Feed + Fuel Chinatown 3.0

Make a Difference for Families living in SROs and Support Chinatown based restaurants

Chinatown CDC is re-launching Feed + Fuel Chinatown to support Chinatown businesses and families living in Single Room Occupancy hotels (SROs). The program has secured $400,000 funding from the Human Services Agency, allowing us to provide over 33,000 meals to 555 Chinatown SRO residents over a 30-week period while using Chinatown based restaurants. We are seeking support from the community to raise an additional $50,000 to provide more meals and to enroll more families to the program.


YOUR IMPACT:

• Donation of $100 provides ten meals
  
  
• Donation of $600 provides two meals a week for 30-weeks for one person

KEY GOALS:

• SRO Resident Safety: minimize communal kitchen usage in SRO’s by providing prepared meals that SRO residents do not have to prepare.
  
  
• SRO Resident Food Security: SRO’s are considered housing of last resort for most households. Not surprisingly, SRO residents are categorically in the extremely low income (ELI) income bracket and are also among the most physically vulnerable. A disproportionately high number of working aged adults living SRO’s are employed in the service sector. Nearly 100% have experienced reduced employment.
  
  
• Saving Chinatown Restaurants: Chinatown restaurants are under severe distress from COVID 19. Many are on the brink of closing. In a December 21, 2020 meeting, restaurant operators identified a meals program as the best mechanism to keeping their doors open. Chinatown restaurants, in many respects, are irreplaceable. Restaurants weave the underlying cultural fabric of the community – serving as affordable banquet spaces, impromptu meeting venues, and respite spaces for individuals living in cramped SRO’s. Many Chinatown restaurants, because they are so affordable, also serve as de facto food security assets.
  
  
• Employment: This program will help re-employ a significant number of restaurant workers, many of whom are ELI SRO residents themselves. In an August 2020 survey conducted by Chinatown CDC of close to 300 SRO families, approximately 43% indicated that they are restaurant workers. Seventy seven percent (77%) also indicated that they had become unemployed during the pandemic.
  
  

Donations will fund direct payment to Chinatown based restaurants. No contribution is too small. Please share this fundraiser page with your friends and family. Thank you.

Video about Feed + Fuel Chinatown 1.0

Publications and Conferences Featuring Feed & Fuel

• "Feed and Fuel: Preventing Small Business Displacement During the COVID-19 Pandemic in San Francisco’s Chinatown." Keeping Small Businesses in Place: Voices From the Field Case Studies of Communities Combating Commercial Gentrification, 103-115.
  
  This case study report is written by Amy Zhou (Senior Planner) and Christie Li (Urban Planner) and published by the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education at School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation at the University of Maryland, College Park.
  
  Presented at the Small Business Anti-Displacement Network (SBAN) Conference: "The Future of Small Business Policy & Advocacy." University of Maryland’s National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education, November 2023.
  
  View the Report
  
  
  
  
  
• Case Study Spotlight Presenters at the virtual Small Business Anti-Displacement Network Conference hosted by the School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation at the University of Maryland, College Park, November 2022.
  
  View the Recording