3-Strikes Focuses on the Poor, But Ignores Crimes of the
Rich
Crime legislation is a perfect example of politicians siding with the
wealthy. The rich, who illegally redistribute wealth and cause more deaths and
injuries than all of street crime, are generally coddled and protected by
concepts of "deregulation" and "free markets." White-collar
crime, corporate crime, environmental crime, occupational crimes are all
de-emphasized. The poor, on the other hand, commit the vast majority of
street crime and are generally attacked as the scourge of the earth and
punished severely through concepts of "victim rights" and "crime
control."
The brainwashing of America into allowing the rich get richer has been the
greatest achievement of today's politicians. The result, however, is that
instead of a "trickled down" effect, the poor have actually been
"trickled on." As demonstrated in the book "Inequality by
Design," between 1959 and 1969, income per person grew for all households.
However, since 1970, income per person has continued to grow rapidly for the
richest households, grown at a declining rate among middle-income households,
and fallen slightly among poor house-holds. The result is significantly more
inequality.
Corporate America also appears to exacerbate the problem by providing less
and less quality jobs for ex-convicts. Not even McDonalds is willing to hire
someone with a record. When one considers that 1/3 of African-American males
are in prison, parole or probation, it's no wonder that people lash back at the
system by committing crime.
Because of this growing inequality, the rich need to make sure that the
poor are kept in line. The best way to do this? Lock 'em up and throw away the
key if they get out of line. The longer they are in the prison, the better. A
criminal justice model that emphasizes "control" is just that--it is
supposed to control those who it targets.
The United States pretends to take the moral high-road when talking about
other countries like China or Iraq, but then fills its own prisons with
nonviolent and non-serious offenders--most who come from the lower economic
classes.
The following are some statistics and comments from books and articles on
the growing inequality between the rich and the poor and crime control policies
that emphasize street crime. PLEASE SEND US NEW DATA AND ARTICLES IF YOU HAVE
THEM.
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California kids fare poorly in U.S. survey
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Rich-poor gap wider than in 1968
Thirty years ago, the Kerner Commission report concluded that the nation
was being divided into two societies: "one black, one white -- separate
and unequal."
In a new report by the Milton S. Eisenhower Foundation, the nation looks
even more separated and the poor have gotten poorer.
The foundation's report attributes the deterioration in the urban poor's
condition to the legacy of supply-side economics in the 1980s. It also
cites increasing hostility to affirmative action and what the report asserts is
the failure of several social programs popular in Washington--such as
enterprise zones and the Job Training Partnership Act--to truly help poor
people.
The report states that in 1968, roughly 1 in 8 Americans was living
in poverty. In 1998 1 in 7, nearly 14% of the population lives in
poverty. Thirty years ago, about 50% of the poor lived in
metropolitan areas. Today, 77% do, and the percentage of poor in central
city areas, which tend to be minority neighborhoods, also has grown, according
to the report's authors.
The result is that despite a national unemployment rate below 5%, the
unemployment rate for African Americans is nearly 10%. Nearly 30% of
African American and Latino families live below the poverty line, three times
the rate for non-Latino whites. Similarly, the median family income for
Latinos and African Americans is about 55% that of their non-Latino white
counterparts. LATimes,
3/1/98.
The report cites Head Start, after-school youth centers, urban school
reform and school-to-work programs as things that work. Other successes,
the report says, are programs that focus on job training, placement and
retention, inner-city economic development and crime and drug prevention.
OCRegister, 3/1/98.
400 new California laws increasing punishments in recent
years.
"A steady stream of legislation--400 new laws by one count--have
increased criminal punishments in recent years, and in particular expanded the
types of crimes that resulted in state prison sentences, increased prison
sentences and restricted the ability of correctional agencies to reduce the
actual time served by granting good conduct or work credits."
Little Hoover Commission Report, Jan. 1998, p.
30.
The book "Inequality by Design" shows how the
growing inequality in America is caused by wealthy interests
In response to the book "The Bell Curve," several sociologists
from UC-Berkeley show that "not only does the wealth of individuals'
parents shape their chances for a good life, so do national policies ranging
from labor laws to investments in education to tax deductions." The
authors explore the ways that America--the most economically unequal society in
the industrialized world--unevenly distributes rewards through regulation of
the market, taxes and government spending. The book is filled with statistics
and sources showing what is causing the increasing inequality between the rich
and the poor. "Inequality by Design: Cracking the Bell Curve Myth" by
Claude S. Fischer, Michael Hout, Martin Sanchez Jankowski, Samuel R. Lucas, Ann
Swidler, and Kim Voss, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press
(1996).
Many in U.S. jails are poor and have been abused.
In study by the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics, released
April 25, 1998, almost half the female inmates and 13 percent of jailed men in
the nation have been abused sexually or physically at least once in their
lives.
More than a quarter of the women -- 27 percent -- and 3 percent of men said
the abuse included rape. Large numbers of the inmates grew up in single-parent
homes, were children of dissolute parents or spent at least part of their
childhood in homes on welfare or in public housing. More than a third -- 36
percent -- said they were unemployed before their most recent arrest.
``The tragedy is that people who have been victimized often become
victimizers themselves,'' said Eric E. Sterling, president of the
Washington-based Criminal Justice Policy Foundation. ``It's a cycle we could
break, but it involves some expense. As a society, we haven't put our resources
there.''
The study also said 20 percent of inmates were seeking work, 16 percent
were not looking, and ``almost half reported income of less than $600 a month
during the month before their arrest.''
Sterling said misbehaving children simply have fewer opportunities for help
in poor families. ``Poverty often means that kids in trouble are not able to
get therapy or counseling,'' he said. ``Not to blame their parents, but there
is a lack of resources and a social indifference to the problems of poor kids.
A kid acting out in an underfunded school system is less likely to see a school
psychologist.'' "U.S. Paints Bleak Picture of Jails," by Cassandra
Burrell, Associated Press.
California kids fare poorly in U.S. survey
In 1997, California's chidren--especially the state's low-income
youngsters--were more likely to be in poor health, to have no usual source of
health care and to live in families in which parents worry about putting food
on the table than those in other states, accoring to the first survey of
families' well-being conducted by the Urban Institute.
While 20% of California families live in poverty (defined as $12,641 for a
parent and two children), 28% of the state's children live in such conditions.
Nationally, 14.8% of all Americans, and 20.5% of all children, live in poverty.
Almost four in every 10 California parents earn less than $31,822, which
qualifies them as low-income. And among low-income Californians, 59% reported
they either have experienced food shortages or they worry about running out of
food before they can afford to buy more. Nationally, 54% of low-income
Americans had similar feers.
About 18.5% of California's children live in low-income families where
parents are "not confident" that they could get their child needed
medical care (compare to 14.2% nationwide). And 14.4% of those children have no
"usual source of health care," according to their parents. Meanwhile,
12.2% of California children in low-income families are in fair or poor
health--significantly more than the national average of 8.2%.
LATimes, 1/26/99.
Poor get Poorer in 1996
Though the median household income increased for the second consecutive
year, up to $35,492, it remains slightly lower than it was in 1989 at the peak
of the last economic cycle, just before the recession.
Poverty in the Los Angeles metropolitan area declined half a percentage
point, to 18.7%. Nationally, the poverty rate declined slightly for the third
straight year, to 13.7% (still higher than 1989). And the poverty rate for
California, 16.8%, remained significantly higher than the national rate, even
though it declined half a percentage point.
Using a poverty threshold of $16,036 for a family of four, the census found
that 36.5 million Americans are poor. Children remained more prone to poverty,
and the number of children younger than 18 without health insurance jumped from
9.8 million in 1995 to 10.6 million in 1996, nearly 15% of all children,
according to the report.
Overall, the study shows that incomes in California have increased 5% since
bottoming out in 1993. But the state's median income of $38,812 remains almost
7% lower than the pre-recession high of almost $42,000 in 1989. Nationally, the
1996 median income of $35,492 represented a 1.2% increase, in
inflation-adjusted dollars from 1995. But it was still lower than the 1989
pre-recession high of $36,575.
The modest 1.2% increase in the median income compares little to the 26
years from 1947 to 1973, the heyday of America's post-war economic dominance,
median income doubled, even after adjusting for inflation. In the 24 years
since 1973, it has increased just 1.6%.
Families whose earnings ranked them in the bottom fifth of the income
distribution say their incomes drop nearly 2%. By contrast, families in the top
20% experienced gains more than 2%. The top fifth is the only group whose
average income exceeds the pre-recession 1989 level.
At 11.2%, the poverty rate among whites remained unchanged since 1995 and
virtually unchanged since 1991. Asian-American poverty also remained
essentially unchanged, at 14.5%. But the poverty rate among blacks dropped to
28.4% in 1996--down about one percentage point since 1995 and more than four
points since 1991. Poverty among Latinos also dropped about one percentage
point in 1996, to 29.4%.
5.6% of married couples live in poverty, but nearly 1 in 7 families headed
by single men live in poverty, while nearly one-third of female-headed families
are poor. (single-parent households constituted about 18% of all families;
today, they are nearly 1 in 4.
About 1 in 6 families with children younger than 18 live in poverty. But
only 7.5% of married families with young children are poor, compared to nearly
42% of female-headed households. LATimes,
9/30/97.
$1.64 billion Orange County white collar crime results
in minor sentences for the players involved.
Former county Assistant Treasurer Matthew R. Raabe received the harshest
punishment in the $1.64 billion Orange County bankruptcy when Superior Court
Judge Everett W. Dickey gave him a 3 year prison term on Friday, Oct. 3, 1997.
This was the last person to have their fate determined by the courts for
the Orange County bankruptcy debacle that started when O.C. officials illegally
misappropriated public funds.
The final tally shows the following:
former Assistant Treasurer Matthew R. Raabe received a 3-year prison term;
former county Treasurer Bob Citron, who pleaded guilty in the case, received
one year at county jail (days only, and can sleep at home at night)--he ended
up only having to serve 8 months for good behavior.
OCRegister, 10/25/97;
former county budget chief Ron Rubino got a hung jury, then pleaded no contest
to a minor misdemeanor count and got 100 hours of community service;
Merrill Lynch Co. bought its way out of criminal investigation by paying $30
million (about $3 million of it to the District Attorney's Office);
Steven E. Lewis, county auditor had case dismissed; and, various charges
against other county supervisors were thrown out of court.
LATimes, 10/4/97,
OCRegister, 10/5/97,
LATimes, 12/6/97.
It will take a generation and a half for Orange County taxpayers to repay
the $1.64 billion Citron lost speculating on some of the riskiest Wall Street
securities ever devised. From last year until the year 2000, the county must
devote $76 million a year--roughly one fourth of its discretionary
spending--for interest and principal payments on the nearly $1 billion worth of
bonds it issued to extricate itself from the calamity caused by Citron's
reckless investment strategy. Beyond 2000, the payments rise to $88 million a
year and, although the amount drops in 2012, the very last payment won't be
made until the year 2027. LATimes,
10/24/97.
Novelist points out problems in American society.
Novelist Carlos Fuentes has called the U.S.-Mexican border "a
scar." Fuentes characterized anti-immigrant backlash, both in the United
States and Europe, as a dangerous resurgence of racism deeply embedded in
Western society.
"After the history of the 20th century--which is one of the most
brutal, violent centuries on human record--to resurrect the ghost of
xenophobia, racism, hatred of the other, is exposing oneself once more to the
worst crimes of our age," he says. "One would have thought these
lessons had been learned."
In Fuentes' eyes, a host of pressing U.S. social problems--like the
widening gap between the rich and the poor--are given similarly short shrift.
"It is important to know whether Sharon Stone wears underwear or not than
how much a black family makes in Jesse Helms' state of North Carolina,"
Fuentes says. "Most of the news is about show business and the comings and
goings of movie stars. This cult of celebrity sweeps social problems under the
rug, and that means the problems will explode someday."
LATimes, 10/24/97.
The costs of workplace fraud estimated at $400 billion
a year.
The cost of workplace fraud was estimated at $400 billion a year in a
nationwide survey released this year by the Assn. of Certified Fraud Examiners
in Austin, Texas. The losses--equivalent of 6% of total U.S. gross domestic
product--were twice what researchers had expected.
According to the survey, the cost amounted to $9 a day per employee for the
average company.
Who Commits Fraud and Abuse
| Employees |
Management |
Owners |
| 58% |
30% |
12% |
What is Costs the Company--median loss, by position in org.
| Employees |
Management |
Owners |
| $60,000 |
$250,000 |
$1 million |
Clinton makes statements about China's human rights
violations when U.S. one of only western countries with death penalty and
highest prison rate.
On Oct. 29, 1997, President Clinton told Chinese President Jiang Zemin that
China's behavior is on the "wrong side of history," and Jiang
responded that human rights and freedoms are "relative" terms.
Clinton makes this statement when the U.S. and China are amongst the minority
of nations still to have the death penalty and the U.S. has one of the highest
rates of incarceration in the world. Oh yea, Clinton made these statements as
Clinton and Jiang signed a series of agreements covering energy, trade, nuclear
power, military communications at sea and high-level contacts between the two
powers. LATimes, 10/30/97
Lack of regulation in securities industry causing more
investors to lose money on shady IPOs
While our criminal justice system is spending billions of dollars targeting
street and drug crime, the securities industry appears to be putting in a
minimal effort to stop problems with initial public offerings (IPOs).
To Mark Brown, the initials IPO might often stand for incredibly powerful
odor. "They're awful. Nine out of 10 IPOs shouldn't be IPO-ing," said
Brown, an analyst for IPO Monitor newsletter in Calabasses. "It's an
unmitigated disgrace."
Regulators give most IPOs just cursory attention and deal-making investment
bankers are running at full capacity, increasing the risk that investors will
unwittingly buy an IPO bomb.
A quarter of companies in Orange County that went public in 1997 have seen
their stock fall below their offering prices.
OCRegister, 10/26/97.
The surging stock market has spawned wide-spread investment fraud across
the country, according to law enforcement officials and securities regulators.
OCRegister, 11/30/97.
California government officials get huge pay
raises in 1998.
The governor's salary will increase from $131,000 to $165,000, while
legislators will get a hike from about $78,000 to nearly $100,000. Other
increases include:
Lieutenant Governor, from $98,280 to $123,750;
Attorney General, from $111,384 to $140,250;
Controller, from $98,280 to $132,000;
Treasurer, from $98,280 to $132,000;
Secretary of State, from $98,280 to $123,750;
Superintendent of Public Instruction, from $111,384 to $140,250; and
Insurance Commissioner, from $98,280 to $132,000.
"Pay hikes approved for government officials," by Catalina Ortiz,
The Bakersfield Californian, 3/26/98
Law enforcement officials increasingly imprisoned for
corruption
Law enforcement corruption, sparked mostly by illegal drugs, has become so
rampant that the number of federal, state and local officials in federal
prisons has multiplied 5 times in four years, from 107 in 1994 to 548 in
1998. LATimes, 6/13/98.
Human Rights Group Assails U.S. in Report.
The Humans Rights Watch released a report on December 4, 1997 that was
highly critical of the Clinton Administration. The report said the Clinton
Administration has "actively obstructed" human rights efforts as well
as new mechanisms to enforce internationally accepted standards. The report
said U.S. actions have particularly been hurtful on three issues now on the
front line of the push for global human rights: child soldiers, land mines and
an international criminal court.
The administration practice of ignoring human rights in some areas and
adopting a "selective" commitment based on economic convenience or
strategic interests in others now poses a "growing threat" to human
rights in key parts of the world, most vividly in China and Central Africa,
according to "Human Rights Watch World Report 1998."
"U.S. arrogance suggests that in Washington's view, human rights
standards should be embraced only if they codify what the U.S. government
already does, not what the United States ought to achieve," concluded the
report. LATimes, 12/5/97.
Of course, when the U.S. is leading the way with laws like the 3-Strikes
law, mandatory minimums and the death penalty, no wonder the rest of the world
is looking at us with a few raised eyebrows.
Computer hackers cost an estimated $100 billion in
the U.S.
As billions of dollars go toward catching and locking up the "street
criminals" and "drug users," computer hackers are stealing an
estimated $100 billion in the U.S. LATimes, 11/30/97.
Thousands of unsanitary conditions and food
violations fail to interrupt packing plants.
White-collar crime isn't just limited to embezzling and fraud, it also
involves violating regulations on products that are being produced. When the
public expects a certain standard or quality of product and manufacturers fail
to deliver it (usually to cut costs), the manufacturers can sometimes
physically harm consumers by their actions. Is there an outcry against these
manufacturers like there is against street criminals and drug addicts? Why not?
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has permitted hundreds of meat and
poultry plants to operate virtually uninterrupted even while federal inspectors
file tens of thousands of citations against them for unsanitary conditions and
food contamination, department records show.
Cox News Service analyzed an Agriculture Department computerized database
of meat and poultry inspection records for 1996 and found 138,593 instances in
which inspectors said food prepared in packing plants was "certain"
to sicken consumers. Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention have long argued that food-borne illness is a far bigger problem
than public reports would suggest, and that food processing plants play a major
role.
The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta estimates that contaminated
foods make more than 30 million Americans sick every year--and cause more than
9,000 deaths. OC-Register, 1/18/98.
Food lines grow across the United States
Nationally, 86% of cities surveyed recently by the U.S. Conference of
Mayors reported an increase in demand for emergency food assistance. On
average, requests for food at soup kitchens and food pantries have risen by
16%. And 38% of those seeking emergency food aid are employed, according to the
Conference of Mayors, up from 23% in 1994.
"We're all frightened," said Lynnette Engelhardt, domestic policy
analyst at Bread for the World. "We know what this welfare reform means.
After all, $27.7 billion was cut from food stamps over six years, and we know
that over the next several years it's only going to get worse. We all knew it
was going to be bad, but I don't think anyone believed it was going to be so
bad so quickly." LATimes,
1/27/97.
Carpentry teacher may lose job for past record.
Natividad "Junior" Alvarado Jr., 36, was hired at the Los Angeles
Pinos Conservation Camp for the job of teaching carpentry. However, the state
Commission on Teacher Credentialing stopped his application because his
application indicates a past record of 14 misdemeanor convictions that included
drug possession, burglary and theft. His last arrest was in 1989 for drunk
driving. He has no felonies.
"Sure I have a past," Alvarado said. "I have a dope
background. But, I have a lot of people who know me and know how I've turned my
life around."
For the last nine years, he has ministered to youths at the New Life Family
Fellowship, the Santa Ana church he and his wife co-founded. He serves on the
city's Human Relations Commission.
In the mean time, Alvarado hangs in limbo until a committee hearing decides
his fate. LATimes, 2/17/98.
Poverty persists for kids of working poor
Unemployment may be down, but its not helping children poor parents.
In 1996, the recent year for which data are available, 5.5 million children
lived in poverty across the nation, and 63% of them lived in families with at
least one working parent, according to Columbia University's National Center
for Children in Poverty.
The number of poor children has declined since peaking at 6.4 million in
1993, shortly after the last recession. In that year, however, only 55%
of poor young children came from working-poor families.
The trend seems to demonstrate that the new requirements that welfare
recipients find jobs may be driving many parents off public assistance, but the
jobs that these adults can command frequently do not lift their families above
the poverty line, which was $12,516 in 1996 for a family of three.
A recent U.S. Census Bureau report found that the number of children in
poverty surged by 44% in California between 1989 and 1993 before declining by
5% over the next two years. In 1993, according to the census report, the
child poverty rate in Los Angeles County was 36.6%.
LATimes, 3/13/98.
LA County does not have enough available jobs for those
coming off welfare
A study by the Economic Roundtable, a nonprofit public policy research
group, concluded that the number of aid recipients seeking jobs in coming years
will vastly outnumber the jobs available--an average of 2.5 job seekers for
every new opening. When unemployed job seekers are added to the mix, the
ratio increases to 5.4 job seekers for each new opening.
LATimes, 5/20/98.
Class plays most important part in academic performance
scores.
One of the nation's most cherished beliefs is that the poor can educate
themselves out of poverty. But if economic well-being and social
stability are prerequisites for academic success, the chance of such
self-generated upward mobility appears remote.
In an opinion piece, David Freedman states "In today's America,
wealthy, socially advantaged children outperform just about everyone else in
the world. Poor rural and urban students from broken homes rank dead
last. Class appears far more important than ethnicity. A 1992 study
showed that while U.S. Asians score the highest of all groups on global math
tests, wealthy black students outperform them, even though overall African
American test scores are low." LATimes, 3/15/98.
Sacramento inundated with increase in roadside
begging.
The beggars are everywhere -- at the Capitol City Freeway offramp at 16th
Street, on the median strip where Sutterville Road runs into Freeport Boulevard
at the north end of William Land Park, at the 12th Street exit off Highway 99
between Curtis Park and Oak Park. Dirty and bedraggled -- some with children,
others with their dogs -- the petitioners all hold cardboard signs aloft. The
signs have different words, but all convey a similar message: "hungry and
homeless."
In an editorial, the Sacramento Bee concluded: "Unless the country
gets serious about addressing those huge social problems, unsightly beggars
will continue to spoil the city landscape, if not at freeway offramps then on
downtown street corners, in the parking lots of suburban shopping malls and
eventually at our front doorways. And sadly, no ordinance passed by the City
Council to outlaw or discourage begging can change that."
Sacramento Bee, 3/17/98.
Decrease in welfare simply makes the poor invisible.
There is a lot of talk about the "success" of welfare
reform. Don't believe it. In New York state, which has a highly
touted program for getting people off welfare and into jobs, only 27% of those
dropped from the rolls have found any sort of job, according to a recent state
study. And the small group that was successful in finding work includes
those who earned as little as $100 in a three-month period.
"There was a 15% increase in 1997 in the number of people--26 million
in all--requiring the support of charitable food bank programs," wrote
Robert Sheer. "The political pundits love to cite Alexis de
Toqueville, but they seem oblivious to the fact that the prosperous middle
class, which he said was the basis of our system of democracy, is continuing to
shrink." LATimes, 4/7/98.
For each $1 tax break for bottom 80%, richest 1% receive
$1,198 in 1997.
Showing favoritism to the rich, legislators gave the richest 1% an average
of $1,198 in tax breaks as compared to each $1 in tax break for the bottom 80%
in 1997. LATimes, 4/7/98.
Gap in wages and benefits between skilled and unskilled
workers widens.
Since the 1970s, the gap in wages between the skilled an unskilled workers
has widened sharply. But new research show the inequality doesn't stop
there. Discrepencies in job benefits and the quality of work life have
also grown, pointing to a bigger chasm than previously recognized.
The median wage of those with only a high school diploma fell 6%, adjusted
for inflation, from 1980 to 1996, while the earnings of college graduates rose
12%.
When taking into accout benefits, Brooks Pierce, an economist at the U.S.
Department of Labor, calculated that in 1982, workers in the top 10% were
making $35.16 and hour--4.56 times that of workers in the bottom 10% at $7.72
an hour. In 1996, the ratio had increased to 5.43 to 1, with highly paid
workers having gained $1.73 an hour and low-end workers having lost 93 cents an
hour.
Some of the reasons state by Pierce are that fewer than 10% of those in the
bottom tenth received paid leave of any kind as opposed to more than 80% for
those in the top tenth. Similarly, less than 10% of those in the bottom
tenth can count on any employer-financed retirement benefits as opposed to
about 70% of total workers. OCRegister, 6/14/98.
Poverty a significant factor in students' test
scores.
The results of the Stanford 9 exam in Orange County showed a wide gap
between the rich versus the poor school districts. "Poverty is a
significant factor that influences the test scores," said Linda
Delgiudice, director of student achievement and Santa Ana Unified School
District, the largest and one of the poorest in the county--and one of the
lowest scores. "These children come with fewer advantages--fewer reading
materials at home, no home computers," she said.
Andersen Elementary School in Newport Beach ranked highest in reading and
math of all schools, according to a computer analysis by the Los Angeles Times.
Students their scored in the 80th percentile. In contrast, some scores at
Kennedy Elementary School, in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Santa Ana,
did not surpass the 20th percentile. LATimes, 7/23/98.
753,000 in California cannot find affordable rentals.
Despite the booming economy, a record 5.3 million low-income American
families face serious shortages of affordable rental housing, including 753,000
families in California, the government reported April 28, 1998.
California cities with "worst-case needs" are Los Angeles,
Anaheim, Sacramento, San Bernadino, San Diego and San Francisco, the Housing
and Urban Development study said.
Andrew Cuomo, secretary of housing and urban development said that
"the growing numbers of men and women who serve the fast food we eat, who
clean the offices where we work, who watch our children in day-care centers,
and who perform many other low-wage jobs aren't paid enough to house their
families in safe and decent conditions."
The HUD report, titled "America's Affordable Housing Shortage,"
said that a sharp increase has occurred in the number of working poor families
needing housing assistance, with the total jumping by 265,000--or 24%--from
1991 to 1995, the latest year for which figures are available.
The study found that the affordable housing shortage was caused in part
because fewer low-rent apartments are available on the private market.
The study also showed that the West has the highest percentage of any region of
very low-income renters with worst-case needs. It said that 42% of these
renters spent more than 50% of their incomes for rent or living in substandard
or overcrowded housing. This figure compared with 32% in the South, 33%
in the Midwest and 39% in the Northeast. Federal officials said two
factors that contributed to this trend were the high cost of housing in
Southern California and the reduced availability of federally subsidized
housing, either in the form of vouchers or public housing, which compared with
older urban areas in the East. LATimes, 4/29/98.
Rent a burden for Orange County poor
With increasing real estate prices, rental prices are also increasing and
putting a greater burden on people in Orange County with low incomes.
There are an estimated 54,000 households in Orange County that face what the
government calls a worst-case rental scenario. These residents pay half
their incomes in rent or live in substandard housing or both. According
to a study released April 28, 1998 by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development, the average monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Orange
County is $858. OCRegister,
4/29/98.
Orange County renters paid a record $969 a month in the fourth quarter of
1998, up 7% over the same period in 1997, a real eastate research frim reported
on January 22, 1999. Since 1994, rents have increased 19% in Orange County,
making it the most expensive area to rent in Southern California, according to
RealFacts, a Marin County firm that conducts a quarterly survey of renting in
the state's major counties. LATimes,
1/23/99.
Median price of Orange County home increases to
$236,000
Making tougher and tougher on the poor, the O.C. real estate market jumped
by $10,000 in one month to an all-time high of $236,000 in June of 1998.
LATimes, 7/15/98.
Housing gap for poor is widest in Southern California
In a time of economic growth, more Americans have ever are too poor to find
rental housing they can afford and appears to be most acute in Los Angeles
County and northern Orange County. According to a study released June 15,
1998 by the Washington, D.C. based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the
nation's widest gap in affordable housing is in Southern California, where
there are four times more low-income renters than there are low-cost units for
them to rent. The national average is only 2 to 1.
The median price of an Orange County home hit an all-time high of $226,000
in May of 1998, according to Acxiom/DataQuick Information Services.
The average monthly rental for an Orange County apartment is $853,
near an all-time high according to Marcus & Millichaps, a real estate
consulting firm.
Nationally, the report spotlights the results of a 25-year trend: Steady
growth in the number of poor renters combined with slight declines in the
number of low-cost rental units. LATimes, 6/16/98.
A typical apartment rents for more than $900 a month in Los Angeles and
Orange counties, up more than 8% from three years ago. A typical minimum-wage
earner would have to work 125 hours a week in Los Angeles County 18 hours a
day, seven days a week--to pay rent, according to the UCLA Advanced Policy
Institute. With costs rising so quickly, many families have been doubling up,
even tripling up.
The L.A. Housing Department said that 25% of poor renters live in
overcrowded conditions, many of them having seven people or more sharing a
two-bedroom apartment. Those numbers are expected to grow as low-income renters
search for a shrinking number of apartments.
LATimes, 8/30/98.
Many of California's immigrants are going hungry
Hunger among immigrant families in two of California's largest counties has
increased at an alarming rate since September 1997, when a federal welfare
reform act mandated that noncitizens be cut from government food stamps, a
study conducted by a nonprofit group for Los Angeles and San Francisco counties
has found. LATimes, 5/27/98.
Estimated 12,000 homeless in Orange County
The Orange County Housing and Community Development Department estimated
that the homeless population in Orange County is 12,000, including 8,000 people
in families with children.
"We have hundreds of foster children turning 18, leaving the system
with nowhere to go," said Susan Johnson of the OrangeWood Children's
Foundation.
To count the homeless, the county turned to INFOLink of Orange County, a
nonprofit group that conducts research on social issues.
OCRegister, 7/20/98 and
OCRegister, 11/29/98.
17% of kids in Orange County are uninsured
Nationally, the rate of uninsured kids is 11%; in Orange County, it is 17%.
OCRegister, 8/5/98.
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Date last modified: 1/26/99.