Editor’s note: This story is part of a pilot project of the Mosaic Journalism Program for Bay Area high school students. In advance of the regular Mosaic two-week summer intensive course in journalism, the pilot project this spring is exploring remote instruction in reporting and writing.
Socorro Madrigal, mother of three, and her husband are both unemployed due to the coronavirus pandemic. They live in a two-room apartment in San Jose’s Washington neighborhood, one of the city’s poorest, and no longer can pay the monthly rent.
“As of right now, I feel really stressed, but more than anything, I’m afraid,” said Madrigal. “I’m afraid that I’ll be kicked out of my home, and that I won’t have power or internet for my kids to continue their online learning, so overall I’m afraid.”
Thousands of low-income families like the Madrigals in poorer neighborhoods like Washington are being left to fend for themselves as the coronavirus pandemic amplifies across the nation and globe. Local organizations and health centers in Silicon Valley understand the urgency and importance of helping their communities, and are creating new ways to distribute food and provide housing assistance.
In an effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus, the Santa Clara County Office of Education shut down schools on March 13, and then Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered Californians to shelter in place. Both actions were devastating for low-income families who depended on schools to feed their children and provide them a safe place during workdays.
Not so long ago, Stephanie Palmeri Farias, the former principal of Washington Elementary, saw the poverty firsthand during visits to families.
“I would find out that the front house has a whole other house behind it,” she said, “and I would find eight tiny little units, or families living in converted garages, families living in five-bedroom houses and it would be one family for each room.”
The nearby Sacred Heart Community Service center has also been a large contributor to the community during the pandemic. The nonprofit’s mission has always been to create a community where every child and adult is free from poverty.
However, many of the charity’s programs had to be postponed or paused to meet the new pandemic precautions. It was a huge transition from having 85 volunteers every day to only two.
“So, you know, once the time came, we have to change up a lot of those programs to comply with social distancing,” Sacred Heart spokesman Demone Carter said. “But I’m proud to say that we’ve been able to figure out a way to do it with less people and less traffic in the building.”
Before, Sacred Heart had a pantry program for needy residents who would pick food items themselves. Now the agency allows only five recipients at a time who are given a box filled with groceries, and they’re out the door.
With this new system, Carter said, 7,775 boxes of groceries were distributed to the neighborhood. Sacred Heart receives donated foods from Second Harvest Food Bank and grocery stores.
Schools have also been involved in the Washington neighborhood.
A local San Jose charter school, Downtown College Prep, has partnered with San Jose Unified School District to provide families with free breakfasts and lunches every day since shelter in place began.
Similar to Sacred Heart, DCP has a grab-and-go system to comply with social distancing regulations. According to Katie Zazueta, the spokesperson for DCP, more than 2,500 breakfasts and lunches were given to families starting in March.
A lot of work has been put into delivering and packaging food for a diverse group of individuals and families.
“It’s really a mix of people in terms of age, race, all those demographics,” Carter said. “These are people that you look at and see in your community every day, but don’t necessarily understand what they’re going through.”
Dozens of neighborhood residents are volunteering to help at these different organizations, even though they’re putting themselves at risk of getting sick with the virus.
Two local groups began signing up volunteers. Madre a Madre, a women’s empowerment group, joined with the Healing Grove Health Center, a Christian, nonprofit clinic in the Washington area. The groups recruited neighborhood leaders who would contact 10 families each to find out who needed help. Madre a Madre leader, Maria Marcelo, picked one leader in certain neighborhoods to deliver food directly to families at home.
“I invited over 100 people to come and volunteer, and 90% of that invitation are Spanish-speaking Mexicans,” said Brett Bymaster, director of Healing Grove. “I can tell you exactly why that is. If you have never experienced hunger you’re not that motivated to go out and do something about it, but most of these families grew up in poverty in Mexico. They know what it feels to be hungry.”
Socorro Madrigal became a volunteer.
“A lot of people can’t go out and buy food for many reasons,” Madrigal said. “I wanted to help in any way that I can.”
However, hunger isn’t the only problem in the area.
Madrigal and her husband, Jose Maldanado, are both immigrants who have worked in minimum-wage jobs as waiters. The family of five pays $1,855 for a two-room apartment. Even before the pandemic, they constantly wondered how they were going to keep a roof over their heads.
San Jose passed an eviction moratorium soon after the shelter-in-place order. However, the application presented a difficult task for those with limited educational experience.
Healing Grove worked with SafeTech, a Christian organization that recruits people with technical skills, to create an online form for financially strapped tenants to fill out. The health center would generate a letter and mail it to the landlord and tenant.
Madrigal was able to send a letter to her landlord.
“I’m very blessed to be able to have this resource,” she said, “because I really wouldn’t know what I could’ve done without it.”
Sacred Heart is also working on housing relief. According to Carter, the group has teamed up with other service organizations, such as Destination Home, a non-profit homeless prevention program, to receive $12 million in COVID-19 relief funds for the community. About$500,000 of those relief funds have been distributed, with 4,000 applications pending.
Into the future, Healing Grove wants to enhance the clinic’s call center so it could reach 5,000 to 10,000 calls per day, up from 50 to 100 today. Sacred Heart is trying to find ways to help renters after the San Jose moratorium ends, when landlords will expect rent payments.
“We’re trying to afford the narrative that we’re doing our best to help people during this difficult time,” Carter said. “But we’re also working to change the conditions that create this type of poverty and which has only worsened with COVID.”
Andrea Saldana is a junior at Abraham Lincoln High School in San Jose.