Manio, a first-generation Filipina who had spent the last two years of high school in Los Angeles public housing, had managed a nonprofit assisting marginalized youth in San Francisco, patented environmentally friendly food packaging and had been making $90,000 in hospital finance before 2019. She moved into commercial real estate hoping to earn more and help pay for her son’s eventual college tuition.
“I’ve always been independent and self-sufficient,” she said, and going to friends with open hands “was a very hard pill to swallow.”
A few thousand dollars in loans from friends helped her pay the rent, her car loan and professional expenses. But with nearly $6,000 a month in expenses, Manio felt like Alice in Wonderland.
“I’m falling deep into this financial hole,” she said. “I have no idea how I’m going to get back, and I have no idea where this is going to lead me.”
In April 2020, she turned to food stamps, which provided about $200 a month, then unemployment.
Manio, who now had drawn over $10,000 in loans from friends, began to dip into a college fund that her father had left for her son. Expecting the pandemic to subside, Manio strained her credit cards to attend extra real estate certifications, trainings and pay her annual licensing fees. But the lockdowns dragged on.
Early this year, she applied to Cornell University’s commercial real estate certification program in commercial real estate development. She paid half-off tuition — $6,000 that she put on her credit card in installments — and emptied her child’s college fund. Manio told her son it would help them bounce back, promising to put all of it back and then some.
By January, the loans from one friend had reached $30,000, and her credit cards were stuffed with $40,000 in additional debt. Manio was now paying only 25% rent in keeping with the state’s eviction moratorium, but the back rent was growing.
Manio put on a stoic face in public meetings in March and April while other board members spoke and shed tears over lost family members due to COVID-19. She couldn’t bring herself to air her problems publicly: What if voters thought she was unable to run a district, city or county, she thought, if she couldn’t get her finances in order?
“It was a lot of saving face,” she said, and “having to hide the real me.”