On Friday, Chinatown CDC launched a take-out meal program to get dinners to residents in their single-room occupancy (SRO) hotels. The meals, provided by New Asia, a dim sum and community banquet restaurant located in Chinatown, allowed residents to avoid communal kitchens on their floors, a typical setup for the SRO hotels. And that helped residents maintain the physical distance suggested by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to help curb the spread of COVID-19.
The meals were paid for through Feed and Fuel Chinatown, a new fund that started with contributions from foundations and a $20,000, flexible grant from NeighborWorks America. The NeighborWorks America grants were given to network organizations at the end of March to help with operational challenges related to COVID-19. Another 300 SRO residents sat down to home-delivered meals, covered by other funding.
"The need keeps growing," says Malcom Yeung, incoming chief executive officer for Chinatown CDC. The organization aims to run the meal programs seven days a week, as long as California's shelter-in-place orders remain.
Maintaining physical distance in SROs is always challenging, Yeung says. There are shared kitchens on each floor – and shared bathrooms as well. "Although we have tripled cleaning in SRO bathrooms, we can't reduce the usage. But we can reduce the usage of kitchens through take-out programs. Plus, we are activating local businesses."
Some of the older residents and residents with disabilities qualify for other community meal delivery programs, and Yeung says his organization is coordinating with them. But many residents do not qualify. And while they receive assistance through the city's food pantries, which have stepped up services, Yeung says the groceries often need to be prepared in communal kitchens. And it's the communal space that Chinatown CDC wants residents to avoid.
By April 6, the organization had set up three programs: home delivery of 600 meals for public housing tenants, with funding from the San Francisco New Deal program and the San Francisco Human Rights Commission through the Far East Café; home delivery of 300 meals for SRO seniors, through the San Francisco Department on Aging; and 700 take-out meals for families living in SROs through the new Feed and Fuel Chinatown Fund.
"The hard part about all of this is that for many seniors and adults and families, SRO housing is the housing of last resort," Young says. San Francisco has some of the highest housing costs in the country. About 60 percent of the housing in Chinatown is single-room occupancy with shared facilities. Food security is an issue.
"We launched the Feed and Fuel Chinatown Fund to address issues like this," Yeung says. "We've seen an incredible amount of generosity."
The goal is to raise up to $600,000 to fund the food security program for the two months that Yeung believes California is going to require residents to shelter in place. "If it goes to a third or fourth month, we'd have to raise another $500,000," Yeung says. Other funding sources could include philanthropy, an individual giving campaign, and a crowdsourcing campaign through Facebook.
As with other NeighborWorks America network organizations, when it comes to problem solving, Chinatown CDC is moving quickly and searching for new strategies. "Hard times require quick and improvised responses," Yeung says.
That's why NeighborWorks America offered the $20,000 grants, which were announced March 25. By March 31, most had been paid out, says Kathryn Watts, senior vice president for field operations.
NeighborWorks decided to use $4 million that had been set aside for a competitive grant opportunity and divide it among its more than 240 network organizations, with added funds from divisions that made cuts to their own budgets. "We're providing it as flexible operating support because that's what we're hearing is the most pressing need," Watts says.
Organizations are using the funds for things like cleaning rental properties, moving employees to remote work and equipping communities with resources. "The needs are across the board," Watts says.
But the goals are similar to those of Chinatown CDC, where Yeung says the plan is "to get things up and running as soon as possible to keep people safe and fed."
04/07/2020
