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Orozco, Norma From: Mextli Lopez <mextli9239@gmail.com> Sent: Tuesday, May 05, 2020 2:28 PM To: Pulido, Miguel; Sarmiento, Vicente; Villegas, Juan; Iglesias, Cecilia; Penaloza, David; Bacerra, Phil; Solorio, Jose; Ridge, Kristine Cc: eComment Subject: Impacted Resident in Favor of Keeping and Expanding the Rent Freeze Dear Mayor Pro Tern Villegas, I am a constituent from the Willard neighborhood. My family has been hard hit my the COVID 19 pandemic. I moved back home after college to support my family after my dad was diagnosed with cancer. My father works as a mechanic and my mother is a domestic worker. I work at Orange Coast College as a student services specialist. On March 16th OCC shut down and all part time workers were laid off. I was amongst those who lost their job. I have two younger sisters and they are all counting on me to keep a roof over their head. Only my mom was working up until last week, but now her hours have been cut severely, culminating in her now only working 4 hours a day 4 day a week. What I will receive in unemployment is nowhere close to what I was making before I lost my job and what is necessary for me to sustain this household. Her and I have been able scrounge up our money to pay our rent on time for the last two months, but now that her hours have been cut even more, and I only started working this past week, I don't know if we will be able to pay our full rent in June. Even with me beginning work again, my job alone will not be sufficient to make ends meet. I imagine we are not the only family this is happening to. There appears to be a second wave of lay offs/ hour shortages impacting workers right now. As family members who have been laid off for the past few months return to work, it appears their previously employed counterparts are now losing work. There are many others going through similar and even worse situations than what my family is confronting. I am writing to you today to urge you to support an expansion of the current rent freeze which only covers us through the end of May. I want to make sure my family; my parents and my sisters don't become homeless. I don't know what I would do if our landlord was able to increase rent on us while I'm still trying to catch up to the rent we will fall behind on. We were able to pay April rent, and May rent , but now as I return to work, my mom is losing the majority of her work hours, so I know will struggle to pay rent in June. Please support a rent freeze that matches the eviction moratorium timeline. This way I and many others will have a fighting chance to catch up on the debts we've accumulated while we've been out of work. Thank you for your time. Sincerely, Mextli Lopez 6\2