(dramatic music) - [Lorraine] A rise in COVID cases raises concerns about safety on school campuses.

How leaders are reacting to the virus' resurgence.

- We fear that we could start looking a lot like we did last year.

- [Lorraine] A new initiative in the City of Tucson to keep its most vulnerable residents sheltered and off the streets.

- In the work that I do, we say housing is health care.

- [Lorraine] Plus a proposition to raise the minimum wage.

We hear about the pros and cons before voters weigh in.

- There's not a worker shortage.

There's a living wage shortage.

- All of those basic costs are going to go up.

(dramatic music) - Hello, and welcome to Arizona 360.

I'm Lorraine Rivera.

Thanks so much for joining us.

Across Arizona, new cases of COVID-19 are emerging in large part due to the Delta variant and low vaccination rates.

The state is seeing about 2,000 new cases a day.

About half of the population is vaccinated.

Data from the American Academy of Pediatrics also finds Arizona is one of the leading states for COVID-19 deaths among children.

All this as more students return to the classroom this month.

A new state law bans districts from mandating masks and vaccines, but a handful of districts, including Southern Arizona's largest, are defying that rule by requiring masks anyway.

Meanwhile, the University of Arizona says it's not entirely clear what the state's transmission rate means for its upcoming year.

Richard Carmona served as a former U.S.

Surgeon General and oversees the UA's re-entry program.

He joined me to discuss issues at play.

- Well, we're working very closely with the governor's office.

We are doing the best we can under the new laws to be able to encourage people to wear a mask and to get vaccinated.

There are conversations every day.

We have a number of subcommittees.

We have public health advisory committee.

We speak to immunologists, our physicians, our caregivers, our nurses, our pharmacists, to have situational awareness every day.

So what we do know is that we have a robust program in place to be able to protect the students, staff, and faculty at the university.

What we don't know is how much more this is going to transmit.

And what we do know the numbers are rising around the country.

The variant that we have now is more transmissible, and we fear that we could start looking a lot like we did last year, where we're going to have to take measures to protect the public, the university, and so on.

- Dr. Carmona, what is your recommendation to families with children who can't get the vaccine?

This week we learned that Arizona is one of the leading states when it comes to pediatric deaths associated with COVID-19.

- Well, the best advice I can give right now, as soon as the vaccine is available for youngsters, and that's being studied right now, and hopefully sometime into the fall we'll have that information.

I believe it will be found safe that you get the vaccine.

In the interim for those under 12 years old that are in school, they should wear a mask in class.

What we do know are that children spread the disease pretty quickly.

And even though most children don't do poorly, they get sick, it's like a bad cold, but there are some that get very, very sick, especially those who have preexisting disease.

- Can you give us some insight on why the FDA has not given the vaccines the full approval?

'Cause it seems many people are watching and waiting to see that happen.

- Yeah, well, first and foremost, the public should understand that the EUA, or Emergency Use Authorization, is a mechanism to get something to market much quicker, especially in an emergency when people need a drug or a vaccine in this case.

And so it's done with limited information, but enough information to be able to make a decision that it appears safe.

When you do the final, it's much more information, much more in-depth study to ensure that that original decision was correct.

So I know they've accelerated that right now and there's teams working on it full-time, but there's a lot of information around the nation, and it takes a while to aggregate that information.

- Let's say the Emergency Use Authorization dissolves, the FDA approves it.

Does that bring the buy-in from the public that you would like to see as a former Surgeon General?

- We would hope so.

There are some people that that is what they're saying.

"Well, once they fully approve it, I'll do it."

I think that I would say to those people, get the vaccine now because you're gonna protect yourself and protect your families.

If you don't believe me, look at the news every day and look at the people who have not been vaccinated who are otherwise young and healthy are in ICUs and very, very ill.

So it's very important that everybody gets vaccinated now.

If not, we have a lot of the population that is going to continue to spread this infection.

The longer the infection spreads, the more likely the variant changes or mutates, and it can get different characteristics then, including, at some point, maybe being resistant to the vaccine we have, which would be catastrophic.

- Why the recommendation to wear a mask if you have the vaccine?

- Even people who are vaccinated can carry the virus, and therefore spread it inadvertently.

So when you're in close quarters, when you're indoors, when you're with people that you don't know their vaccination status, it's probably a good idea, an added level of safety, to put that mask on.

- And finally, for people who are still waiting on the vaccine because they want to see FDA approval, they're concerned about their privacy in the workplace when it comes to mandates, what do you say to them?

- Well, the privacy is an issue and I know, speaking with many employers trying to walk that fine line to maintain privacy, but also to ensure that everybody is vaccinated.

Your employer wants to know you're vaccinated because if you're coming to work, if you're in a service industry, if you are even a policeman or a fireman and you're engaging with the public every day, we wanna know that you're not only doing your job safely, but that you're not inadvertently transmitting disease because you don't have a vaccine.

And I know in the county, we are doing everything we can here to reach out to those disadvantaged populations.

On the Native American lands, the poor folks, the migrant workers that are working in the fields, we have mobile vans going out to vaccinate them.

It's that important that we're committing resources to make sure that everybody has the opportunity to be vaccinated.

- All right, Dr. Carmona, thank you for your insight.

- Thanks very much.

(gentle music) - Arizona renters who couldn't make payments because of the pandemic now have until October before facing a possible eviction.

Earlier this week, the eviction moratorium expired.

But within days, the CDC stepped in with a 60-day extension for areas with high transmission rates.

That includes the entire state.

What this means for renters and landlords may vary.

Daniel Sullivan oversees the Tucson Pima Eviction Prevention Program.

- So since March, we've received more than 16,000 applications and we have obligated or spend about $21 million to landlords and tenants so that they can avoid eviction.

And what that equates to is about 3,000 people and counting.

- There were more than $300 million poured into the state, and you mentioned the 21 million here in Pima county.

There are still people who didn't receive any funding.

How's that possible?

- So there is a process to go through.

So these are federal funds, so we need to go through an eligibility determination.

So it's based on income.

However, though, we did receive two allocations, and we're about 68% spent on the first allocation.

So we're going to be moving on to the second allocation.

But right now, we're also prioritizing people who are the lowest income or closest to eviction.

So, we actually have our staff from Pima County directly in the court to help folks who are even in eviction proceedings get the rental assistance quickly so that they don't become evicted.

- The extension that has been granted until October, what sort of support will that offer to people who are facing eviction currently?

- It's huge.

So I think it gave the community a big sigh of relief.

Leading up to it, we were receiving a lot of phone calls and folks just wondering, what comes next?

So the big thing is it gives us time to put more money out to tenants and landlords.

So it gave us the gift of time.

- What do you say to landlords who are concerned that these extensions will continue meanwhile they still have to pay their mortgages?

- And that's an absolutely valid point, and I would just urge them to be patient.

We are here for them and their tenants.

We have funds that are earmarked for them.

It's the first time in my career that I've actually seen adequate resources to address this problem.

We've always had an eviction problem in the nation and in Arizona.

So, now is the time where we actually have the resources, where we can say, we're gonna get the funds to folks as quickly as possible.

- You are dealing with a wide spectrum of people from families to singles.

What sort of resources are available to them?

Because your website appears to offer a pretty robust system.

- Absolutely, so here within the Community & Workforce Development department, not only do we have rental assistance, but we also have job programs for people who are underemployed or have lost their jobs.

So they can come down to the Pima County One-Stop and get into a training program so that they can get into a career that sustains them and their families.

We also have home repair programs for folks and also services for people who are experiencing homelessness.

Here in the Community & Workforce Development department, we have a wide array of resources and we look at the people who come to us, often on the worst day of their lives.

They've lost their job or they're facing eviction.

And we look at them and we serve them with urgency in heart and serve them holistically.

So we're not just dealing with one problem, but we're dealing with all the things that might be impacting them or their families.

- Daniel, I wanna ask you, the governor said or referred to this as a social safety net that had been stretched, strengthened, and accentuated.

Given that you are among the boots on the ground, how would you characterize it?

- I would characterize it as unprecedented, but I would say that the thing that is hopeful is there are resources in the community.

The factor that we're trying to get through now is time.

So asking everybody to be patient and submit applications.

Landlords can submit applications on behalf of their tenants at tucsonpimaep.com.

So if they haven't done so already, submit those applications, and we will get to them.

- And stress that there is help available.

- There is help available.

And there's adequate resources.

We just need time.

- Okay.

Daniel Sullivan from Pima County, thank you.

- Thank you.

- For people already without a place to call home, the City of Tucson undertook a new initiative to put a roof over their heads.

Tony Paniagua reports on efforts to expand temporary housing across the community.

(car engines revving) - [Tony] An old motor lodge from the 1940s is providing a new lease on life for needy residents in Tucson.

The city bought this property last year, and now it's being used to provide temporary shelter for people who lack a roof over their heads.

- I'm 33, and I ended up here after taking maternity leave, not paid.

- [Tony] Sally didn't want us to use her real name or show her face, but she agreed to share her story.

Sally gave birth to a premature baby in June.

As a single mother without any benefits from her part-time job in bookkeeping, the time she's taking off to be with her newborn is unpaid.

- Five weeks, no money is really hard on your finances, very hard.

And then to add a newborn on top of it.

- [Interviewer] We've heard a lot about assistance.

Government assistance has been handed out throughout the pandemic.

Was that not your case?

- I didn't get any of the assistance during the pandemic.

I worked the whole time.

- [Tony] With no place to go after leaving the hospital, she says she was even forced to sleep in her car one night with her baby.

- And it was absolutely miserable.

I was reading an article in the paper a couple of weeks ago that said Tucson was one of the most affordable places to live.

I don't think they've seen what rent is right now, 'cause that's not true.

Maybe it was back before the pandemic, but not now, not now at all, 'cause if you're looking at 900, 1,000 dollars for a one bedroom, you're out your mind.

I can't afford that, and I don't even think anybody on minimum wage can.

And it's not that easy to get housing assistance either.

- [Tony] Similar experiences are countless among the homeless.

Liz Morales has heard many of them in her 20-year career.

Morales is the Housing and Community Development director for the city, but she has also worked in other municipalities.

- In the work that I do, we say housing is health care.

We need to ensure that people can get into housing first, because we can address all the other healthcare issues, mental health, if there's any substance use, alcoholism.

Those are things we can address after we get people housed or at least into shelter.

- [Tony] Morales says a recent city program is providing some relief.

Using federal funds, Tucson was not only able to buy the old motor lodge last year, but other properties as well.

On the west side, the city acquired the former Desert Cove Country Club, which has 28 units for temporary housing.

And in midtown, near Stone and Glenn, this other building will be used as transitional lodging for homeless youth.

- Funding and services is what helps us get to address the real need, which is getting people into a place of their own.

- [Tony] There are other purchases in the works totalling millions of dollars.

- This is an absolutely important investment that the City of Tucson can make with a help of our federal government through American Rescue Plan dollars and Cares Funds.

- [Tony] Mayor Regina Romero says housing affordability and homelessness are two of the major concerns from constituents.

When the mayor and council meet on August 10th, she'll ask the city to begin developing an affordable housing strategic plan.

- I've already asked my colleagues on the council, and they approved the possibility of creating an affordable housing corporation, which would actually put the City of Tucson in a space where we could build our own affordable housing for the future.

So there are many options that we're looking at, but we cannot move forward without having a strategic plan that would help create goals and then help us move towards those goals in an organized way.

(keyboard keys clicking) - [Tony] Liz Morales says many residents are paying more for housing than recommended by financial experts.

- What we know is that there's over 50% of people are cost-burden, meaning they're paying more than 30% of their income.

So, when you just look at the population, we, in general, have people paying more rent than they can afford.

- [Tony] Back at the former motor lodge, Sally is seeing a light at the end of the tunnel.

She's scheduled to move into subsidized housing at the Tucson House just a few blocks away.

She says she's grateful for the assistance she is getting and looking forward to a new beginning.

- Absolutely.

Very eager, I can't wait, 'cause honestly the permanent housing part, once we get that out of the way, I think a lot of other things in life will line up because you can not maintain all those things if you don't have a house, you really can't.

I thought I could, no, it's not doable.

- [Interviewer] It doesn't work sleeping on a sofa with a baby.

- No, absolutely not.

That and finding somewhere to go sleep on a sofa with a baby, it's not very easy.

(piano music) - Voters in Tucson decided which candidates vying for three City Council seats will appear on the November ballot.

Turnout was 22% or about 21,000 ballots.

For Ward 3's open seat, Democrat Kevin Dahl will face right in Republican candidate Alan Harwell Jr. Democrat Richard Fimbres, who ran unopposed in the primary, will also have an uncontested race to keep his Ward 5 seat in the general election.

Same goes for Ward 6's Steve Kozachik, who easily won his primary against two Democratic challengers.

On top of City Council races, this November voters also decide if minimum wage workers in Tucson deserve a raise.

It's currently $12.15 an hour.

The Tucson Minimum Wage Act would see it gradually go up to $15 an hour by the year 2025.

The group Tucson Fight for $15 is leading the charge.

Campaign Manager C.J.

Boyd joined us to explain the initiative's added protections for workers.

- You know, the basic thing is of course raising the minimum wage, but one of the other things that it does is put into place a handful of protections that are really just to make sure that workers are treated fairly.

So one of the classic ones is, ways that some larger companies will get away with not paying, say, benefits or paying what they should be is to misclassify workers.

So that means treating somebody as an independent contractor when they're really not.

There are legal definitions for what constitutes independent contractor, and so this just puts some of that into more, makes it a little more clear.

Another thing it does is put in protections like, this one is something that I've personally experienced, so I'm really glad it's in there.

Sometimes in service industry, I used to work at a bar years ago in Chicago, and sometimes you'd show up, you got there on time, you did everything you were supposed to do, and they say, "Eh, it's a little slow tonight.

We're gonna send you home," and you've only been there an hour.

Now, that's super inconvenient for me, but it's even more if you had kids and you have to hire a babysitter, maybe you have to get public transportation to get across town.

There's a provision in this that makes sure that if somebody shows up to their shift as planned and then you send them home early, the employer does have to pay a minimum of three hours.

The big one that I think is really important is this creates an office of wage enforcement.

And a lot of people don't know this, but I mean, wage theft is the largest kind of theft that happens in America.

It accounts for more than any other kind of theft nationally.

And that just means anyone, any employer, who is paying their employee less than what they're supposed to be, legally.

And this would create an office, a city office, that makes sure to get people paid what they are owed.

- On the federal level, the Congressional Budget Office published a report that showed if minimum wage were to go up to something like $15, it would result in 1.4 million job loss.

On a local scale, do you think about that sort of thing?

Could that apply here where jobs could be lost?

- Yeah, I think that that statistic is really tricky.

Right now, for a Tucsonian who's making 12.15 an hour to be able to afford an average two-bedroom apartment, so nothing special, just an average two bedroom apartment, someone making 12.15 needs to work about 62 hours a week.

That means that person probably has a job and a half.

That's not really what the minimum wage is for.

It was always meant to be so that people could work a 40-hour workweek and be able to pay their bills and raise their families.

So one of the ways that I think that that gets spun by the more conservatives is to say, well, there's going to be job loss.

But sometimes what that means is, someone who currently has two jobs is able to quit their second job if they no longer need it, because they're actually being paid a living wage.

I don't think that's a bad thing.

- The opposition says that it increases job loss, as you just noted, drives up cost, which are then passed onto the consumer, could even lead certain industries toward automation.

What's your response to all those?

- I think the automation one is especially interesting because this thread of automation has been going on for years.

And one of the things that we've seen recently, now everyone's talking about, oh, we have a worker shortage.

There's not a worker shortage.

There's a living wage shortage.

And there's tons of people, but if they were really gonna automate for lack of workers, it seems like that would be happening now, and we're not really seeing that.

So what we're seeing is people desperate to get people back to work even for wages that are not fair.

And if you can't compete with unemployment, then I think that's a problem.

And there's plenty of people who want to work and they're just saying, "You need to be able to pay me something.

I'm not gonna do this backbreaking labor for nothing."

- With the primary now under the City of Tucson's belt headed toward November, how does your group mobilize to get this message out?

- For a lot of folks, this is going to be the biggest reason to go to the poll.

So, we're very much hoping that a lot of people see that and that we're going to have a lot of coalition support.

So we've already, I mean, our group is already made up of a lot of folks, from labor activists to nonprofit folks, to just people across Tucson that wanna see poverty seriously diminished.

And I think that's just gonna bring even more people in because this is the main issue.

- Okay, C.J.

Boyd from Prop 206, thank you.

- Thanks so much for having me.

- The Tucson Metro Chamber is a vocal opponent of the Tucson Minimum Wage Act.

It represents 1500 businesses across Pima County.

We discussed the Chamber's concerns with its president, Amber Smith.

- We agree that wage earners should make a higher wage, but the additional protection, as they call it, spills in there are really problematic for the business community and those employers, especially those employers that actually don't even have minimum wage workers because they pay well above that.

- Can you give us some ideas on what some of the protections are that that wave a red flag for you?

- Well, it requires the City of Tucson to hire someone that essentially is the wage police, where businesses would need to submit their payroll to the city so they can guarantee that they are paying above minimum wage.

And secondarily, there's what we believe to be a conflict of federal law, because it does not allow employers to pay wages using a Social Security number.

Well, as you know, employers pay into Social Security as well as those employees.

So how can they do that without using a Social Security number?

It's little pieces like that.

Whistleblower, it's what incentivizes employees to essentially rat out their employer without giving the employer protections of it being a legitimate cause or case as well.

- It sounds like you can see the value in trying to get more money for wage earners, but you have those concerns.

Is there a way to achieve some sort of balance given that this measure will be before voters in November?

- Yeah, I mean, for one, workforce development.

If we really want to lift up our employees, and especially those families that are struggling, let's invest in workforce development and let them gain the skills that truly earn a higher wage, not a higher minimum wage, but a competitive working wage to make them more sustainable and really, truly create a livable wage.

- When you think of minimum wage, who do you see performing those minimum wage jobs?

Is it a younger demographic?

- It is.

So if you just look at the (indistinct) of Labor Statistics, about half of them are under the age of 23.

So what does that mean?

Who are those poor people?

Very, definitely those high schoolers that are getting their first job and building those soft skills necessary that they will need once they get out of school and start looking for full-time employment and going to college or whatever that path is.

- This initiative had some early momentum garnering something like almost 30,000 signatures to get on the ballot in just a handful of months.

What is going to be the defense that you and your supporters mount moving into November?

- Well, what we'd like is a community conversation, and not just local, but state-wide.

A state-wide or a federal approach is how you really should handle this so that you can then create and standardize, create the normalizing of what those wages are.

It reduces that competition and fighting, but then you can also bring in those industries and discuss those areas, such as tip pooling and things like that that again levels the playing field for our employers.

- Small businesses tend to be some of the louder voices when they hear of a minimum wage increase.

What sorts of supports will you be offering as the chamber to guide them through how this evolves?

- Well, for us, it's gonna have to be offsetting those higher costs.

If this passes, one of those things that those small businesses will choose to do are reduce the hours of those minimum-wage workers.

And not just the minimum-wage workers, you need to talk about compression issues as well.

So where everyone within a company is going to have to be paid more because you have to be able to differentiate the higher level of skills, and that lowest wage is one of your baseline.

But you know what else happens?

That pass-through costs: rent, groceries, your menu items, all of those basic costs are going to go up.

So employees might in theory make a higher wage due to this, but they're gonna be paying more to actually live.

So it's gonna be up to us to be able to figure out ways to reduce those higher costs for ultimately, not the employers, but those employees.

- Okay.

Amber Smith from the Tucson Metro Chamber, thank you.

- Thanks, Lorraine.

- That's all for now.

Thanks for joining us.

To get in touch, visit us on social media or send an email to arizona360@azpm.org and let us know what you think.

We'll see you next week.

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