SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (KRON) — Its San Francisco’s fourth day of the stay-at-home order and like the rest of the Bay Area, streets are relatively empty and most stores are shutdown.
Now the rest of California will endure the same thing and the economic impact that comes with it.
“Everyone is really nervous because there is no precedent for this,” Jim Wunderman said.
Wunderman, with the Bay Area Council supports the stay at home order as the best way of slowing the spread of the coronavirus, but he says it will pack quite an economic punch.
“A lot of questions about liquidity, how do you get businesses up and going again that has been shut down, are the workers still available?” Wunderman said.
For the last eight years, Larrilou Carumba has worked as a housekeeper at San Francisco’s Marriott Marquis. Now the single mother of three has had her 40-hour workweek cut to zero and fears her health benefits may disappear.
“My faith in God is the only thing I have now but I am trying to be strong for my kids, because nobody knows what will happen, nobody knows,” Carumba said.
Business leaders say whenever this ends the state will have to play a role in getting businesses large and small rolling again.
“I would say tax relief not holding business accountable to meeting tax deadlines when they dont have cash to support that, free to low interest loans to inject liquidity back into businesses when they are ready to ramp back up again,” Wunderman said.
Business leaders say it all depends on how long people must stay at home, the longer that happen and the longer these businesses are closed, the harder it will be for California to recover.
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