San Francisco Program Now Replaces Wages for Low-Income Residents Suffering From COVID-19

As COVID-19 cases spike in California, San Francisco has begun offering more than $1,200 in aid to undocumented and other low-income residents who would otherwise be unable to recover at home from the virus.

The Right to Recover program, which launched last week, has several goals: to reduce transmission, boost testing and promote the city’s recovery from the pandemic, according to San Francisco Mayor London Breed.

“We created a program that provides the financial security people need to safely isolate if they test positive,” Breed said in a statement. “We hope the Right to Recover program will encourage people to get tested for COVID-19, with the peace of mind that if they do test positive, they can stay home without worrying about how they’ll afford their basic needs.”

City officials said they will channel $2 million in private donations from Give2SF to help more than 1,300 San Franciscans who are diagnosed with COVID-19, but who don’t qualify for unemployment insurance or other benefits because of immigration status or other reasons.

The program guarantees beneficiaries at least two weeks of minimum wage.

A recent UCSF COVID-19 study in the city’s Mission District found most of those who tested positive were Latinos who made less than $50,000 per year and couldn’t work from home. About half did not report any symptoms.

Susana Rojas, who worked with UCSF researchers to conduct the study, said many people they encountered were afraid to get tested because they couldn’t afford to miss work and lose income.

“As the sole providers for their families, living paycheck to paycheck and being ineligible for most if not all public benefits, they had no other way of providing food or paying rent than to continue working, whether healthy or sick,” Rojas said, with the city’s Latino Task Force on COVID-19.

Undocumented immigrants contribute an estimated $3 billion per year in local and state taxes in California, but they are not eligible for unemployment insurance, food stamps or federal coronavirus stimulus checks.

Sup. Hillary Ronen, whose district includes the Mission, proposed the Right to Recover program and worked with the city’s Department of Public Health, the Office of Economic and Workforce Development and other agencies to get it off the ground.

This comes as confirmed cases of the coronavirus among Latinos in California surged to nearly 100,000 — representing more than half of all cases where race or ethnicity was identified, according to the California Department of Public Health.

Staff with the city’s public health department will interview people who test positive for COVID-19, and direct those eligible to the program and other resources such as food delivery and free hotel rooms to quarantine, said Cristina Padilla, a spokeswoman with the agency.

She added that individuals will not be not asked about their immigration, probation or parole status during those interviews.