More than half of Latinos in
California struggle to stay afloat, report finds
More than 50 percent of Latinos in California struggle to pay for basic expenses like housing, food, and electricity
PUBLISHED: | UPDATED:
For
three years, Kimberly Esquivel and her family lived in a studio apartment in
Oakland, with Kimberly and her sister sleeping in the main room and her parents
and two brothers in the hallway.
Esquivel’s
father is legally blind and has a kidney condition that prevents him from
working. Her mother sells jewelry, but it hasn’t provided enough money to
improve their living situation. They can’t afford a car and food adds up.
Kimberly, 18, and her 20-year-old sister want to go to college, but they can’t
do it until the family’s finances become more secure.
The
Esquivels’ precarious situation is not unique. In California, more than 50% of
Latino households are hard-pressed to make it financially, despite the state’s
booming economy and strong labor market, according to a new report from
Oakland’s Insight Center for Community Development. The study found broad
swaths of the state’s largest ethnic group living in economic insecurity and earning
significantly less than Californians overall, even as many work multiple jobs
to try to make ends meet.
Across
the state, 52% — or 1.6 million — Latino households have trouble paying for
basic expenses like food, housing, and electricity, the Insight center found,
up from 49% in 2014. The median income for Latino households was $56,200,
compared with $78,00 statewide and $100,000 for Asian households, $96,400 for
white households, and $55,200 for black households. Latinos in the study, the
researchers found, often made lower wages.
The
median annual wage for the 10 most commonly held jobs for Latinos — farming,
construction, food preparation, transportation, sales, production, management,
office and administrative work, personal care, and grounds maintenance — was
$37,000, compared to $72,000 for the ten most commonly held jobs for white and
Asian workers. Latinos working in management make $70,255 on average, the
report found, compared to white managers, who earn $123,051.
The Insight center’s
analysis was based on 2016 data from the U.S. Census Bureau and measured
through the Family Needs Calculator (FNC),
a tool that estimates the cost of living for families of different sizes by
looking at the cost of housing, transportation, food, and other expenses in
each county in the state. The FNC is an alternative to federal poverty
measures, which do not account for the cost of housing and other expenses.
In
the Bay Area, 53% percent of Latino workers have trouble paying for basic
expenses, compared with 30% among workers of all racial and ethnic groups,
according to additional data provided by the center. The analysis also found
that the median household income for Latino workers in the Bay Area is $70,900
annually and $110,000 in the Bay Area as a whole.
This
economic picture is consistent with what Armando Hernandez, the director of
community programs at the Oakland-based community organization the Unity
Council, said he regularly sees in his work with low-income clients. Most
Latino clients the organization serves have low-wage jobs, he said, and many
have more than one, making it harder to pursue opportunities, like vocational
and workforce training programs and high school and college degrees, that might
lead to higher paying positions.
“Most
families are working between 2 to 3 jobs,” Hernandez said. “That’s really the
Catch 22 we find ourselves in. Clients come in and say, ‘I need a better job.’
But when we say: ‘Can you take this training or can we help you in this way?’
they say they have another job at that time or don’t have child care.”
He
added, “The challenge really is time. Time is such a commodity for people with
low incomes and low educational attainment. It’s a loop they’re caught in in
having to work so much to make ends meet.”
The
Bay Area’s housing crisis has also put a squeeze on many low-income Latino
families, Hernandez noted.
“We
are seeing seniors, working families, and youth that are being displaced, that
are living in their cars, that are crashing with their families or their
friends and in emergency shelters,” he said, adding, that what makes the
situation so difficult here is “the housing and the fear of being displaced.”
Insight’s analysis is
not the only one in recent months that has taken a look at wealth inequities
among Latinos in California. A July report by the California Latino Economic Institute
found Latinos faring worse than the general population on outcomes from poverty
to educational attainment to home ownership. That report also found Latinos
overrepresented in low-income groups and underrepresented in high-income groups,
with 60% live in some form of inadequate housing.
“There’s
just a compounding from multiple domains that make it very difficult for
Latinos to enter the middle class,” says Mindy Romero, the director of the
California Civic Engagement Project (CCEP) at the University of Southern
California Price School of Public Policy and author of the report.
“It’s
clear that however you slice the data, there is a consistency that’s being told
for Latinos in California,” Romero said. “And it’s a story that our policies in
our state clearly are not producing a good standard of living for the Latino
community. There are significant disparities that have real impacts on people’s
life chances, and they are entrenched.”
A
few months ago, Kimberly Esquivel got a job at a local community organization,
joining her sister as a main breadwinner, and together they saved enough money
for the family to move to a two-bedroom apartment. Now Kimberly shares a
bedroom with her sister, while her parents and her two brothers,14 and 17, share
the other bedroom. No one sleeps in the hallway.
She’s
relieved her family is in a better living situation and grateful she took her
dad’s advice to hold off on taking a restaurant job so she could find a
position that better fit her goals. She likes her job, she said, and hopes to
keep working in her community after she goes to college — something that, for
Esquivel and for her sister, remains in the future.
“Right
now we’re kind of making sure that first we take care of our family,” she said.
This article is part of The
California Divide, a collaboration among newsrooms examining income inequity
and economic survival in California.
California passes same-day voter registration, rigging elections even bluer
As if ballot-harvesting by illegal aliens were not enough, California has come up with a new way to rig elections to ensure one-party permanent Democratic Party rule.
According to the Los Angeles Times:
SACRAMENTO — Californians will be able to register to vote on election day at local polling places and voting centers under legislation signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday, a potentially significant step toward boosting turnout in key contests next year.The new law provides for a significant expansion of so-called conditional voter registration, which allows a new voter to cast a ballot that is counted after eligibility is determined during the 30-day vote-counting period after an election. That process began in last year's statewide election, but registration was available only in county elections offices. Starting next year, voters can register on election day anywhere ballots are cast."This simply enfranchises more people to vote," said state Sen. Tom Umberg (D-Santa Ana), the author of the new law. "The presidential race is one thing, but this is going to make an even bigger difference in turnout for local races."
California's Gov. Gavin Newsom, who's been curiously silent on his Facebook page about the gargantuan blackouts slamming the Bay Area, proudly has this news right there at the top of his page as his signature achievement.
Suffice to say, this is a recipe for disaster. As voting tallies roll out in real time on election day, Democratic operatives, illegally here or not, will be right onto the matter, with lists of unregistered potential voters, going to their homes and signing them up to make the tally go their way. The political muscle used is going to be amazing.
With California already not checking who's legally allowed to vote, and often, through the Department of Motor Vehicles' automatic voter registration system, you can bet that a lot of those newly registered voters are not going to be here legally. The sanctuary state, after all, does not check.
Now that they've got a register-or-else system of political muscling for registrations in elections going the Republican way, you can bet they will muscle illegals to register — with a warning that they'll be reported to authorities as illegal if they don't.
They'll be additionally shielded from scrutiny based on the fact that the state has refused to cooperate with federal investigators about who's registered legally, so it's a perfect game for them.
What's stunning is why they did it at all. After all, haven't they already gotten the solid blue state they've wanted, based on their past rigging? They've even gotten deep red Orange County in their column, which has a whiff of fraud. They've enacted driver's licenses for illegal aliens and now automatic motor voter registration, which can be halted only on the honor system, if someone says he is not allowed to vote due to being a non-citizen. Plenty of "errors" have already happened.
They've also enacted automatic mail-in ballots, even if people do not ask for them, putting physical paper ballots on every kitchen table in the state if not in the mailboxes of people who have moved away. Based on that, they've enacted ballot-harvesting, where Democratic operatives break the chain of custody in first counting votes coming in and, once they see a result they don't like, fanning out and going to people's houses who still have not voted — and "collecting" those votes, once they've "helped" these indifferent or unwilling voters to fill them out. You can see how easy it would be to coerce an illegal alien in such conditions. Worse still, the fate of the ballot of someone who voted the "wrong" way is anyone's guess. No one knows if they turn all the ballots in.
Rest assured: there's more rigging. They've enacted a first-two-out-the-gate primary system, which keeps Republicans off the ballot entirely, forcing voters to choose between just two Democrats, one hideous and the second even worse. That was the nightmare Republicans faced when they were forced to choose between Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who'd just got caught employing a Chinese spy for 20 years, and a crazed leftist affiliated with what's unaffectionately known as the "Mexican mafia" of California's political machinery, named Kevin de León. The map here shows how bad it is.
With this kind of rigging, it's no wonder California, which still has a sizable conservative contingent, has nearly zero representation in any public office, state or national.
Yet the :eft still can't trust the good thing it's got and still doesn't trust those unreliable voters. This measure to stack the total with same-day registrations is just the latest scheme to ensure permanent power. It stinks to high heaven.
Image credit: MB298 via Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Democrats turning California into a third-world hellhole: Going without electricity edition
Democrats are turning California into a third-world hellhole without electricity, water, and freedom.
Due to Democrats' love for trees, at least 800,000 Californians will be without power for several days. Instead of properly managing California forests to reduce the chances of big fires, Democrats are saying Californians have to go without lights, refrigerators, and air-conditioning. Democrats could also avoid this by not making the power company financially liable for all forest fire damages, but since PG&E is a company, not an illegal alien, the Democrats couldn't care less about doing what's best for California.
While they try to blame climate change and the infrastructure, the reality is that neither of those has caused any significant changes in the last ten years — but now, suddenly, due to Democrat policies, Californians have to start living in the 18th century.
The Democrats who run California also refuse to build more water storage capacity even though the state's population has dramatically increased, ensuring that water has to be rationed during droughts.
Democrats are turning California into a third-world country economically. The income inequality between the über-rich Silicon Valley workers and the rest of Californians is huge, just like in third-world countries, while the elites live in luxury and the rest live in squalor.
Democrats are doing a great job manufacturing poverty and homelessness even as they fail to instill hope in Californians.
California has four times more homeless per capita and three times more poor per capita than the rest of America. Half the homeless in America are in California, even though California has only 12% of the U.S. population. Also, blacks are six times more prevalent in the San Francisco homeless population than they are in California in general.
The homeless explosion has brought the return of third-world diseases like typhus to California — not to mention streets littered with human feces.
Democrats are trying to keep people from having cars, just like the people of the Third World. After all, a car gives people the freedom to move, and freedom is a bad thing in the minds of Democrats since it limits the power the government has over citizens.
Recently, Gavin Newsom, the Democrat governor, transferred millions of dollars that the voters had been ensured would go to improve the state's failing road infrastructure to a fund designed to convince Californians to give up their cars.
Democrats are also working to make cars unaffordable for any but the richest Californians.
Californians pay $1.53 more for a gallon for gasoline than the rest of America. That's $21 more for a tank of gasoline. Facebook employees won't notice it, but the poor in California who can't afford to live near their jobs are paying through the teeth.
Like all third-world tyrants, Democrats are doing everything they can to eliminate democracy in California.
The jungle primary, where the top two candidates in the primaries go against each other, has resulted in many races where two Democrats are running against each other, giving voters who don't agree with the Democrats' failed policies no one to vote for.
California is doing nothing to ensure that people who shouldn't vote don't vote. Instead, the people running the state are doing everything possible to let illegal aliens vote. When illegal aliens go pick up their driver's licenses, they're automatically enrolled to vote unless they say they're not citizens.
California is also trying to end democracy by keeping the Republican presidential candidate off the ballot. Democrats passed an unconstitutional law to keep any candidate who didn't release his tax returns off the ballot solely to keep Californians from voting for Trump.
Finally, the Democrats are going after freedom of the press. An undercover journalist revealed that Planned Parenthood was selling aborted baby parts. Instead of investigating that illegal practice, Democrat Kamala Harris decided to put the journalist on trial.
Democrats keep telling us California is the future if they get elected. That means that poverty, homelessness, the end of democracy, and a press that reports only what Democrats want heard are what Democrats are promising us.
If you're an immensely wealthy Google employee, California is Heaven. If you're not, it's becoming more and more like Hell.
You can read more of Tom's rants at his blog, Conversations about the obvious, and feel free to follow him on Twitter.
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