Tracing the Invisible Danger of Household Crowding
Difficult to measure and pervasive in low-income areas, residential overcrowding drives up the Covid-19 rate among Latinos in San Francisco’s gentrified Mission District.
A coronavirus testing site in San Francisco’s Mission District in April.
Photographer: San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images
Abraham Gonzalez’s subsidized apartment in San Francisco’s Mission District has been both a safe haven and stressor since the pandemic began. He’s been unable to pay his $780 rent since April, after losing his job as a restaurant dishwasher during San Francisco’s economic shutdown. Like so many renters, he is worried about what will happen when the city’s indefinite eviction moratorium eventually expires and payments come due.
Gonzalez, who came to the Bay Area from Mexico in 2011, knows that his home is a shield from the virus that continues to attack Latino people in San Francisco. The two-bedroom apartment he shares with his wife and daughter is no palace, but he feels fortunate to have it: Many families he knows reside in apartments and houses brimming with other people. These overcrowded homes become tinder for Covid-19 when, inevitably, one or several adults is heading out to work every day and gets sick.