CORRESPONDENCE - 60A - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

Salas, Diana From: Cynthia Guerra <info@sg.actionnetwork.org> Sent: Monday, May 04, 2020 11:55 AM To: eComment Subject: Council Meeting May 5th 2020 Agenda Item 60A Santa Ana City Council Santa Ana City Council, Dear Mayor Pulido and Santa Ana City Council, The COVID-19 (coronavirus) crisis is a worldwide pandemic, posing social and economic threats to our community. Our community is extremely low-income, is primarily made up of renters, and many reside in multi -family households, and live in mixed -status households. We also know that a lot of families are largely uninsured or have inadequate access to healthcare. Because of this, we recognize how vulnerable our community is to this pandemic, susceptible to experiencing financial precarity and housing displacement. Equally alarming is that we particularly at risk of losing our lives. Confirmed COVID-19 cases in Orange County have been consistently growing, with 2,636 confirmed cases so far (as of 05/01/20). My own family's struggly matches the same precarity faced by too many of our Santa Ana residents. My parents lost around 75% of their income when they lost one of their two jobs. This has left only my my sister and my income to keep us afloat. Our rent was already too high, far exceeding the HUD's stipulation that we spend no more than 30% of our income on rent. A rent increase would devastate us. As is, we have very little room to save money, which is essential during a global pandemic given the potential medical emergency we can fall into. Both my father and sibling still have to go out to work increasing our risk of contagion of Covid-19. We live in overcrowded conditions which would make it absolutely impossible for anyone in our family to isolate in they event that they contract Covid-19. We cannot afford to pay for hotels to self -isolate. Given our already unstable financial situation and high risks, please tell what reason can a landlord possibly give to justify raising the rent? What reason do you have for allowing this? I know my family is not the only one. A large share of people in California, including Santa Ana residents are losing their jobs and therefore are unable to pay rent. California has surpassed over 3 million people filing for unemployment benefits and Orange County has reported over 13,200 job losses. These are astounding numbers. We cannot expect for people to pay back their rent during the six month period while potentially experiencing rent %7