With San Francisco’s shutdown orders extended through May, out-of-work residents’ desperation will surely swell.

So it’s good news Mayor London Breed’s administration has found a way to get the $138 million tied up in hard-to-access medical reimbursement accounts back to the employees who earned the money in the first place.

I told you recently about some San Francisco business owners and employees being frustrated that $138 million is sitting in 104,000 individual medical reimbursement accounts, funded by employer contributions mandated by a 2006 law intended to provide health care to all San Franciscans.

But withdrawing the money to get reimbursed for health care costs has become increasingly onerous, some workers say, with myriad bureaucratic hoops to jump through. And besides, why can’t they just have the money back to pay for rent, groceries and other necessities since we’re in the midst of a public health crisis?

Well, soon they can.

The city next week will contact all 104,000 account holders and give them the option of requesting the money in their accounts be released to them. The mayor’s office is still trying to figure out whether the money will come in regular checks or something like a grocery gift card.

“During this unprecedented pandemic and the ensuing economic fallout, our workers need all the support they can get,” Breed said in a statement. “Our ability to deliver these funds for basic needs during this public health crisis will make a difference in people’s lives.”

Lana Porcello, the owner of a shuttered restaurant near Ocean Beach, hopes the money will help the 51 employees she had to lay off. After the shelter-in-place rules went into effect, she closed Outerlands and has been asking the city to release her employees’ money back to them, but hadn’t gotten anywhere.

Told of the news, she said, “That’s huge!”

“Some people have thousands of dollars saved and that can absolutely help with rent and groceries,” she said. “It will be a great relief for a lot of people.”

She said it’s a relief for business owners like herself, too, because the more secure the workforce, the more likely businesses can reopen in some fashion after shelter-in-place rules are finally lifted.

Rodney Fong, president of the Chamber of Commerce, called the release of the money “our own local $100 million stimulus package.”

“I’m hopeful it has some impact and buys everyone a little more time,” he said.

There’s more to do in terms of the medical reimbursement accounts, however. There’s another $65 million in “deactivated” funds sitting at the city. If an employee doesn’t tap into his or her own account within 24 months, the city can take it back and use it for its own purposes as long as it coughs up the money later if the employee asks for it.

Breed’s intention is to release that money, too, though the details still have to be worked out.

Usually, the goods handed out by food banks are pretty basic: canned corn, apples, rice, potatoes. But thousands of people lining up for help this week in San Francisco will find an unlikely surprise in their sacks: 10 oz. American Wagyu steaks worth nearly $60 each.

The prized meat was trucked from Snake River Farms in Idaho last week to a warehouse in Fremont and is currently being cut and packaged. The family-owned farm, which focuses on raising its animals humanely, usually sells its Wagyu steak to high-end restaurants, but with those shuttered due to the coronavirus pandemic, the farm is donating the steak.

And it’s a lot of steak. The San Francisco haul will be divided into 35,000 portions and is estimated to be worth $2 million.

Volunteers with TogetherSF will deliver the steaks, most of which will go to the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank. Deliveries will also be made to La Cocina, Meals on Wheels, Self Help for the Elderly and public housing sites, among other groups. People may see steaks in their grocery bags as early as Wednesday.

Paul Ash, executive director of the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank, said he hadn’t yet heard of the steak windfall.

“You’re breaking the news to me!” he said, sounding pleasantly surprised.

He said some food distributors are donating high-end products to the food bank since restaurants are shuttered, and he recently received 5-pound wheels of cheese from a local cheese company that he estimated to be worth $100 apiece.

The need just keeps rising with 50,000 households in San Francisco asking for food assistance — 19,000 more than just three weeks ago. The food bank is delivering bags of groceries to homebound seniors using “a hodgepodge network of volunteers,” Ash said, including Amazon drivers who pick up the food and deliver it on their routes.

The steak donation is being coordinated by TogetherSF, a new nonprofit started by Kanishka Karunaratne Cheng, who worked as Breed’s director of commission affairs until earlier this month. She left to become a private consultant and run TogetherSF as a volunteer.

It recruits people wanting to volunteer during the COVID-19 pandemic and matches them with people and organizations needing help. Volunteers will drive the steaks from the Fremont warehouse operated by Newport Meat, which donated its butchering services, to the various food distribution sites in the city.

“It’s kind of a random thing to have come up, but it’ll be really nice to see people’s faces when they get something they really weren’t expecting,” Karunaratne Cheng said. “It’s so rewarding.”

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Heather Knight appears Sundays and Tuesdays. Email: hknight@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hknightsf Instagram: @heatherknightsf