreeze, who were removed by state officials last summer after a series of fires. But the Rangers’ camp demonstrates that there’s hope for controlling these incidents without official intervention. The key to their success has been fire preparedness, including measures like installing smoke alarms and keeping fire extinguishers on hand, according to Derrick Soo, leader of the Rangers community.

“Fire safety measures are a necessity, including at encampments, because every human life is valuable,” said Paul-Kealoha Blake, a member of Berkeley’s Homeless Commission and a volunteer with the nonprofit Consider the Homeless! “Encampment fires are an issue because they endanger both the resident of the structure that’s on fire and endangers the encampment.”

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About a year ago, former Berkeley councilmember Cheryl Davila pushed to create an official program to address encampment fires. Davila proposed using existing homeless services funding to distribute fire extinguishers and fire prevention tools through social service providers. The City Council tabled the proposal in March 2021.

Fire preparedness is essential “to protect the safety of our people and preemptively stop the spread of preventable fires,” said Davila in a report to the council last year.

As an example of work the city could build on, she pointed to outreach done by residents and homeless advocacy nonprofits that have distributed chemical fire extinguishers to people living in tents and vehicles.

Those tools might have helped residents of a large Wood Street encampment in Oakland, where multiple vehicles caught fire on March 1, including an RV. Within a week, another encampment less than a mile away also went up in flames. Fires increased 14% in Oakland during the first year of the pandemic to 611 from the previous year’s 535, tent encampment fires are projected to decline slightly in the second year.

During the first year of the pandemic, fire incidents associated with homeless encampments in Berkeley rose at a similar rate, climbing 18% to 133 from 113 the previous year. About a third of those fires were at the Seabreeze Camp on the Interstate 80 University Avenue exit, where passersby reported smoke, cooking, trash fires and tent fires.

Residents at the Seabreeze camp used extinguishers to control some of their fires, but each time one was used, it had to be replaced or refilled, which made it difficult for volunteers to abate all fires without support from the city.

In this camp and many other locations, residents approach fires differently than the Rangers.

On the edge of the freeway

On a cold, windy evening at Seabreeze Camp, Mama West looked for spare poles to fix her sleeping quarters and prevent her tent from blowing away. 

For the past six years, Mama West lived on this strip of land along the University Avenue freeway exit in Berkeley. Residents and advocates named the community after a nearby market. Seabreeze is also an apt descriptor: The winds can reach 30 miles per hour here near the Berkeley Marina, and fire is a necessity to maintain warmth.

As the sun set, her partner, Drew, got ready to start a blaze in their fire pit, a metal tub wide and high enough to shield a sizable bonfire. He found fuel from a neighbor, Shawna, who keeps stacks of chopped-up pallets in front of her tent.

In early July 2021, the Seabreeze Camp was scheduled to be dismantled by Caltrans due to the growing issues with trash and fires. Berkeley city staff also cited problems like crime and domestic disputes.

On Aug. 9, Gov. Gavin Newsom joined the transportation agency staff in clearing part of the encampment before holding a briefing on his California Comeback Plan, which dedicates $12 billion to housing, shelter and services for people experiencing homelessness, plus $50 million for local governments to resolve encampments.

After the cleanup at the “downstairs” section of Seabreeze where people camped under the freeway, “11 residents accepted services,” said Will Arnold, a spokesman for Caltrans. Several others were displaced onto city streets without securing housing services.

A week later, when the Seabreeze “upstairs” cleanup took place, another 17 residents who lived on the islands along the University exit and Frontage Road had nowhere to go. They relocated to city sidewalks and a nearby freeway exit. About two dozen, including Mama West, moved into hotel rooms through Project Roomkey, which places unhoused residents in hotels. Two people accepted a four-person tent at the 24-hour Horizon Transitional Village shelter, according to a Berkeleyside report and a reporter’s visit to the indoor tent site.

Those who declined shelter beds pointed to bans on guests, pets, cooking and substance use. In addition, they said, showers are available only twice a week and lights stay on all the time. “Several people have turned down Horizon because their outside tents are bigger than the indoor tent that sits on the concrete floor inside,” wrote activist and civil rights attorney Andrea Henson in an email. “For some with severe disabilities and chronic pain this makes a difference.”

A civil rights lawsuit filed against Caltrans in August on behalf of Seabreeze encampment charged that some “did not receive any offer of housing at all” and others “had disabilities that prevented them from accessing alternative shelter.” The plaintiffs won a preliminary injunction allowing them to remain at the former Shellmound camp, located at the Ashby freeway exit, for six months. Caltrans has appealed. On March 23, the injunction is set to expire, and another hearing is scheduled to determine a four-month extension. Plaintiffs also ask to return to the Seabreeze camp, saying it’s a safer and more accessible location to connect remaining residents to housing services.

Mitigating fire risk

After gathering fuel, Drew loaded the fire pit with wood scraps and a Burger King bag filled with cardboard clamshell containers and paper wrappers. His torch lighter ignited the flames, and he placed a metal rack with an empty skillet on top. But he forgot the water he intended to boil, and stepped into the darkness of the tent, searching for a water jug.

“Do not leave your skillet unattended without water!” yelled Mama West when she spotted the pan. She threw it in the sand and covered the fire pit with the skeleton of a metal chair, protecting other items from coming close to the open flames.

In 2021, Mama West’s tent has caught fire three times as winds spread the flames from fires set by neighbors for cooking and warmth. Once, a small barbecue grill was knocked from the cooking table.

About a month before this dinner, Mama West lost one of her puppies in a tent fire that began while she stepped outside to make a cup of tea in her fire pit. Suddenly, smoke poured from her tent, and she dashed inside to rescue her six puppies and adult dog. She doesn’t know what set the tent ablaze.

The greatest loss for her was not her personal identification documents and other belongings, but her dog Patches and the puppies she considered “grandbabies.” Berkeley’s Animal Control      put her dogs up for adoption and charged Mama West with animal endangerment in the death of her puppy. She fought to get the charge dropped, but her animals were not returned.

Seabreeze Camp residents successfully fought for years against Caltrans efforts to clear the parcel where they lived, but their eventual displacement felt inevitable. The agency’s policy calls for evicting residents immediately when encampments pose an imminent threat to safety or relocating them over a longer timeline when the risk is high but not critical.

“Immediate threats include modifications to structures that increase the risk of collapse, encampments that physically block traffic or pathways and put people in the encampments or the traveling public at risk of imminent danger,” Hector Chichilla, a Caltrans spokesman, wrote in an email, adding that fire risk may also fall under this category. 

The pandemic put a crimp in the encampment removal policy. Cleanups fell to less than a quarter of their pre-pandemic numbers in 2020 before rebounding in 2021.

In Berkeley, the most common fire calls associated with unhoused individuals and encampments are survival-related fires — those used for cooking and warming — the notes in Berkeley Fire Department reports show. Warming fires almost doubled to 35 during the first year of the pandemic, while cooking fires fell by about half to 33. Advocates and homeless communities concerned about fires say the city could do more to help them, especially given its efforts elsewhere.

The Berkeley Fire Department has often made donations of surplus equipment and vehicles to residents in need in countries as far afield as Argentina and South Africa. They have also donated locally, helping the Berkeley School District, Berkeley Boosters Association and the Northern California city of McCloud.

Berkeley does run an emergency weather shelter, but by December 2021, it was at capacity, hosting only 19 residents due to COVID-19 restrictions. In late January, the city also relocated 27 unhoused people to hotel rooms at the Berkeley Inn through a special winter housing program, but less than a month later, almost all were returned to the streets, where temperatures dropped below 40 degrees. Many lacked tents, as their property was seized during sweeps Jan. 26 and Feb. 1.

“We don’t have enough shelter space,” said Blake of the homeless commission. “It’s all full. And the Horizon shelter has no heat.”

Dinner al fresco

As the moon lit up the night sky above their tent, Drew returned with a clear jug and put the skillet back on the fire rack, boiling water for soup with instant noodles. Mama West heated a foil plate of prepared rice, broccoli and teriyaki chicken from a homeless-services nonprofit.

While the food warmed up, Mama West stashed her groceries from weekly donations in the mended tent to keep them safe from rats. Plastic bags and bins filled half the tent, leaving the edge of the mattress open for the two to sit. After she and Drew reorganized the food bins, Mama West put her prized keyboard back inside. She loves making music.

With the food secured, dinner was ready. They sat on the mattress and laid out dishes to share on top of their metal ice chest. Mama West dug into the chicken teriyaki plate with her fingers and Drew slurped his chicken noodles, watching the fire crackle.  

Fire prevention: community solutions

In deep East Oakland, leader Derick Soo set up a fire safety system for the 77th Avenue Rangers and advocated for temporary access to a nearby fire hydrant. Kyle Mitchell, a lawyer and Soo’s friend, helped out. 

Mitchell has purchased fire suppression tools for the Rangers like extinguishers, alarms, Thermoses and power banks. The power banks allow people to charge devices and provide light, so residents can avoid the danger of open flames or wildcat hookups to electricity poles. He also distributed 20-gallon jugs of water to unhoused residents throughout Oakland, and advocated for water access at encampments to become an official city program.

For fire suppression, smoke detectors are effective, and with 10-year batteries, will last a long time. Because fire extinguishers are expensive to buy and refill, Mitchell taught unhoused residents how to cheaply refill them with pressurized water and soap. They can be refilled at gas stations or with a bicycle pump, but they are heavy – and this soap-and-water mixture won’t work on electrical or gas fires, although those incidents rarely occur at encampments due to their lack of amenities.

Soo uses a power solar grid that holds 4,000 watts with eight batteries, and a diesel generator for extra power to charge residents’ devices and two community refrigerators at night. Diesel is much less flammable than gasoline.

For heat, camp residents use gadgets fueled by propane because the power required to generate heat is more than any power bank or individual solar grid can provide. Propane is portable, abundant and long-lasting compared to other alternatives.

Fire prevention tools are distributed to Oakland residents living in homes and apartments, but on the streets, unhoused residents are responsible for devising their own solutions. Nonprofits and volunteers like Mitchell work to bridge that gap and distribute these much-needed essentials.

These tools can make a difference, especially when it’s cold. During the pandemic, fire incidents surged in winter, when temperatures dropped. Oakland averaged about 70 fires per month from November 2020 to March 2021, compared with 58 a year earlier. In 2021, fires continued to climb, spiking to 99 in March –– the highest monthly incident rate in the last three years.

The numbers are likely an underestimate, as Oakland Fire Department reports showed only encampment fires, not trash fires, vehicle fires, or other types of fires connected to unhoused residents.

Camp residents have identified several affordable tools and other alternatives for safe heating, like a portable propane heater that turns off when tipped over, or a diesel air heater. Soo heats his home with a turkey air fryer running on a small propane tank that can last him a month, but it costs him a whopping 60% more than a year ago.

Soo used to pay $15 for a 20-pound refill. Now he pays $24. The coronavirus pandemic increased demand for outdoor activities and recreational camping, and portable propane tanks were also often out of stock. Other options when propane is not available and money is tight are bottles filled with hot water or heated stones, according to Mitchell.

Soo has experimented with fire retardant paint on fabric and plywood surfaces. But even with these modifications, tents are not very resistant to any of the elements. 

“Typically, here on this street, tents last about two months because of the wind,” said Soo. “Wind just tears them up. Tents don’t hold very well even when you put tarps on them.”

Because of tents’ minimal weather protection and lack of security, Soo is designing Conestoga huts for the Rangers. These tiny homes, which look like the back of a covered wagon, will be built on a platform and have electricity, hot water, windows, showers and a mini kitchen. Each home has a water tank and infrared water heater. The rounded roof/wall uses plastic for waterproofing and tar paper for fire resistance under a heavy-duty tarp.

While these homes can be a solution to providing safe shelter, they are still temporary. Since 2016, Soo has been advocating for the sanctioning of his camp, and he also helps camp residents get connected to housing services. By March, the occupancy of the camp had dwindled down to half, and the city canceled their mobile shower service. But this has not defeated him, and Soo built a solar shower.

“Camps are a necessity because some folks have only known violent streets,” said Soo. “People don’t know a village community.”

The post Grassroots Nonprofits and Homeless Communities Create Their Own Fire Prevention Solutions appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

Local governments throughout the state will have to figure out how to help people still struggling to cover rent as the economy continues its climb back to pre-pandemic levels.

“We are working diligently with our community-based program partners on a public information and outreach campaign to get all eligible tenants and landlords to apply and respond to the program by March 31st,” said Audrey Abadilla, spokesperson for the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development.

The state has committed “to provide support to eligible applicants” who apply for rent relief by then, according to a government memo the Public Press obtained and that Abadilla verified as authentic.

“It is critical applicants act as quickly as possible to complete their application and reply to any requested action or response,” the memo said, because that would allow quicker processing.

People can apply for financial aid to cover past or future rent and utility fees, going back to April 2020.

Though the statewide eviction moratorium ended in October, rent-relief applicants have retained eviction protections while they awaited a decision from the government.

Those protections will also terminate at the end of March, meaning that landlords will be able to evict renters with outstanding debts beginning April 1. To avoid eviction, by that date tenants must pay at least 25% of what was due from the beginning of September 2020 to the end of September 2021, as well as 100% of what came due since then.

Potentially thousands of San Franciscans will still be awaiting payments by April, leaving them vulnerable to eviction, based on a recent Public Press analysis. Renters across the state could face the same risk, according to a survey published Tuesday by Tenants Together, a statewide coalition of tenant-rights groups.

San Franciscans have continued to apply for rent relief in recent weeks, though the pace has slowed compared with earlier in the pandemic, according to the Public Press’ Rent Relief Tracker. The government had received $298.4 million in requests and paid out $115.7 million by last week.

Throughout California, requests totaled at least $7.1 billion by mid-February, and the state had paid out at least $2.1 billion from more than $5 billion available, according to data from the California Department of Housing and Community Development. Those figures do not count requests and payments processed by locally operated rent-relief programs throughout California.

Last month, the Legislature passed a budget bill that authorizes the state to pour more money into the rent relief program if the volume of eligible applications merits it.

Eviction protections for people facing COVID-19 hardships are complex, and the Public Press has created a flow chart to help tenants understand their rights.

Are you facing eviction? Call the Eviction Defense Collaborative at (415) 659-9184 or send an email to legal@evictiondefense.org as soon as possible. The organization advises that tenants respond within five days of being served with court papers to avoid the risk of a default judgment against them.

Is your landlord suing you to recover pandemic rent debt? Go here to read our guide on how small claims court works, and how to argue your side of the case.

The post California’s Rent-Relief Program to Stop Taking Applications March 31 appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

Tenants throughout the state will still be waiting for rent assistance by April, when their pending applications will cease to protect them from eviction for those debts, the groups said in a report Tuesday. Tenants continue to face difficulties when applying, as well as long waits for responses and for checks once they are approved, according to a survey of 58 organizations helping tenants throughout California.

The state has long said that it would protect tenants who faced a COVID-19 hardship from displacement, said Shanti Singh, legislative and communications director for Tenants Together, a statewide coalition of tenant-rights groups and the organization that conducted the survey.

“Apply for rent relief, avoid eviction,” Singh said, recalling the government’s messaging. “It’s clear that that promise is being broken.”

“The State program is the largest, most successful program in the nation,” said Geoffrey Ross, deputy director of federal financial assistance at the California Department of Housing and Community Development, in an email response to Tenants Together’s characterizations. He added that “1 in 3 payments nationally have been made in California to our tenants and landlords in need.”

“We continue to pay out over $80 million to 8,000+ households a week and we are accelerating,” Ross said.

Ninety percent of the survey’s respondents said their clients had difficulty accessing the state’s online rent-relief application, and 84% said tenants experienced “excessive delays” in getting approved. About half reported “inadequate language access,” a problem that has been present from the start.

“A lot of these were problems that tenant advocates predicted,” Singh said, “but we were not consulted when the program was set up.”

Tenants Together is demanding that state lawmakers permanently protect Californians from eviction for any rent debt traced to a COVID-19 hardship.

The group also wants the state to provide greater transparency and access to its data on rent-relief applicants, and for local tenant protections to remain in place. The group’s staff fear a repeat of Assembly Bill 832, passed in June, which established the end of the statewide eviction moratorium while undoing protections that had just been approved at the local level.

If eviction protections are not extended or made permanent, Jessica Ramirez and her children might find themselves homeless — again.

When Ramirez lost her job at an Amazon packing facility in Fresno in July, she needed help covering rent. She requested financial assistance for utilities and rent, and received $6,000 in November. That covered rent through the end of February, but she’s still waiting to find out if the state will pay her overdue utility bills, totaling around $5,000.

For now, the lights still work and the water runs.

“But I don’t know how much longer they’re going to leave it on,” Ramirez said.

In February, she got her job back at Amazon, but she has yet to receive her first paycheck. She worries that it won’t be enough to cover the rent, she said, so she is applying for additional rent assistance.

Ramirez and the father of her five children, who lost his job in December, will need to figure out how to cover this month’s rent by April 1, or else their landlord will be able to evict them.

“I don’t want to be homeless again, with my kids living in a car,” she said, recalling what life was like before she first started working at Amazon in 2018. “We want a roof over our kids’ heads no matter what.”

The statewide eviction moratorium ended Sept. 30. Beginning in October, tenants who faced a COVID-19 hardship and had not paid at least 25% of what was due over the previous 13 months could be evicted. If they have applied for rent assistance then they are protected from eviction until the end of March at latest.

San Franciscans are protected from eviction for unpaid rents that will come due from April until the end of the local state of emergency related to the pandemic. Mayor London Breed has not said when she will lift it.

But residents here and throughout the state will still be on the hook for rent debts they accumulated since March 2020.

The layered state and local regulations are complicated, and the Public Press has created a flow chart to help tenants understand them.

In the aftermath of the end of the statewide eviction moratorium and as the local economy has ramped back up, San Franciscans have continued to make new requests for rent assistance, though the pace has slowed in recent weeks, according to the Public Press’ Rent Relief Tracker. The government had received $298.4 million in requests and paid out $115.7 million by last week.

In San Francisco, thousands of applications will probably still be pending by the time those tenants lose eviction protection in April, a recent Public Press analysis shows.

The post California Evictions Could Soar in April, Tenant Groups Warn appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

“How high is the circulating virus in the community? Three weeks ago, four weeks ago, when the test positivity rate was like 1, 2%, you can behave yourself a little bit differently. But when it’s 15, 30%, you need to behave yourself with caution,” Rhoads said.  

Rhoads is associate director for community engagement for the cancer center at the University of California, San Francisco, as well as an associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics there. She is also the founder of Umoja Health, a COVID-19 testing, vaccination and wraparound-services collaborative. Rhoads stressed that the blame for the spike should not be laid at the feet of individuals, which only leads to stigma and shame.  

But she said that inconsistent messaging from authorities has led to a feeling of whiplash and confusion for people trying to protect themselves and their loved ones from infection. Early instructions that workers outside of health care settings not acquire N95 respirators, for example, backfired when the supply became less strained and a much more contagious variant warranted the use of N95 and KN95 masks for everyone, she said. Constantly changing blanket instructions leads to people feeling misled, she said. 

“But if you couch the messaging in asking people to understand what is circulating around you, then they’re going to have the opportunity to go to, you know, DEFCON-5, DEFCON-N95,” she said. “And there won’t be any stigma or ‘I’m doing the wrong thing’ around that.” 

Rhoads said it shouldn’t be the responsibility of every individual to acquire personal protective equipment or tests themselves in order to adhere to constantly changing instructions. 

“We also need to actually get the materials to people that they need, rather than telling them to get it themselves, when they’re perfectly comfortable with what we told them they needed before,” she said. 

How much virus is circulating in the community should also factor into decisions about getting tested.  

“We try to stratify the risk: Have you been exposed? Then yeah, if you’re day three, day five, you do need to test, right? But, if you’re just a worried well person, I would say please stay home. Because you’re out there in the line with, right now at our testing sites, one out of three people are positive,” she said. “So, you’re out there, really, risking getting COVID because the people you’re in line with, some of them have COVID.” 

Another problem Rhoads said she sees is the class divide in how much exposure risk residents face — and how some with the privilege of being able to avoid frequent exposures turn that into a stigmatizing calculation about what behaviors they can engage in safely. 

“I remember the beginning of the pandemic, a friend of mine saying that they were going to have dinner with some friends. And I said, ‘Really, movement of people is not a good thing right now.’ And the response was, ‘We know them really well. They’re clean,’” Rhoads said.  

Both that mindset and the social system that relies on a certain class of people to be essential workers and keep everything running need to change, she said.  

“That’s where we need transformation and innovation,” Rhoads said, adding that our society currently accepts a political and economic system that “relies on some people really bearing a huge share of the burden of the work that it takes to make the country run, as ‘normal,’ with air quotes.” 

Returning to normalcy is not a goal for Rhoads. 

“While we solve the mystery of COVID, we have to figure out how we’re going to live right now,” she said. “And I don’t think we’re going back to normal, because normal is part of how we got here.” 

A segment from our radio show and podcast, “Civic.” Listen at 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays at 102.5 FM in San Francisco, or online at ksfp.fm, and subscribe on Apple, Google, Spotify or Stitcher. 

The post Case Rates Should Drive Risk Mitigation Behavior, Doctor Says appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

In coming weeks, city supervisors will weigh legislation that would make it easier for tenants to form associations, similar to labor unions, that could compel landlords to hear them out on a range of issues, including the aesthetics of new construction and other matters affecting the bottom line for owners.

The proposal, authored by Supervisor Aaron Peskin, is inspired by protections that tenants in federally assisted housing secured 20 years ago — and might be the first legislation in the nation requiring private landlords to sit down and bargain.

The San Francisco Apartment Association, a property-owners group with thousands of members, opposes the legislation.

This is “all about power,” said Brad Hirn, a tenant organizer with the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco, one of about a dozen tenant and labor groups that collaborated with Peskin and his staff as they crafted the legislation. “Power comes from organized people. And the legislation creates a tangible reason to organize,” Hirn said.

A lone tenant may have limited ability to persuade a bad or neglectful landlord to take requests seriously, and might back down in response to scare tactics like eviction threats. A group of tenants could be harder to frighten or ignore.

A response to landlords who stymie organizing efforts

Peskin’s legislation would explicitly protect San Francisco renters’ efforts to form tenant associations, which would be officially recognized for a building if the residents of at least half the units signed on. Upon the association’s request, landlords would have to meet at least once every three months and confer “in good faith” about tenants’ concerns. The legislation gives examples of good-faith interactions, such as “responding to reasonable requests for information” and “negotiating and putting agreements into writing.”

The requirement to meet and confer is “groundbreaking,” said Fred Sherburn-Zimmer, executive director of the Housing Rights Committee. “We have asked tenant groups around the country. If there is a law that requires this, we have never heard of it.”

If the law were in place and landlords did not follow the rules requiring meetings, the city’s Rent Board could penalize them by forcing a drop in rents. Landlords would not be punished for refusing an association’s demands.

The legislation’s real strength would be in enabling and possibly normalizing tenant organizing, Sherburn-Zimmer said. An organized group might more effectively employ strategies — such as drawing press attention, protesting publicly or even withholding rent — to compel a landlord to make concessions.

Tenants can already politically organize, but sometimes landlords try to stop them, Sherburn-Zimmer said. She recalled an instance when long-time San Francisco tenants asked for her help brainstorming a response to impending rent hikes, which would force some to move out.

“We tried to have a meeting in the lobby, and the landlord sent someone to disrupt it, then tried to physically throw me out,” Sherburn-Zimmer said. The group relocated to a cafe, where they settled on a request.

“They were like, ‘you bought this building, we know you can raise the rent as much as you want. Can we at least negotiate the amount of time we get before the rent increase?’” she said, adding that they requested reimbursements for relocation costs. The mayor’s office interceded, and in the end, the landlord gave tenants some of what they wanted.

“It was imperfect, but it was a sign that this could be helpful in all kinds of situations,” Sherburn-Zimmer said, referring to collective bargaining with government oversight.

Veritas, generally called San Francisco’s largest landlord, has also tried to reduce interactions between tenants and the Housing Rights Committee, Hirn said, which has hurt organizing efforts.

In early 2020, 76 Veritas buildings were up for sale. Hirn began visiting them, knocking on doors to educate tenants about their rights and what to expect in the months to come. The Veritas Tenants Association was knocking too, welcoming tenants to join and sign a petition stating a desire to bargain with the company over the terms of the sale. Veritas then sent tenants a memo asserting that state law limited visitors to speaking only with the residents who invited them. The company warned that, in response to violators, it would call the police “to protect the security of the building and residents.” It made good on that threat.

But that’s just one interpretation of state law. By another, a visiting tenant organizer should be able to speak with anyone in the building, said Brian Brophy, a tenant attorney at the law firm Tobener Ravenscroft LLP.

“Because a court has not interpreted that specific question,” Brophy said in an email, “and because there are landlords/property management companies challenging knocking on doors, there is potential legal risk” to the tenant organizer.

If passed, Peskin’s legislation would clarify that visiting organizers could talk to anyone in the building.

Veritas declined to comment for this story. However, spokesman Ron Heckmann asserted that the company does not own or act as landlord for its buildings. Rather, it “manages apartment assets on behalf of owners and investors,” he said.

The company has not divulged its full portfolio of properties, which are rent-controlled and legally owned by various limited-liability companies and similar entities. Separately, Veritas created the company GreenTree, which manages conditions and tenant concerns in the buildings.

A boon for the Veritas Tenants Association

Peskin’s proposal is in large part a response to the experiences of the Veritas Tenants Association, which has over 1,200 members who live in more than 100 Veritas properties in San Francisco, as well as in buildings in other cities, Hirn said. The association, which was involved in discussions over crafting the legislation, has tried for more than a year to get the company to negotiate on multiple demands that would address tenants’ financial hardships during the pandemic.

In an attempt to draw Veritas to the bargaining table, more than 50 of the association’s member households have committed through November to withhold their applications to the state to cover their rent debt — a combined $5.7 million that would go to Veritas — a move that makes them vulnerable to eviction.

They will soon vote on whether to continue their “debt strike” through December, Hirn said. Any delay in applying with the state could reduce their odds of getting rent assistance, as the programs have already received more requests than currently allocated funds can satisfy. 

The association wants to negotiate a rent-relief package with the company for all members who need help.

For tenants who took on debt to cover rent during the pandemic, the association wants temporary rent reductions to help people pay off their credit cards, payday loans or debts to family or friends, since rent-relief programs will not help with this secondary debt, often called “shadow debt.” Members also want the company to never apply the rent increases for 2020 and 2021 that it has so far delayed — that includes the annual increases that the Rent Board allows, to follow regional inflation, and “passthroughs” that reimburse the landlord for construction costs and other expenses.

If Peskin’s legislation passes, it could give Veritas’ tenants, and those of other landlords, the tools to pull them to the bargaining table.

“I think it makes sense, it’s reasonable, it’s overdue,” said Debbie Nunez, a member of the Veritas Tenants Association. “I anticipate some pushback form Veritas. That’s just part and parcel with what they do.”

Associations could be useful in less contentious settings too, said Lee Hepner, legislative aide to Peskin and lead staffer on the tenant-association proposal.

“I’d like to think this is a tool for building community among a group of tenants,” Hepner said.

A tenant association could weigh in on safety considerations, use of common areas, laundry-room restrictions and, most importantly, construction schedules. Hepner said his office has repeatedly heard complaints from constituents that working from home was difficult because “in the middle of the workday, water and electricity would shut off without any warning.” Peskin passed emergency legislation early in the pandemic to prohibit certain utility and water shut-offs.

Associations might also distill the varied concerns of the entire group into talking points, similar to the way neighborhood organizations represent residents’ concerns in conversations with Peskin’s office, Hepner said.

“At the risk of sounding naive or like I’m gaslighting landlords, this could make their jobs easier,” Hepner said.

‘A solution in search of a problem’

Not everyone is excited about the proposal.

Requests like those from the Veritas Tenants Association are best decided between the landlord and specific tenants, rather than with an entire building’s occupants, said Charley Goss, government and community affairs manager for the San Francisco Apartment Association.

That would be especially true if the landlord were helping tenants with shadow debt, Goss said, which might be owed to institutions or to personal contacts without documentation.

“It’s hard to sort of verify the need in an objective way. There has to be a sort of needs demonstration, which by definition is particular to the circumstances of that one individual,” Goss said. “You’re basically looking at a set of factors: medical, child-care expenses, rent rates, even their history as a tenant.”

He was also skeptical that tenants would collectively be able to agree on their requests of the landlord, especially regarding construction issues.

“One person wants the wall patched, but the other one wants to work in peace,” Goss said. If major construction were on the table, then “maybe the tenant in Unit 1 is having a kid next month, and they’d like it pushed off for a year if possible.”

But Goss’ main criticism was that the legislation seemed unnecessary.

“We’re having this conversation like all tenants are underserved, unprotected, low-income and being snubbed by their landlords. If you take a step back, I don’t think that anyone thinks that’s the case,” he said. In response to tenant hardships last year, between 21% and 54% of landlords reported granting rent reductions each month, according to surveys by the Apartment Association.

The Apartment Association is in contact with Peskin’s office to try to “improve the legislation and make it more workable and productive,” Goss said.

Andrew Zacks, a real estate attorney in San Francisco, called the legislation “a solution in search of a problem.” In an email, he said it “implicates the landlord’s 1st amendment rights” to the extent it punishes their refusal to engage in negotiations.

Real estate attorney Daniel Bornstein said he’s concerned that landlords will get treated unfairly when tenants appeal to the Rent Board, which will have to weigh in on new aspects of the tenant-landlord relationship.

“It’s one thing to make an assessment of whether there was heat in the building,” Bornstein said. “It’s another to make an assessment of whether there were good-faith meetings. That’s fraught with a lot of what might be circumstantial, and not very apparent.”

“What is ‘good faith?’” he said, and questioned whether a landlord would be violating the law by merely walking out of a conversation that became unruly.

Peskin has vetted the legislation with the City Attorney’s Office. And Hepner said Rent Board leadership has assured him that they could handle this new extended oversight role.

As for the assertion that the legislation is unnecessary, Hepner said, “I don’t think anybody can say with a straight face that there aren’t tenants that have been aggrieved and wouldn’t benefit from a seat at the table when communicating with landlords.”

The Board of Supervisors’ Rules Committee will review the legislation before the end of the year, Hepner said. Peskin is on the committee, and one of its two other members, Supervisor Connie Chan, has co-sponsored the legislation, making its progression to the full board all but certain.

‘Right to organize’ in public housing paved the way

The legislation is heavily inspired by similar protections created in 2000 for housing that is privately owned and subsidized by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and in which about 1.3 million households live nationwide.

Those rules, collectively called the right to organize, were “a sea change” for tenants, said Michael Kane, executive director of the National Alliance of HUD Tenants, which fought for the protections.

Kane started organizing in the 1970s and encountered many tactics from landlords who neglected and sometimes preyed upon their tenants.

“Owners demanding sexual favors of women, vulnerable women, in order to get an apartment. Very common,” Kane recalled. When tenants tried to politically organize, he said, owners threatened them with eviction, or offered bribes to a tenant leader to induce them to step down and destabilize their group. He said they also sent spies to tenant meetings to undermine them and gather information.

Tenants gaining the right to organize shifted the balance of power. It explicitly protected efforts to meet and form groups for collectively dealing with owners and landlords. Professional organizers and tenant advocates were also protected if they came onsite to talk to people and distribute flyers.

“I heard stories of people getting harassed, and they would take the regulations to the property manager, who would back off,” Kane said.

It was a success story for tenants in most cases, though Kane called it “insufficient” because of a lack of enforcement by HUD.

After reviewing Peskin’s legislation, Kane said it would be “very exciting to have a right to organize in private housing generally, beyond HUD subsidized housing.”

He said that, if the law were passed, tenants of landlords with multiple properties might gain bargaining leverage by uniting across buildings.

“That could be very powerful. And everybody will see that. So tenants will have a very strong incentive to join, and nowadays with social media it would be possible to do that,” Kane said. “It will be a blossoming of tenant organizing across the city.”

The post Proposed Tenant-Organizing Protections Could Shift Balance of Power in SF appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

“We refer to it as the tsunami,” said Devin Fathi, a housing law attorney at nonprofit Open Door Legal. Its inevitability is “kind of universally accepted at this point,” he said.

Starting Nov. 1, landlords seeking to recover unpaid pandemic rents can sue tenants in either civil or small claims court. Unlike renters who face eviction, those fighting lawsuits over rent debt aren’t allowed legal representation in small claims court. Neither are landlords.

Fathi and other tenant attorneys explained how to approach small claims court, as well as the pitfalls of debt collection.

Going to court

To avoid eviction for nonpayment, tenants who experienced COVID-19 hardships need to have paid their landlords at least 25% of the rent due over the previous 13 months by Oct. 1.

They could not be evicted for the remaining rent debt for that time period, or for any rent due from March through August 2020 — but their landlords can begin pursuing that money in small claims court in November.

A landlord taking their tenant to small claims court must notify them at least 15 days prior to the scheduled hearing if the recipient lives in San Francisco. If they live outside the city — perhaps because they’re no longer the landlord’s tenant — they must be notified at least 20 days ahead of the hearing.

But cases could take longer to go to trial.

“If, in reality, there’s a lot of people who are trying to go to small claims and get this rent back, then we might see the dates get pushed out,” Fathi said, possibly by months.

In other types of lawsuits, defendants must respond to the summons with paperwork. In small claims cases, they just need to show up to the hearing.

That, alone, can be frightening to noncitizens who worry the judge will discover they are in the country illegally and deport them, Fathi said. During the pandemic, some undocumented immigrants took on debt to pay rent and avoid the courtroom entirely, as the Public Press recently reported.

But landlords who try to highlight a tenant’s citizenship status are “going to be reprimanded by the court,” Fathi said. That’s especially true in San Francisco, a self-declared “sanctuary city” where government staffers are generally prohibited from helping Immigration and Customs Enforcement carry out federal immigration law.

Judge may reduce rent debt

Once in court, the landlord and tenant compete to convince the judge how much rent is owed.

The tenant may be able to reduce the debt by proving the landlord provided housing that failed to meet habitability standards like adequate and safe heating, weatherproofing, functional plumbing or electrical equipment, or an absence of pests. If the tenant made purchases to address problems due to the landlord’s inaction, like mouse traps for a persistent rodent infestation, the judge could deduct those expenses from the rent debt. The judge might do the same if the tenant lacked access to amenities that the lease promised, like a courtyard that remained locked.

Calculating how much debt to subtract is a subjective process, Fathi said. He described a hypothetical situation.

“I have a pretty bad mold presence in my kitchen and, per month that I’ve lived with this, it has impacted my enjoyment of my unit by 20%. So, then you calculate 20% of the rent to be deducted.”

If possible, tenants should bring evidence that their landlords knew about these issues but did not resolve them quickly, Fathi said. He added that he has met tenants who stayed quiet rather than complain.

“They don’t want to disturb their landlords” and create friction, Fathi said, especially if they couldn’t afford rent during the pandemic.

Tenants may also reduce their debts by showing their landlord previously illegally increased their rent, said Tom Drohan, director of litigation at Legal Assistance to the Elderly. For example, the landlord of a rent-controlled unit might have raised the rent beyond the annually allowed amount. The money the tenant paid above the legal limit “will be credited back to you,” Drohan said.

And the judge may reduce the debt amount if the landlord did not pursue financial aid through the government’s rent assistance program.

“Unfortunately the operative word here is ‘may,’” said Ora Prochovnick, director of litigation and policy at the Eviction Defense Collaborative, which coordinates city-sponsored legal services for tenants facing eviction.

“It is discretionary, not mandatory that the judgment be so reduced,” Prochovnick said, adding that Michelle Tong, who would be hearing small claims cases in San Francisco, is “a good judge.”

If landlord wins, collecting debt can be difficult

If a landlord wins, they have 10 years to collect the debt and can later renew that period. They or a debt-collection company will try to claim the tenant’s money by intercepting, or garnishing, wages or pulling from their bank account. But they can’t take everything.

When garnishing wages, each week the collector must take the lesser of the two:

• 25% of the tenant’s earnings, after legally required deductions.
• 50% of what exceeds the local minimum wage, at full-time hours. In San Francisco that’s $652.80 a week, which means that if the tenant earned $700 then the collector could take half the difference between that amount and the minimum wage, or $23.60.

Certain types of incomes are off limits, including social security and “any kind of public benefit, state or federal,” said Kari Rudd, senior attorney in the consumer protection unit at Bay Area Legal Aid.

To keep that income from being accidentally garnished, people should have it direct-deposited into a bank account and refrain from transferring it to a second account where its public origin would be less obvious, Rudd said.

A debt collector cannot reduce a California resident’s bank balance below a standard threshold of about $1,800. The debtor can request a higher threshold if they need more money to cover their necessities.

When the debt collector provides notice that they will draw money from wages or an account, the tenant can make a “claim of exemption” to argue why that money should not be touched. The tenant should file the claim within 15 days of receiving the notice in order to protect their bank account, Rudd said, and there’s no time limit to protect wages.

Sidestepping court with a repayment plan is risky

Landlords and tenants might try to sidestep the small claims process by signing new leases, establishing higher rents that would pay off the debt over time.

“That just seems like a bad idea to me,” Rudd said, adding that people should take this approach with caution.

Tenants cannot be evicted for the COVID-19 rent debt that landlords may seek in small claims court, but they can be evicted for violating a new lease — for example, if they’re unable to pay the new rent.

Tenants can learn more about their legal rights by attending Bay Area Legal Aid’s free monthly clinic for people who accumulated rent debt in San Francisco due to COVID-19 hardship. Clinics are held the fourth Friday of each month unless that lands on a holiday — the next two meetings are on Nov. 19 and Dec. 17. Reserve a spot by calling 415-982-1300.

The post Got Sued for Pandemic Rent Debt? Here’s What You Need to Know appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

When Agustin Angel walks up to a door, knocks and waits, he knows this conversation about vaccination could go a number of ways.  

“Every interaction is different,” he said. He generally starts by politely introducing himself and saying that he works with Bayview Hunters Point Community Advocates, and that he’s going door to door trying to get a sense of people’s vaccination status and their feelings about the vaccines available against COVID-19.   

“Sometimes you do get some folks that are willing to have a conversation with you and talk about the vaccine and why they have gotten it themselves, and what vaccines, and how did they affect them,” Angel said.  

In the neighborhood as a whole, most have already gotten their shots. Angel and his colleague Corey Monroe work in a community that, at 93%, has one of the highest estimated vaccination rates in the city. Monroe, whose work is focused on connecting unhoused residents with resources, says part of the reason for that high vaccination rate is precisely because of on-the-ground outreach work Community Advocates and other agencies have been doing. That work continues and will for the foreseeable future. Monroe said he expects COVID vaccinations may be needed annually. 

“I think it’s here to stay. It is serious,” he said. “I just think we have to be aware. We have to keep the message going here: We have to remain to be safe and keep the message going.” 

Still, as the Public Press previously reported, Bayview Hunters Point also continues to have high rates of COVID-19 infection, and this could be partly explained by pockets of much lower vaccination rates than the neighborhood overall. Angel and Monroe said they have heard many reasons why someone might not want to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Some people worry about the side effects, some fear it will affect their reproductive health, others are afraid the mass vaccination effort is actually an experiment on unwitting subjects. Still others simply hate the idea of being mandated or coerced into anything. 

“It’s all kind of things that people are just so against it. It’s just a big resistance,” Monroe said. “I do know when people get sick, they do change their mind and want the shot.” 

Some people mistrust the government when it comes to public health because of the racist legacy of experimentation and exploitation, exemplified by incidents like the Tuskegee Study, in which African American participants with syphilis were left untreated. But such concerns are a poor predictor of which ethnicities are more or less likely to have been vaccinated in San Francisco. In fact, city health department data shows white people are the least vaccinated, at 69%, of those ethnicities tracked. 

“I think it’s across the board,” he said. “I mean, Muni, the police, the fire department, BART — you have people saying they just not getting the vaccine.” 

At this point, Monroe said he worries about people losing their livelihoods. 

“If you don’t get the vaccine by certain dates, you’re losing your job. And I’m like, ‘how are you gonna take care of your family though?’” he said. 

For those who are still hesitant, outreach workers hope getting information from trusted, locally rooted messengers will help alleviate fears. When someone says they haven’t received the vaccine, Angel said he probes what’s behind that decision.  

“With all respect, I’d say: ‘Can I ask you what’s your decision on, what’s holding you back? Is it that you don‘t know what‘s in the vaccine? Or is it because of all the information that you’re hearing from your friends and family? Or is it the information that you’re hearing from the media?” 

Angel can offer to connect residents with a doctor who works closely with community health groups who might address some of their fears. If it helps, his organization can even make an appointment for a later date and bring the vaccine directly to someone’s home. He also shares information about the nearest vaccine sites and testing sites.  

With conflicting messages coming from politicians, national media and distant health officials, Monroe said, it can be hard for anyone to know whom to believe. But some people will believe community outreach workers. 

“I don’t have all the right answers,” he said. “I just want people to be alive and safe.” 

A segment from our radio show and podcast, “Civic.” Listen at 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays at 102.5 FM in San Francisco, or online at ksfp.fm, and subscribe on Apple, Google, Spotify or Stitcher. 

The post Knock-Knock: Have You Been Vaccinated Against COVID-19? appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.