“It’s rather embarrassing. Sitting at the wheel of his van in the parking lot of Shelter Island Park in San Diego, Andy, in his thirties, hesitated for a long time before agreeing to tell his story.
The arrangement of the rear seats left no doubt that he now lives in his car. “For a few months, yes. I was on contract in the movie industry. Technician. In Los Angeles. “
In 2020, this world of illusion has also been overtaken by reality. There were less than 54 shoots per day compared to 104 the previous year, said a few days ago FilmLA, the organization that issues permits in the City of Angels. A drop of 48% compared to the previous year. The lowest level in 25 years.
“My car is all I have left,” added Andy without further details, looking sad. When he turned up the sound from his speakers, the music coming out of them barely made him smile.
On the aptly named Shelter Island, the refuge island, the collateral victims of the pandemic, like Andy, have now been stranded for several months, giving a strange face to the official statistics. In the week leading up to January 23, 843,000 people applied for unemployment insurance benefits in the United States. Before the pandemic, they were between 200,000 and 250,000 doing so, per week. In addition, 426,000 people have taken advantage of federal aid for workers in the entertainment industry and self-employed people left out of work by the ongoing health crisis. That brings down a check from $ 167 to $ 467 per week. Sometimes just enough to live in a car, in a state where housing is very scarce and rents very expensive.
“Oh, yes, I see more and more of them living in their cars,” said Frank Craddle, a retired laborer from Oregon, sitting in the doorway of the trailer mounted on the back of his old man. pickup. He is used to parking lots in California, where he comes to spend the winter in his truck. Him, it is by choice. “There is too much snow in my house right now,” he said.
“The United States is a big country, but it’s a country upside down,” adds the 78-year-old man, while protecting his mouth with the cup of his coffee. Someone is going to have to be held responsible one day. “
And meanwhile, in Washington last week, Republicans and Democrats continued to revolve around a deal to get the Senate to pass Joe Biden’s action plan to bring relief to Americans during the pandemic. Despite the urgency of the situation. The project, valued at $ 1900 billion in public spending, yet promises the immediate sending of a check for $ 1400 to Americans to stimulate the economy. It would also increase the unemployment benefit to $ 400 a week.
The new government hopes to sidestep the Republicans’ obstruction this week, by pushing through its plan with the backing of all 50 Democratic senators and the voice of Kamala Harris, the vice president, capable of giving a majority in a vote in a now Senate. divided equally between the two parties.
“The price to pay will be higher if we do nothing rather than act fast and big,” Janet Yellen, the new US Treasury Secretary of State, said last week after meeting with the president. We need to do it now to reduce costs in the long run. “
Costs that are not only financial, judging by the glaring social disparities that the pandemic continues to reveal in the United States. A country where the weakest are still the most affected by the disease and the least served by the vaccination campaigns which have started to increase for more than a week, across the country.
A death that discriminates
Since November, the COVID-19 death rate in the Latino community of Los Angeles has climbed … 1000%, County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said on Friday. “The Latino community is actually supporting the worst of this pandemic,” she summed up. At the end of November, 3.5 members of the community were dying out of 100,000. Last week. This rate rose to 40 per 100,000.
It’s a question of poverty, summarizes Nancy Binkin, professor of public health at the University of California in San Diego. “About a tenth of Los Angeles’ population lives in crowded housing, with several people in one room. Many are in multigenerational households, which multiplies the spread to vulnerable elderly people. “
Latinos, like African Americans, more affected by COVID-19 than the rest of the population, find themselves on the front lines of contagion, in unhealthy workplaces, and in essential jobs where the level of exposure is higher. “We also have a large immigrant population, including those who are not here legally and who are afraid to go for testing or to collaborate in contact tracing in case of infection,” she adds. .
An Associated Press analysis has also just shown that vaccination has difficulty reaching the African-American community, yet one of the most exposed to the disease. COVID-19 contamination is three times higher than in the others. The setting of the car clinic, favored for mass vaccination, partly explains the cleavage. You have to have one to get there.
In North Carolina, for example, “Blacks make up 22% of the population and 26% of the health workforce, but only 11% of those vaccinated to date. Whites, a category in which the state includes both Hispanic and non-Hispanic whites, represent 68% of the population and 82% of those vaccinated, ”the agency said.
The same segregation can be read in the official data for Maryland, Florida, Mississippi, Texas, Delaware, Joe Biden’s stronghold, Ohio …
“It’s a terrible time,” said Julia, in the Shelter Island parking lot on Saturday, behind the trailer in which the 71-year-old retiree has put all her self-employed money to live there all year. The day before, she says she helped people in the street, hit by the torrential rains and the drop in temperature of the moment. The mercury has fallen below 10. “Freezing” weather, seen from here.
“I gave socks to a woman who didn’t even have shoes and a container of water,” she adds. She also says sometimes giving advice to those who the pandemic has confined under the roof of their cars. She also sees more and more on her way. “I know how it works. I’ve lived on the road for 14 years. Then she concludes: “This is what must be done to get through the crisis together. We must help each other. “
Less generous counter-proposal
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