From hotel rooms for people who are homeless to restaurant meals for seniors isolating for their lives, California has rapidly expanded its safety net in an attempt to catch millions of residents impacted by the coronavirus and its economic aftershocks.
But months in, the pandemic safety net strains and sometimes snaps under the weight of Californians’ needs.
An estimated 3.5 million residents report their family lacked enough food to eat, up from 2.7 million before the pandemic.
Whether California’s safety net response represents the best the state could do to keep its residents afloat or a one-two punch of overpromising and underdelivering may lie in the eyes of the beholder.
For some of California’s biggest pandemic safety net programs, here’s how the state’s promises square with reality:
This article is part of The California Divide, a collaboration among newsrooms examining income inequity and economic survival in California.