‘Essential’ and unsafe: Frontline workers of color face compounded risks

As legions of Philadelphians have been laid off or forced to work from their living rooms, Ashley Jimenez, the director of case management at two homeless shelters, has kept coming into work.

She worries constantly about her clients, even more than usual. They are disproportionately elderly and afflicted with immune-compromising illnesses like HIV/AIDS.

“This is a population who are … more susceptible to the COVID-19,” said Jimenez. “When I walk in those doors every day, I’m thinking, and it kind of goes two ways: How susceptible am I to them? And how susceptible are they to me?”