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EAST PALO ALTO — Laura Rubio saved up enough money to pay rent this month and maybe the next.
But the tenant activist and house cleaner doesn’t know what holds for her after that.
“I’m undocumented, I won’t be able to get money together for rent,” Rubio said. “I’m going to be evicted. There’s just no way I’ll be able to get together $5,000 I owe the landlord. It’s inconceivable.”
Like many East Palo Altans, Rubio faces a mounting debt to her landlord if she remains without work as the ongoing coronavirus pandemic keeps businesses closed and people at home.
Despite being left without homes or offices to clean, Rubio has not stayed idle.
Along with taking care of her two children, Rubio has been volunteering alongside dozens of others in East Palo Alto to hand out meals to low-income families that were already living paycheck-to-paycheck and offering much-needed translation services for the hundreds of Spanish-speaking families there.
Already strapped for cash, the city’s relief efforts for renters — who make up 52 percent of households — rely heavily on appealing to non-profits, local churches and private companies for help.
For East Palo Councilman Ruben Abrica, the pandemic is exposing the vast inequalities of the Bay Area. He said it’s up to the council to take measures within its limited means to shore up a community already ravaged by low wages and gentrification.
“Many people are going to be left out,” Abrica said.
After Bay Area counties declared eviction moratoria to keep people in their homes during the coronavirus pandemic just weeks ago, East Palo Alto doubled the deadline to pay back rent from 90 to 180 days after it lifts its local emergency.
If you applied for rent relief anywhere else in San Mateo County, you’d have to fill out a form in 14 days explaining your coronavirus-related hardship to qualify for assistance, a deadline East Palo Alto council members pushed to 30 days.
Council members also recently agreed to dip as much as they could into city emergency savings and allocated $100,000 in rent relief. In Mountain View just a few miles south, nearly half a million dollars is being spent on rent relief with more likely on the way.
These measures help, said Rubio. But she admitted that it would be impossible to reach everyone who needs help — there are just too many families like hers in need that the government can’t reach.
“The feeling that you might owe your landlord thousands of dollars, that’s heavy,” Rubio said. “One big worry of mine is that there is help out there, but a lot of people don’t know. I’m disposed to go door to door and ask people what they need, but that’s dangerous and difficult work. I’m very worried about my community.”
Rubio said she’s joining over 130 families — the majority of them undocumented — in seeking rental assistance from Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto, where Housing Program Directing Attorney Jason Tarricone said they are getting swamped with calls.
Tarricone said his agency has seen fielded about 12 times as many requests for rental assistance for April rent than usual, and he fears it might be just the tip of the iceberg.
“That’s a huge increase and it’s only going to continue,” Tarricone said. “The amount of rent that’s going to be owed for April, May and maybe June is just staggering and we’re not going to be able to meet that demand. We can meet some of it but it’s going to be huge.”
Tarricone’s agency cannot handle all the increase in requests so he is asking people seeking rent relief who are eligible for state and federal aid to turn to core service agencies in Peninsula cities who offer that kind of help.
The agency, Tarricone said, is mainly focusing on undocumented immigrants who won’t benefit from federal and state help.
“People are really scared, people are confused about the moratorium and it doesn’t help with different things they’re hearing about state orders and county orders,” Tarricone said of his undocumented, largely Spanish-speaking clients. “We’re trying to provide clarity.”
For people like Rubio who have already resigned themselves to being evicted in the future, Tarricone said the message is to protect themselves. His agency has been handing out flyers at food distribution locations in the city as well as reaching out to other networks to get the message out to the Spanish-speaking community.
But it’s clear to Tarricone that non-profits like his own won’t be able to do it all. The moratorium, he said, is only buying people time to pay rent, but it doesn’t forgive rent.
“The federal, state and local governments have to take action to cancel rent and mortgage payments or put significant resources in rental assistance,” Tarricone said. “Without these steps there’s going to be a flood of evictions in the next few months after this is over. If you think we have a homeless crisis now, this is going to be unimaginable.”
Abrica said the city is currently trying to “cobble up different pots of money” and collaborating with charitable foundations in the area in an effort to “protect the (city’s) general fund.”
Like many other cities, East Palo Alto must figure out how to help its residents with the limited powers given to them by the state amid the coronavirus crisis. Abrica said he feels the city’s relief efforts are choked by an inability to implement bolder policies like an extension of the moratorium through August or a tougher rent control law.
“That’s a structural problem in our system of government but something that the state takes up so the rental population is not put into homelessness,” Abrica said. “Now all of them owe so much money it’s going to hit us again pretty soon.”
Though limited means stunt the area’s ability to bounce back, Abrica said the community is sticking together and building their own aid networks.
“Some of us who grew up in poverty, we know that we have to rely on ourselves ultimately,” Abrica said. “You rely on your family network, your neighborhood network and friends in order to survive and make it through.”
