Cook Martha Garcia preps food at Verde Mexican Rotisserie in South Lake Tahoe on Oct. 6, 2021. About 16% of California's food prep and service workers live in poverty, a new measure shows. Photo by Salgu Wissmath for CalMatters
Dear California Reader,
I'm Denise Amos, editor on the California Divide Team, stepping in for Wendy Fry, who is on special assignment.
California poverty is on the rise again after a brief pause for COVID, CalMatters’ Alejandra Reyes-Velarde reports.
Federal officials had temporarily expanded access and funding for a variety of anti-poverty programs during the pandemic and then systematically pulled them back beginning last year.
That’s why California’s poverty rate climbed in the first quarter of 2023, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. Poverty rose from 11.7% in 2021 to 13.2%, according to the institute’s measure, which includes public aid and regional costs of living — unlike official federal poverty rates.
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“We’re seeing an uptick in poverty. That’s not because the economy is worse — it’s actually improving — but it’s because we temporarily, using federal funds mainly, had expansions of safety net programs,” said Caroline Danielson, a researcher at the institute.
About 5 million Californians live in poverty. There would have been 3.2 million more if not for government safety net programs, the institute said.
Most harmed by poverty: Latino households, the elderly, and children, the stats show. In the Los Angeles and San Diego regions, 15% of residents are poor.
More than 8 in 10 of California’s working poor are employed year-round; nearly half work full time. Better pay and more funding for training and education could change those trends, Danielson said.
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Mind the wealth gap. While household wealth grew nationwide during the COVID-19 pandemic, massive wealth gaps remained, Money magazine reports. The Federal Reserve this month said median net worth surged 31% for white households to
$285,000 from 2019 through 2022, while for Black households it grew 60% to $44,900 and for Latino households it grew 47% to $61,600. Similar data wasn’t available for Asian/Pacific Islander households.
Half the home. Thanks to climbing mortgage interest rates and high demand, a homebuyer’s dollar only goes about half as far as it did at the end of 2020. Back then, homebuyers earning the median household income could afford a house selling for about $737,400. Now they’d have to settle for a $356,300 house, according to an NBC News analysis of data from Redfin and the St. Louis Federal Reserve.
Residential homes in San Diego. Photo via iStock Photo
Highest cost city. The same week U.S. News and World Report names San Diego the country’s most expensive city, another report quantifies how hard it is to afford to live there: 35% of San Diegan households can’t afford basic expenses; 38% of all San Diegans and more than 50% of Black San Diegans spend over 30% of their income on housing.
Home heating help. California was allocated more than $226 million from the federal Low Income Home
Energy Assistance Program to help poor people pay home heating and cooling costs, weatherize homes for energy efficiency, and cope with disasters and extreme weather. The funding includes $863,877 for tribal programs. To apply, visit California’s website or the federal website.
Replacement worker probe. Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón said he is launching an investigation into working conditions for migrants hired at LA-area hotels, based on information provided by Unite Here Local 11, which represents striking hotel workers, the LA Times reports.
Temporary services agencies have recruited among Skid Row’s migrant population to find replacements for striking workers at hotels in Santa Monica and near Los Angeles International Airport, the paper reported.
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Black churches going green? Word in Black reports on green coalition training for pastors of Black churches, so they’ll include climate concerns in sermons. A survey shows 75% of Black Protestants believe that increased floods and other natural disasters show we are living in biblical end times, while 19% view it as a climate change
crisis.
Buy-one-get-one-free? Grocery stores are selling more food using promotional discounts; it has reached a level not seen since 2019, says research firm NielsenIQ. But those special deals didn’t stop U.S. shoppers from paying one-third higher prices, the Wall Street Journal reports. Supermarket prices ratcheted up 2.4% in September from a year prior, while restaurant prices climbed 6%.
No Boomer inheritance boom. The 55.8 million Americans over 65 account for 17% of the population but half its wealth — $96.4 trillion. Don’t expect most of that to transfer to the next generation, though. Long-term care and
end-of-life costs will eat it, Business Insider reports, meaning much of it will land in the pockets of other already-wealthy people.
Toxic exposures. The booming disaster-restoration industry is capitalizing on low-wage labor, mainly undocumented immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean, The Center for Public Integrity reports. Often they’re exposed to mold, asbestos and lead while clearing debris and rebuilding after hurricanes, floods and wildfires, as federal emergency response policies prioritize fast recovery over worker health.
Poor credit reporting. Federal regulators are fining TransUnion $15 million for allegedly providing incomplete and inaccurate information about prospective tenants to landlords who use its “risk score” metric. The regulators seek $4 million in civil penalties and $11 million in restitution to the harmed renters.
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California Divide is a statewide media collaboration to raise awareness and engagement about poverty and income inequality through in-depth, local storytelling and community outreach. The project is based at CalMatters in Sacramento with a team of reporters deployed at news organizations throughout California.
