S.F. goes begging to fund crucial COVID-19 program that pays essential workers to quarantine

Every Thursday, a stretch of Alabama Street on the edge of the Mission District transforms into the epitome of a smart, proactive, culturally sensitive response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The block between 19th and 20th streets shuts down to cars. Valerie Tulier-Laiwa, a coordinator of the Latino Task Force, stands in the middle of the pavement, burning sage and thanking God for another day of life. Four lines form just beyond the circle: for the general public, essential workers, elders in folding chairs, and those who’ve come into contact with someone who tested positive for the coronavirus.

They’re residents of the Mission, many of them Latino, and they’re there to get tested at a site designed for them. Many of the volunteers speak Spanish. Health insurance, identification and appointments aren’t required. A food bank inside offers tortillas, rice, beans and masa. Just one ingredient is missing: money to ensure they can quarantine if their results come back positive.

The city’s widely hailed Right to Recover program is supposed to allow those who test positive but don’t have paid sick leave to quarantine for two weeks. But it’s not built into the city’s budget — and funding it hinges on the whims of the wealthy. San Francisco has done spectacularly well in containing the virus compared with other American cities, but our continued success depends on the ability of everyone, including essential workers, to safely quarantine as our businesses open up.

The city in July started asking those who tested positive anywhere in San Francisco if they needed money to be able to quarantine, and anybody who answered yes got two weeks of minimum wage — or $1,285 total. The $2 million for the program came from the city’s Give2SF fund, which directs private donations to people and businesses needing help during the pandemic.

It was enough to cover 1,555 people. But with one person living in poverty testing positive, on average, every hour in our wealthy city, the money evaporated in seven weeks. By mid-August, the city no longer asked those who tested positive if they needed money to quarantine because there was no money to offer.

Anybody who has tested positive since then was sent off to quarantine on the honor system but with no help to make it a reality. So the so-called Right to Recover was not a right at all, and everybody else in the city was put at more risk.

City officials hit up foundations and private donors for weeks, hat in hand. Yes, a multibillion-dollar government entity with a budget larger than many states had to beg wealthy people to ensure its restaurant workers, janitors and housekeepers could be paid minimum wage for two weeks to prevent the spread of a deadly virus. The Department of Public Health’s budget alone totals roughly $2.5 billion.

Finally, this week the city secured a $2 million donation to restart Right to Recover. It comes from the Crankstart Foundation, the philanthropic venture of Silicon Valley investor Michael Moritz and his wife, novelist Harriet Heyman. Public health workers will probably start asking people if they need financial help to quarantine in about 10 days.

The donation from Moritz and Heyman is generous, but the money will most likely be gone again in several weeks, and the begging will begin anew. It should be funded by the city like any other crucial program, but it’s inexplicably not part of the new budget. (In the meantime, if any other rich people want to donate, email me. A column mention awaits!)

Right to Recover should also have administrative money built in so it’s somebody’s job to disburse the funds. Currently, nonprofits are charged with the task with no extra money to accomplish it — and some people have received their $1,285 weeks after their quarantine was over.

Diane Jones, a retired nurse who pioneered San Francisco General Hospital’s renowned patient care program at the start of the AIDS epidemic, is helping the Latino Task Force and said that somehow Right to Recover has turned into a charity program when it’s actually a critical public health intervention. The money needs to be ready immediately when a low-income person tests positive to persuade them to go into isolation right away and limit the spread of the virus.

“If they get it six weeks later or two weeks later, it defeats the purpose,” she said.

Joaquin Torres is the director of the city’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development and a member of the Give2SF committee. He sought the Right to Recover donations for weeks before securing the Crankstart money and explained that the city’s general fund, which has taken a huge whack due to the COVID-19 pandemic, cannot support every worthwhile program. He said he’s hopeful that philanthropists will continue to see the benefit of funding Right to Recover.

Hope, though, doesn’t cut it these days. If it did, 2020 wouldn’t be nearly this wretched.

The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the economic inequities in San Francisco that were already pretty obvious. Latinos make up just 15% of San Francisco but comprise 50.2% of the positive coronavirus tests. Conversely, white people make up about 45% of San Francisco but just 14.8% of the positive coronavirus tests.

That’s largely because Latinos are far more likely to be essential workers and live in crowded homes. Jon Jacobo, another leader of the Latino Task Force, said he knows of living situations in the Mission in which 30 people are squeezed into three bedrooms.

A UCSF study at the 24th Street BART Station last month tested 2,622 people, and 9% tested positive. Latinos at the site had an 11% chance of testing positive. That’s much higher than San Francisco’s overall test positivity rate last month of 2.61%.

Of those who tested positive at BART, 93% were Latino, and 85% said Spanish was their preferred language. They were nearly all low-income, and just 22% had paid sick leave. Two-thirds of the people who tested positive were referred to the Right to Recover program, but nobody received the money because it was gone.

Jacobo said it does little good to test people but give them no way to quarantine if they’re positive. He said there should also be food delivery for people in quarantine since they now often have to come back to the Alabama Street food bank to pick up supplies while they’re supposed to be isolating.

Those people aren’t the only ones who’ve come up short. Jacobo said he and other members of the task force had to pay for the testing site’s chairs, tables, canopies and other supplies out of their own pockets when it started in early July — and still haven’t been reimbursed by the city.

Just one person at the Thursday testing site is paid — in theory. The site coordinator has gone unpaid for several weeks, Jacobo said. He described a constant battle to get resources from the Department of Public Health including more tests because they often run out.

“It’s the equivalent of giving a bucket of water to fight a five-alarm fire,” Jacobo said.

These issues came to a head at a Sept. 11 meeting between Jacobo, other members of the Latino Task Force and Mayor London Breed. Breed seems to have gotten the message and on Thursday announced a commitment of $28.5 million to support the Latino community through more neighborhood testing sites, more contact tracers who speak Spanish, eviction prevention, food help, small business loans and more community hubs to support kids who are distance learning.

“We can do more to support those who have been going to work day after day and who too often live in crowded conditions that make it hard to isolate,” Breed said in a statement.

The mayor’s commitment includes $2 million for Right to Recover — which is the new Moritz money. There’s no mention in her lengthy news release about what happens to the program when those funds inevitably expire.

Separately, the Department of Public Health last week committed $30,000 to reimburse the Latino Task Force members for their expenses.

Supervisor Hillary Ronen, who initially pushed for the creation of Right to Recover, wants to figure out how it can get money to people in quarantine more quickly.

“We have two months to find additional funding,” she said. “This should be a top priority.”

It should be — which is why the city needs to ensure that it is.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Heather Knight appears Sundays and Tuesdays. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @hknightsf Instagram: @heatherknightsf