Transcripts For SFGTV Assesor Chu Presents COVID Recovery 20240712

Hi everyone, thank you for joining us today for the Panel Discussion on the covid recovery. I am your moderator today, megan, the policy share for the San Francisco womens political committee. I would like to welcome our panelists carmen chu, joey jackson morgan, and veronica shepherd. Thank you for being here today. I would like to open up the discussion with a question. Please introduce yourself and tell our audience what you are currently working on the covid issues in your field. We can start with carmen. So good afternoon everybody, so glad to join all of you today for this great panel. I want to thank you megan for helping to host this and making sure this important conversation comes forward. I serve as San Francisco elected assessor. Like many of you, we had to quickly change to a remote work scenario with our office when we had the shelter place be put in place in march. We were able to do that relatively quickly and 98 of our operations is happening off site and not in person. Weve been working hard to make sure we try to continue to do our work, primarily because we know that the revenue impact of our work has been very, very large and disperse impact to the city, from the types of programs were able to support people with us specially during covid19. Were continuing to do that. I think on another note, i think i also serve as the Economic Recovery Task forces cochair, so very much excited to speak to you about the work of the task force coming up in our additional conversations and the last thing ill say in terms of introduction is that im a brand new mother of a 14yearold i mean 14monthold, not year old, but she is growing very quickly and i think more than anything i really am truly seeing and appreciating what it means to be part of a working family, especially during covid19 because there are so many different challenges associated with worklife balance among other things. I want to recognize that i consider myself in a very fortunate place because i have my health, i have a job, and i think that is so much more than a lot of people are facing at this moment. I think we always have to count our blessings in terms of things we do have and recognize that there are many people who need much more in terms of help than where we are. Im happy to be part of this conversation and i look forward to hearing from the co speakers today as well. Thank you. Thank you carmen. Lets go to joy next. Good morning everyone, my name is joy jackson morgan. Im the executive director. Im a unicorn in the city, a San Francisco native. During this time third street has really focused on our young people in addressing the needs that youth have been coming up with, primarily with housing. That has been a huge issue for our young people and food has also been an issue. Weve gone from having our food pantry to having food delivery for our youth and their families. Were currently serving about 50 youth and families per week. Were also trying to keep our young people engaged. This has been a hard time for them adjusting to Distance Learning and not having the certain outlets that theyre accustomed to. So we continued our Youth Development program. We have been keeping our young people engaged, and active, and connected to their peer groups. This is not the norm for any of us. We are use to be being able to go outside and going where we want and now were confined to zoom or many of the platforms we come to be recognized with. Its been difficult for young people, i think, because this is their time in development where theyre suppose to be social and not having these normal things has really taken a toll. So weve been trying to make sure that our Behavioral Health services is available to them, our clinic has been closed since march, and were in the process of trying to get our clinic reopened in the next few weeks so we can start delivering some of our medical services as well. So really trying to stabilize our young people the best way we can and help them through this difficult time, both economically, food, sheltering, heal health. Definitely, thank you joy. Last but not least, veronica. Good morning everyone. Good morning to my panelists. My name is veronica shepherd. Im with the San Francisco department of Public Health. My primary work is around Food Security and racial equity. I support primarily the African American faithbased coalition. Its a coalition of 21 plus churches across the city of San Francisco with primarily African American congregants. Covid19 through the population of people were put into a whirlwind. Shelterinplace hit and there were not a lot of city plans on how people would be sustained. The coalition i work with, because of its infrastructure, we developed a partnership and was able to provide meals immediately across the city. As of todays date, they have delivered over 110,000 meals across the city. Theyre feeding almost 1,000 households each week. Its been quite a challenge. For those of you listening that dont know, the African American community, joy kind of spoke to it. We have been suffering precovid and theres been huge disparity issues between racial inequities. So the shelterinplace and the coronavirus had just added another additional issues on top of what was already going on, on top of the heightened Racial Climate. Its like this stew of a lot of issues that people are facing. We have seniors who this isolation is impacting them mentally and emotionally. We have hunger, issues that hit immediately but were addressing that. We have children in households that cant go out as joy was talking about. I have families where there are ten people in a household and only one person is working. I mean there are so many issues that are spiraling all at the same time so part of my work and role is to support people, help them to stay safe, provide resources and information, and continue to just be that light as a beacon for people who were living complex lives precovid and continue to live complex lives in this pandemic. Thank you veronica. Thank you everyone for those good introductions. I also wanted to quickly note that anyone watching from home, you can feel free to leave a question in the chat box or if youre watching on facebook, leave a question there for our panelists and well get to those at the end. So i wanted to shift it over to carmen. If you can talk more about how was the Economic Recovery Task force created and what is the purpose of this task force . Sure, absolutely. So the i think maybe folks may have heard that the task force is a convening of the mayor, as well as the president of the board of supervisors normen yee. I think as we started to learn more about the pandemic, learn more about the disease and how it was spreading, i think the picture has become that much more complicated and i think you see that with the most recent resurgence with covid19 and the Health Indicators coming back to a negative when it comes to hospitalizations, as well as the number of people who are contracting it. So, it is going to be a big challenge in terms of how it is that we deal with it as a city. I think in general, San Francisco has been really trying to take a measured approach on how it is we have been thinking about economic recovery and making sure were grounding how it is that we are approaching both where were directing or services, house were making sure that were providing different support, based on information on the ground. So actual data, statistics, information that helps us understand whats happening from a health perspective. I think as veronica and joy mentioned also, i think there is a really strong recognition that covid19 really is, is even though the disease does not discriminate, what were seeing is some of the underlying inequities that exist are being exacerbated by the disease. We are seeing instances where people who have the least income security, the people who are at least able to take a break from their job, people who are not able to tell commute, people who dont have savings or have poor Chronic Health conditions who are the ones that are the most impacted by covid19. So we see this from the latinx community, where they are 15 of San Franciscos population, but they make up half of the people who are testing positive in terms of covid19. We seen a disproportionate amount of deaths being asian, pacific american, and the impacts to the African American community and were also seeing in the asian community, a rise in terms of xenophobia, a lot of people being blamed for the creation of covid19 and the spread of it, even when we all know that thats untrue. So i think we see some of these disparities. I think one of the partners we have Going Forward in our w challenge and recognizing women is the department. Im not sure if folks have seen but they put out a report that was telling which spoke to how covid19 is exacerbating inequities amongst women. So again, women tend to be concentrated in lower wage jobs and jobs that may not have as much ability to do telecommuting or some of these other options that people currently have. We are also typically people who will be primary caretakers for young children, and our seniors, and our children, and there is a disproportionate impact among women. Were concentrating on what kind of policy decisions can we be pursuing as a city to enable recovery and think of equity while were at it. If we will have scarce resources, we need two different programs to support our workers, families, and san franciscans as a whole, where should we put that understanding there is a disproportionate impact on how covid is miimpacting our city. S there this is such a significant challenge to us. A lot of the work in terms of spre spreading and food securities are some of the other things. We still have to think of intermediate term. Thats what the Economic Recovery Task force is trying to do, putting the on the ground experiences together, coming up with a coherent plan and strategy on how the city may want to approach reopening going into the future. Definitely, very impactful. I want to bring it to veronica and knowing that Health Disparities are tied to systemic racism and this is a Public Health issue that disproportionately effects people of color and black and brown bodies, what can our leaders do and those in power do to change this tide . I dont think we have enough time. [laughter] ill give it my best shot, okay. Its a loaded question. For our community and im specifically talking about African Americans, we as leaders in this city, particularly at the higher level has to be honest about the Structural Racism and violence thats been perpetuated by our people ever since slavery. We have to be honest on how it looks and how it shows up in each of our systems. We have enough data on the black experience to build cities about, but we dont seem to shift on how the racism and its structure is continuing to keep these barriers and these hurdles high so our communities cant thrive unless we change the Program Project mentality. Were not really pulling out the roots of the racism. Were just doing check boxes. Theyre always like a band aid. They never really resolve the problem because were not going deep enough and were not being honest enough to say were putting systems in place that perpetuate the inequity. Until we as leaders all come together at the highest level and have honest conversations that will be very uncomfortable, because t going to reveal how our own biases stand in the game, to be honest. We have to own up to the fact that a lot of the systems in place, were protecting them at the highest level. People who make up 5 of a population, but have the highest Health Disparities, the worse education outcomes, the highest rates of mass incarceration, i mean i can go on and on. Something is intentionally wrong there. Half of the Homeless Population is black and there isnt even that many of us. What structures continue to perpetuate this and how are we protecting it that it keeps going . We got to be honest, otherwise we are going to continue to Fund Programs that are not sustainable because theyre not designed to be. Theyre not going to dig out the deep root of the problem. The entire country has been functioning in systemic Structural Racism and violence against black people. Now we just got to own that. So it comes back to checking ourselves with our own bias i cant say biases, and you cant tell your community were here to help you and you need a heart transplant, but you give me a band aid. How does that help my community . Yet we continue to do this. So somehow until we as leaders at the highest level can sit down and be honest about what were actually doing to black people and particularly right now with the Racial Climate that were living in, its been unleashed and against us and yet were fighting to get basic needs, food, housing, struggling to get testing out here in our community and yet as karmen spoke, the need is huge. Were not being honest. I think weve been so conditioned to operate in our different slices of the pie, we dont see the whole picture. We dont see how the ingredients are combined to create the recipe we want to build. We need to have conversations that dismantle the racism and make sure that everything were doing is connected to some policy or some ordinance that dismantles the barriers against African American. Absolutely, thank you. Joyce speaking on that, i know that you spoke a little bit in your intro about how this effected your organization right now. How has covid affected your ability to provide Behavioral Services to youth . Both carmen and veronica, i dont know how i get to come after both of you. You spoke so well about this. I think Health Starts in community. It is a community response, a neighborhood response, right . When you start to take away some of the things that were accustomed to, to have this sort of response, on top of the social determinants of health we already had, it definitely puts us at a disadvantage. We need to acknowledge the roles and how that relates to the disbursement of resources and the response from the city. As veronica eluded to before, we are scrapping for resources, for testing. We had to do all telehealth for our Behavioral Health services. Thats not a community model, right . We depend on relationships. We depend on each other for our needs. We build a rapport with you and then that gets taken away. They trust us. Its like were a boutique clinic. It was designed and created by the community and youth to be the beacon for their needs. So i think when we talk about policy, i think we need to look at how there is racism in the Decision Making and that we need to look at whos at the table and who has the power at the table to make these decisions and to help Bring Community to the table so theyre at the forefront of the Decision Making, the solution and the progress. How do we hold the city accountable for try to address our needs without the community there . So when we look at these things moving forward, as veronica said and carmen said, we have to put our leadership and the Community Leadership to help with some of these policies and Decision Making Going Forward. Thats the only way were going to crawl ourselves out of this hole were in. Yep, definitely. I hear that and agree. Speaking about policy and good policy, but just often the foundation of good policy. I want to open this question up for all three of you. How have you seen this city or your organizations budget effected by this pandemic . Can i just start by saying i want to appreciate what veronica and joyce said. I truly think that when we talk about economic recovery, i agree with joy in terms of the Community Based approach. Its really important there are community leaders, network, and existing relationships that can only strengthen and either make that work or not work. I think that is really important to acknowledge. I think to veronicas point as well, i really appreciate the comment she said about how we need to be willing to confront those Difficult Conversations because i really feel whenever it comes to the conversation around race, its really, it is very hard to talk about. Its very hard to be vulnerable and talk about what you dont know or to be fearful of saying the wrong thing and then that makes the conversation around race hard. When we start to see the outcomes that we talked about, whether its economic outcomes, health outcomes, so on. Theyre tied to race. So how do you say that its not connected . So i do think that its important for us to begin taking those steps. Its hard to do, but im hopeful that were going to start to have more conversations and the more conversations we have and sustain conversations, not just for this month or next month, that we can actually see progress. I hope thats going to be the case. I know that its going to be the leadership of the city, but also in our community and how we all interact and what kind of personal responsibility we can all take with dismantling the system we have. In terms of budget, you know, budget is incredibly tough for the city right now. You know, i think what were seeing is a 1. 7 billion deficit because a lot of the revenue has been drying up, all these things tied to Economic Activity has pretty much stopped. So i think thats been a big challenge for us from our organizations point of view. Were trying to figure out the best way possible to continue our work because for folks who dont know, the Assessors Office is responsible for property taxes and our operation brings in about 3 billion of funding to the city year after year. That helps to fund our social services. Its the largest source of general fund revenue for the and Public School and education, which is also important. We want to make sure to continue those operations, but its not going to be easy because if were going to defeat this budget deficit, it looks like potentially cuts. I think all of us are looking for areas where we can cut to help make balance and wont impact people and services, but for an organization like mine where 80 of my expenses are people, thats hard to do. I think that youre going to see that to be really true, especially with so many of our nonprofit partners, where it was already hard to begin with in terms of being able to run the operation to recruit, and to keep talent and people in your organization, to pay them something that will help them survive in a high expense city and now that were in this situation, its even harder. So i just want to acknowledge that its true. Its true for the city and its even more true for a nonprofit partner. I will imagine that were going to have a really challenging time. With that being said, in my point of view, were committed to doing everything we can to continue to bring in the revenue that is fairly due to the city and we will see a lot of challenges to that. We are already seeing a lot of commercial properties and others saying covid had an impact. It certainly has an impact, but from a Property Value point of view. We dont think it has an impact for the fiscal year upcoming. So that is just in my mind understanding where were going to have challenges coming forward as a city. Its going to be tough. Thank you. Im going to jump in. For me the answer is twofold because i work for the Health Department and lot of the budgets were redistributed because of covid. Then i work for community and people on the ground, and their budgets were just pretty much destroyed by a lot of this work. So from the citys lens, from the Health Departments lens, the new guidelines, the Mental Health money has been drastically reduced, which impacts our commune huge because there wasnt enough resources for black people and their Mental Health needs before covid. With the reductions i saw from Gavin Newsoms office, its going to have even a harder hit for our community because as i stated earlier, all of this impacts our mental and Emotional Health and wellbeing. We have people who are seniors that are isolated and are just not doing well because of this intersection of us being around people has impacted us all. So from the community lens, its a huge struggle because youre trying you got funded to do certain programs and certain projects that are going to sub support people and yet people are sheltered in and cant come out. Our Community Also doesnt have access to Technology Like a lot of other communities. Those resources arent always available. As black people, many of us live multigenerational. Our programs are for the seniors or for the kids or for the working poor. We arent looking at Household Level responses. Were all impacted. If grandma is getting the grocery bag, all the eight people that live in that house are going to live out of that gross bag, which is probably going to be gone the same day they get it. So the programs have been impacted by the pandemic so the resources arent as great as they want them to be. It has changed the last few months, but its been a huge impact on trying to connect resources. As joy said earlier, we as Community People know each other and try to build upon what we know we all have, but were all still fighting for the same bread crumb. Its not like joys program got an abundance of stuff. Our wonderful baby y here, a great resource to our community yet theyre trying to engage our community, families, seniors, all the people they serve from an extended reach. The question about the budget has to do with the people on the ground compared to the Health Department who are trying to take resources and redistribute them in an equitable way, but the need is so great. Theyre trying to figure it out each new day. Things keep changing. We have federal guidelines that impacted our budget. There are layers upon layers of things that people have to think about daily. Thank you. All right, im going to answer this question wearing two hats. Im going to start with the first hat as being cochair. So this is my third year. Every year we put out these recommendations, trying to be as equitable and Community Focused as possible. As a cochair, i am worried about this plan shrinkage in the city. When i say that, when we think historically when these things come up, black and brown people are always at the tail end of this. This is who is going to get hit the hardest. It will come out of the Police Department or fire department, wherever it is, its in our neighborhood. Trying to make sure in every decision being made around this planned shrinkage that were taking an equitable lens or equitable approach. The director put out a Covid Response not work book, but i cant think of the word. She put out a great report about how we should approach our recovery as a city. I recommend people should read that. Also my other hat as a leader of a nonprofit, im terrified because by this point in the process, nonprofit leaders will know what were working with. This delay is adding another layer of stress. Youre trying to keep your staff calm and make sure you have money to pay for the things you planned for. Now were waiting for your city counterparts to know if this is going to happen. Youre trying to keep your population to conserve calm. Its a whole level of stress for nonprofit leaders because we dont know whats going to happen and all the things that we grown to trust and depend on are all at jeopardy. I just want to say that health is involved in all policies, whether its education, transportation, whatever, intentional or unintentional. So like we really need to focus on how all of these policies and event the way these budget cuts come down and what impact its going to have on communities of color. Yes, definitely. That is so true. Speaking on that, in todays debate, the Public Health recovery and the economic recovery are often times pinned against one another. So, how do each of you envision a community where these two could be integrated to create prosperity . Lets go to carmen. I was going to let someone else take the lead. In terms of tracking this, when you look at the reproduction rate of covid19, in march it was something above 3. That meant for anyone with covid19, they were basically spreading it to 3 other individuals. San francisco in the bay area took Decisive Action to do shelterinplace in midmarch. They were faster than many other places and it helped slow the spread pretty quickly. When you look at the trajectory of reproduction rate, it dropped dramatically after shelterinplace went into order. For a long time it was under 1. Thats a good thing. You want the number to be under 1. Around the beginning of june or so that started to inch up and now were likely above 1. Thats where we are in terms of the reinfection rate. We want to bring the number down or we will see spread in our communities. I tell you that because what happened that drove that number down was two things. We closed a lot of businesses, reck recreation was also shut down. The second thing, i know for myself, psychologically we were seeing what was happening across the country and around the world and new york. We thought we better take precaution because we dont want to see that happen here. We dont want to see lines of ambulances going into the hospital with us having to make decisions on who to treat and who not to treat. Many of us took a lot of precautions and then that flattened the curve when we reopened the economy in midmay or so, i think a few things happened. I think you know, number one more Economic Activity was happening, so more people were coming in contact with one another. I think a lot of people let their guard down. Weve been cooped up and people thought it wouldnt hurt if i just saw so and so. Overtime as you start to be social, you forget you shouldnt have give someone a hug. I think its hard is see what of the resurgence is related to Economic Activity and what is he rated to our social behaviors. I think the one thing ill say is that im still hopeful that we can open up more of the economy so we can get our budgets back online and our support back online and to help people too. There is a cost to shelterinplace. We heard a lot about the cost to business, the cost to losing jobs, which is not small. Those are big things when people lose their incomes. There is social and emotional challenges, Mental Health challenges. Veronica spoke about social isolation amongst our seniors. We are seeing more food insecurity. There is also the typical ability for us to be able to detect things like abuse. Were not seeing kids go back to school. Were not seeing more avenues for some of these things to be daylighted for example. So it is not without other costs associated with it. I just wanted to say that because part of reopening the economy and getting back to as normal as possible is because there are other impacts we have to see. I do think that we can continue to do it, but we really have to double down in terms of our own social behaviors. Thats hard to do because were use to being the social people we are and seeing your own family. I do think thats what needs to happen in terms of the city and other actions that need to occur to make this a not a here or there or win or lose situation. We have to take more personal responsibility. All of us do. We have to remember to buckle back down again right and not try to get back together and do as mump as we can to social distance and wear masks. Those are things we can take on ourselves to do. As a city we need to think harder about how do we support people during this time . So if we want people to not spread, it means we need to support people who get sick, to make sure they have a replacement income, and they are not going to lose their jobs when they do that. I think there are a lot of policies that need to happen that support Economic Activity so people can have good health behavi behaviors. I just want to say we all have work to do on the policy side to help people who get sick and making sure our Public Health has the resources they need to help with Mental Health, with contact tracing, and testing. The last thing i have to say is that we need to think more regional. I think we started off really well in terms of coming together as a region to slow and close things down. When we started to open back up, counties did it all different ways. So there was a lot of confusion on what is open here and what is open there. When things are open in another county, people from our county and rightly so were saying oh, ill meet you over there to have dinner or whatever it was. You know, it just shows you that spread isnt contained within our county, right . People go, they work in other counties. People come here to work. So i think our lack of having a regional approach when it comes to opening really hurt us. I hope we can get back on track with some of these things so we can come together and be more coherent and cohesive on how were moving together. I could talk for hours about this stuff. So for me megan and thanks carmen. That was wonderful. The question has a different turn for me. When i think of economic recovery or Public Health recovery, i have to ask for ho our health was terrible before covid. Our Economic Life was very poor precovid. So, when were talking about the recovery of these things, if were talking about black people, we have to have a whole different conversation. The Median Income for white people was 101,000 and for black people it was 29,000. Our Health Disparities are the worse across the city for every group. Its a different discussion. Again, everything all the racism that black people and people of color just in general experience is connected to economics, period. So its not just about the pandemic but for my community, it heightened everything that was already in place and occurring. So when we talk about recovery for people who are already oppressed, already impacted by the social determinants of health, the conversation has to take a different nuance. We need honest conversations on what does recovery look like and for what population are we talking about . If youre already twothirds of the food chain and the issue for you is this pandemic, but you still have food, housing, your bills are still being paid, that recovery will have a different outcome for those at the bottom of the barrel. Right now what we see and i know carmen and joy have seen it, its the despair in everyone were seeing. How long will this go on . I have people that i know that dont have jobs and are so afraid because theyre going to end up losing the place theyre renting because they cant pay. I think of recovery for those who are marginalized already and its a different conversation. I agree with carmen. It has to have a regional approach so were not all doing our own thing based on the communities we live in. We do have to think about that. I learned last week because of my exposure to data in the Health Department. I currently live in the census track, in the bay view. Im a native here, born and raised here, that has the highest cases of covid. Oh god, im scared to leave my house even for a basic need. There are people that are Walking Around and theyre not thinking about Public Health recovery. Theyre not thinking about economic recovery. A lot of these people dont even wear masks and theyre not just the black people. It has a different layer added to it in our community. That recovery requires the voices from our community to be leading those conversations. What recovery looks like is not the same as in the bay view. Thank you. I very quickly. Go ahead. And i think that was a perfect segue into one of my points about the community aspect. I was thinking since young people are now one of the fast ers populations to be contracting covid, i have this crazy idea, why not hire them to be our contact tracers . They know who are around and who is going to be somewhere and all this other stuff. Have them help us track this for us. Its their population that is now entering into this. We didnt do a great job with our young people in messaging. They have all kinds of messages going on, does the mask really help, i thought we can go here, is this real, all these different things. So now getting them involved, getting them educated on whats really happening and helping them be a part of the solution is going to engage them, is going to help them in economic recovery. Its going to give them experience that hopefully later on you now have your new Public Health team. Even hiring young people to be Community Ambassadors or captains to help with the Data Collection in specific neighborhoods. I think about whats happening in sunny dale. Hire young people to help with that. Even in the shelterinplace hotels, how can young people be part of the stat . I think there are ways that we can include community and im using my youth lens because i run a Youth Organization but community in general. These are ways we can incorporate the community in a way that doesnt make them feel tokenized and you understand what youre going to do and youre going to sit here and this is on the checklist. This is having them feel a part of the solution and helping their community that is also uplifting them economically. Can i add to that too . We have a Seniors Group called network for elders out here. I know the president and she says theyre trying to communicate because so many of them live alone and they dont even have laptops to do that. They used to meet monthly before covid. I asked how many laptops do you need . She said eight. They dont have the money to get it but its a way to stay connected and to be able to engage and feel like they are also part of what they can do to shift the narrative. It could be small but its so critically needed. Yeah, i love what joy had to say about engaging the youth that way. The city has a huge need for contact tracers and well have a huge need for a while. I think thats an idea we should be exploring as a city and to veronicas point. The Digital Divide is terrible. Youre seeing thats playing out in terms of education. If you have parents or kids that dont have access to technology or the connection, or dont know how to use it, youre seeing theyre falling further behind. Thats a huge challenge. Yeah, so really quickly, i guess a follow up to this is what are some of the red tapes that can be addressed. Youre shaking your head veronica, theres too much red tape. Thats something to think about and maybe theres Community Building down the road. A question we have from an audience member, denise asks how has the covid crisis effected or complicated the housing prices . Hi denise, thanks for your question. We saw an uptick in young people trying to escape Family Violence just in a weeks time. Before the city was allowing them to use Emergency Hotel vouchers we said were going to use them and ask or forgiveness later. So we tried to get our young people somewhere where they could get safe. It started as a week, then growing into a months time and we thankfully were able to sustain them during this whole shelterinplace time. It ended up being 12 young people we had to do this for outside of trying to house i think during this time we were rapidly trying to house all the youths on our list. In addition to the emergency housing youth, we housed close to 20 young people during this time. It looks like rent is going down but there is still a huge need. There are a ton of young people still in the queue and we had to slow down because of resources. Its been strapped because all the money that had to go into hotels, food, just making sure that everyone has the electronic stuff like laptops, hotspot, all of that. It just put a huge strange on our resources strain on our resources and there are still a lot more people in the kuwaiting to be housed although rent is dropping. This is like we went into this crisis with homelessness being one of our huge issues at the city and weve done a better job of trying to address it, but its only going to like its a deep hole. We need if i can advocate for anything right now the two things would be housing, food, and Mental Health. I can say that as a homeless response system in general, everyone not just youth, everywhere faces this crisis during shelterinplace and even now. Definitely. Does anyone else want to answer that question briefly . I guess just quickly for me, its just thanks denise for asking that question. Its so complex. Our housing, our homelessness shot up. I mean we got hundred times more Homeless People here in the bay view than we had before because resources shifted. Things that use to be available in certain parts of the city werent anymore. We even have people that are in sheltered environments without food and going to the Homeless Services to eat. So its just very complex and i ditto everything that joy said. All these of these intersections have to be addressed because theyre all happening at the same time. Definitely. So i want to open it up to our Closing Remarks and last questions here as were coming to time. How has each of your personal experiences guided your strategy to recovery and what are some resources that you can provide to our audience and try to keep this under 2 minutes. I think well be good. Ill go very fast, which is you know my parents were immigrants here so my parents i grew up most of my life where my parents think racism because they couldnt speak english well and they worked in low income jobs. My mom was a seamstress and my dad worked in a kitchen. It always colored my perspective because when i think of policy and how we respond to economic recovery, i think of the people who cant make it to the table. I think of the people that cant come out and advocate because they have to work or i think of the people that cant or dont feel they can speak up. So, i think that is something that will always be with me. Its always keeping that perspective on who cant come here to say what they need to say and we need to be thinking about them too. I think in terms of this pandemic, its even more clear about how it is that we need to be protecting, especially our most vulnerable communities. Joy, if you want to go. Yeah, ill go. I dont think you come out of Hunters Point without being an activist. One of the most overused but appropriate words to describe our neighborhood is resilient. So i think weve learned how to, you know, make something out of nothing. I think again as i talked about earlier the village model of really making sure that we all were helping each other no matter what, even if we had something little. Let me help you get this. I think thats been sort of the beauty of all this, seeing how San Francisco has come together to make sure that we are at least trying to address our most marginalized. I seen people come out to help our seniors like veronica was talking about with the Faithbased Community and serving all those meals. That came from just conversations, very organic conversations. Seeing that and seeing how the networking has i have really been amazed at how everyone has come together in all different fronts. In terms of resources for the audience, i just really want people to get out here and advocate, right . Weve talked about all the things that need to happen. Get engaged. Look at the next budget meeting. Look at the next Police Commissioner meeting. Look at all these different meetings where we need folks to come out and advocate for the things were talking about. Were going to need your voices to make this happen. This is where the community is at the table. This is where we shift the power in the Decision Making. We need you all to show up and advocate for these things. Ill leave you with that. And im going to end with very little. The resources i bring is food. People know me as you need food, call veronica. I pretty much know where all the food is and how to get it to people. More than that, i bring grace. I bring dignity. I bring values and humanity to peoples lives who are suffering in multiple ways and spaces and places, whether they speak english or not. I think that hope and joy said, the resilience we have helps keep people helps people know that somebody cares and somebody really shows that they care about how were experiencing life each day. I dont care whether youre giving a person a napkin or referral. Do it with dignity. Do it with hope. Do it with grace and remind people that theyre not alone. To me thats the most important. If we dont stand for the values that we say we represent, it doesnt matter what we have to offer. You can treat people very badly for something they really need and theyll walk away from you because you disrespected them. So i think that is critical of how to engage people, specifically in this pandemic. Thank you. Thank you veronica, carmen, and joy. Your comments are much appreciated and i hope the three of you collaborate down the line. I just want to plug for summer in the city is their next event, august 6th. This is a big event for all women to celebrate and i know that carmen also has the w challenge coming up celebrating the 100 Year Anniversary of woman suffrage, both are tied to womens suffrage, keeping it in line with womens rights and of course what that means for women of color especially black women and brown women. Thank you again for everyone that is watching from your homes. A remind to make sure that you are socially distant, wear your mask, and stay informed. Thank you. Hi. Im Chris Mathers with channel 19, and youre watching coping with covid19. Today, im going to be talking about exercising during the pandemic. First, im going to tell you what ive been doing, and then im going to be checking in with some friends and family. Ive been riding my bike. All i take is a pair of gloves and a mask if i come into contact with anyone. I try to ride my bike during the time im sheltering in place. I try to ride for at least 30 minutes. Surfing is my other regular outdoor activity. California state guidelines recommend you dont drive more than ten minutes for a spot to exercise, and although im close to ocean beach, im a bit wary to go there, so im using the time to do some maintenance. Filling in gouges and dings, and sanding it down. Im also repairing holes in my suit. Fellow sfgovtv producer chris took his first yoga lesson a couple of years ago and used to go to a class regularly before the lockdown. He and his wife set up a space in their garage for exercising. This routine is from an online class by power yoga. Deann and andy have been using the ping pong table that they bought off craigslist and set it up in their back yard. Ellie has been using this home gym to stay fit. It has everything she needed. And lastly, if the weather is bad outside, you can exercise your mind by doing a puzzle, sudoku, or just by reading a good book. Heres a quick recap. Since i started this episode, the guidelines have changed. For instance, jack may be able to go golfing with some restrictions. Go to sf. Gov to get the most uptodate