from KTLA The state of California has been trying in insure all children. But that process may take some steps backward. this explains some of the effects that may have. - KaleBy Jordan Rau, SACRAMENTO -- California's promising strides toward extending medical coverage to all its children, a longtime goal of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and one advocates believed was in reach by decade's end, has stalled -- and thousands of kids are in danger of losing insurance.The trend is likely to further destabilize California's already shaky healthcare system. Studies have found that children without insurance are less likely to go to the doctor for routine visits that allow early diagnoses and treatment for diabetes, obesity and other increasingly common ailments.Uninsured children are more likely...
from Inside Bay Area A ministry takes to the streets at night to help the poor and homeless. - KaleBy Christine MorenteSAN FRANCISCO — Minutes before her walk through the Tenderloin, Deacon Diana Wheeler stuffed cereal bars into her pockets."We don't give money if they ask," the 53-year-old San Mateo County resident said.Dressed in black, except for the white clerical collar around her neck, Wheeler, along with the Rev. Lyle Beckman and a volunteer for the San Francisco Night Ministry, gathered for a prayer last week.The trio asked for strength and compassion, not only for themselves, but for those living on the streets of San Francisco."There's always an edge to the end of the month," Beckman said. "People are desperate for a couple of bucks."From 10 p.m. to 2 a.m., Wheeler and...
from Inside Bay Area 58 different studies were combined into one for this report showing poverty levels in the Oakland, California region. The Bay Community Foundation focuses on social justice. - KaleBy Kamika DunlapOAKLAND — A new study shows the East Bay is leading the Bay Area in increasing poverty levels, low living-wage job opportunities, decline of housing affordability and sinking high school graduation rates.These were among the findings released Thursday by the East Bay Community Foundation. Their 2008 East Bay Community Assessment Update is a "study of studies," based on a review of data from 58 other reports focused on barriers to justice and equity, as well as solutions to improve quality of life issues for East Bay residents.The study highlights trends in Alameda and...
from the Hanford Sentinel This story was to help drum up donations to afood drive. Many of the locations listed at the end had empty collection barrels well into the food drive. - KaleBy Shawbong FokA food drive launched by 13 businesses in downtown Hanford earlier in July seeks to collect 7,500 pounds of food by month's end -- enough to feed 300 needy families. The drive comes at a time when the slowing economy has pinched the wallets of Kings County residents amid spiking gas and food prices. As a result, more and more families are struggling to make ends meet, according to some of the business employees and owners involved in the drive.The food drive is meant to help needy families fill their bellies, especially as donations slow down during the summer.Castaways Concepts, a...
from Bloomberg By Ryan FlinnTurning dozens of hungry children away from a free meals program wasn't how Vince Harper wanted to start the summer.Harper oversees a program in Santa Rosa, California, that provides food to kids during schools' summer recess. More than 90 lined up at a community center on June 9, the first day of the service. Only 50 meals were available.``It's a terrible feeling,'' said Harper, 41, director of youth and neighborhood services for the Community Action Partnership of Sonoma County. ``You have to tell them to come back tomorrow, and hopefully they will.''As California schools let out this month, food banks in the state face record demand for free meals from families pressed by food price inflation and economic hardship.Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clara and...
from the Los Angeles Times Having a car shouldn't keep needy families from receiving assistance.By Rourke O'BrienWith falling home prices, rising food and fuel costs and an unemployment rate well above the national average, the current economic downturn may push already vulnerable California families to the brink of financial destitution. Thousands of people may turn to welfare for support in the coming months. That's OK -- that's the purpose of temporary assistance. It's not as if this is the money-for-nothing welfare of the early 1990s; these folks are required to start looking for work the second they land on the rolls. Yet to qualify for assistance, many families may be forced to give up the most effective tool they have in the fight against poverty and unemployment: their car.To be...
from the Los Angeles Daily NewsPoverty a reality for most in countyBy Susan Abram PACOIMA — Hollywood may be known as home to the rich and famous, but two out of three people in Los Angeles County struggle to get by, and their ranks are swelling."We're the entertainment capital of the world, but we're also the capital of the working poor," said Kafi Blumenfield, president of the Los-Angeles based Liberty Hill Foundation.Blumenfield joined more than 150 community leaders, social-service providers and policymakers Wednesday in a daylong, first-of-its-kind brainstorming conference on poverty in the San Fernando Valley."Two out of three people don't have enough to meet their basic needs," said Blumenfield, whose organization helps secure grants for social services.The goal of Wednesday's...
from the Stanford DailyBy An Le Nguyen“Poverty is more than just a moral issue. It is a very costly decision for the country as a whole. We all pay the price, poor and non-poor.” As he says this, Sociology Prof. David Grusky hands me a gigantic tome — a 1,082-page whopper — and tells me to read an article by Barbara Ehrenreich.“She’s doing exactly what you’re doing,” Grusky says. Ehrenreich, a middle-class journalist, lived in poverty for a month to test the assumption that work could lift poor women out of their dire straits. But Ehrenreich’s experience greatly surpasses what I hope to accomplish by living at the poverty line for five days.In truth, I feel uncomfortable discussing poverty. I do not have the credibility of a seasoned researcher to claim expert...
from the San Jose Mercury NewsSTANFORD SCHOLARS AT CENTER OF EFFORTBy Sarah FrierStanford University scholars are working to create a more accurate way of measuring poverty than the federal government formulas in place since 1963.The only factors that have been used to determine the federal poverty index are income, family size and family composition. The proposed Stanford poverty index would also account for government benefits, such as food stamps and tax credits, and expenses, such as child care and heating bills."The current measure of poverty is grossly inadequate and doesn't accurately represent the actual needs of families or their actual income after various transfers," said David Grusky, director of the Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality at Stanford and a member of...
from the Los Angeles TimesThe organization provides an exercise in which volunteers are immersed in the difficulties faced by the working poor as they navigate the transit systems, social services, pawn shops and check-cashing.By Martha Groves, Los Angeles Times Staff WriterBrian Deemer, 13, is accustomed to the good life in Manhattan Beach. This week he saw how the other half lives.In a poverty simulation at a Salvation Army facility in downtown Los Angeles, he pretended to be a 42-year-old out-of-work college grad attempting to provide for his three children. He saw how hard it can be to put food on the table and a roof overhead when expenses vastly outweigh income -- or when there's no income at all."It made me look at Los Angeles with a new perspective," said Deemer, a seventh-grader...
from The Daily BreezeBy Melissa Evans Staff WriterArticle Launched: 05/19/2008 11:51:40 PM PDTYounger black people with chronic kidney disease are at a much greater risk of death than white people of the same age - but the difference has nothing to do with biology, according to a study being published next month by local researchers.Blacks under the age of 65 had a78 percent higher risk of death than whites, largely due to lack of access to health care and other socioeconomic factors, Dr. Rajinish Mehrotra of the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute reported in his study.The findings show that poverty, lack of insurance and lower education rates may contribute to higher mortality, he said."Addressing these factors could improve survival rates of blacks in the early stage of kidney...
from the Los Angeles TimesGet ready for less fruit juice and cheese: Soon, WIC coupons will cover produce and other healthful foods.By Susan BowermanSpecial to The TimesApril 28, 2008As food prices spiral higher, the quality of a diet can really suffer. Starchy, sugary, fatty foods are filling and relatively inexpensive compared with fruits, vegetables and lean meats. The effects of a tight budget on food choices are particularly concerning for people who may find healthful foods difficult to afford: low-income mothers and their children.Soon, they will be getting some overdue help.For the first time in its 35-year history, the federal Women, Infants and Children (WIC) Supplemental Nutrition Program -- which provides food vouchers to millions of households nationwide -- will, starting...
from the UC Riverside NewsroomUCR students organize World Benefit on April 15 to support UNICEF campaign.RIVERSIDE, Calif. – UC Riverside students will support global efforts to fight malaria with World Benefit, a festival on Tuesday, April 15, that will raise money for UNICEF’s Roll Back Malaria campaign.The event, which is open to the public, will feature a performance by Chosaanu, a Senegalese dance troupe that is based in San Francisco, at 7:45 p.m. in the University Theatre. The cost for the Chosaanu performance is $6. Admission to other festival events is free. Parking costs $6.From 5:30 p.m. to 6:45 p.m., various student organizations will staff information tables and sell food on the University Theatre patio. Among those organizations are: International Service and Global...
from The Sacramento BeeBy Anita Creamer - acreamer@sacbee.comPublished 12:00 am PDT Wednesday, March 26, 2008Starvation. Poverty. Disease. AIDS orphans.When Americans see the deep problems of the developing world – and Africa in particular – they want to reach out and help.But the point of Village Care International, Jennifer Clancy is saying, is self-sufficiency: Encouraging empowerment from within instead of continued reliance on outsiders."With poverty comes hopelessness," says Clancy, 41, executive director of the Auburn-based nonprofit. "When you see that in Africa, the degree of hopelessness is overwhelming."There are things you can do with the resources you have. You don't have to depend on outside aid from America. You don't have to wait for your government to come, because...
from the San Luis Obispo TribuneTonya StricklandEmily and Leif Brekke beamed at one another on a recent date night at San Luis Obispo’s Farmers Market.Inexpensive activities such as going there or to the park or enjoying their coveted every-other-week Starbucks coffees are a refuge from the relentless pressure of scraping by.After paying their monthly bills, the Grover Beach couple comes up short each month. Though they have satellite television, cell phones and are happy for the most part, they are not living extravagantly.With no savings for the unplanned, they had to take out a loan from family when their two cars recently broke down, for example.“Sometimes we sit down with the budget and just cry,” 26-year-old Emily Brekke said.The Brekkes are like many San Luis Obispo County...
from the San Luis Obispo TribuneSarah ArnquistOn a recent rainy afternoon, a dozen or so children jumped off a school bus in San Simeon and scurried toward their homes in a nearby motel.Normally at 4 p. m., Erminia is still at work cleaning hotel rooms when her son, 10, and daughter, 7, get home from school. But on this day during the slow tourism season, she met them at the door.While the children began their homework, Erminia made chilies rellenos for dinner on a two-burner camp stove. The smell of charred green peppers filled the cramped motel room—the family’s home for a year. Before that, they shared a house in Cambria with two other families.Nestled next to million-dollar homes in the bucolic hills of Cambria and amid the strip of motels in San Simeon live some of San Luis...
from the LA Daily NewsBy Troy Anderson, Staff WriterCharles Mitchell was drafted into the Vietnam War soon after graduating from college. He served his country as a medic.But when he returned home, the former marine biologist spent the next two decades "in hiding" from anti-war protesters, working for political campaigns and on various odd jobs.By 1989, he applied for low-income housing and got an apartment on Skid Row in downtown L.A. Today, the 67-year-old scrapes by on about $1,000 a month in Supplemental Security Income benefits and pays $238 a month for his single-room apartment."So many seniors in L.A. are desperate to make ends meet," Mitchell said. "We've contributed to society, paid into the system, only to have that system deny us help when we need it most."Mitchell is among...
from San Luis Obispo TribuneWith poverty indicators on the rise, more and more local families are walking an economic high wire with their livelihoods and homes in the balance.By Sarah ArnquistAn increasing number of middle-class families in San Luis Obispo County are just an unexpected medical problem or lost job away from falling into poverty.A key reason: a local economy that is more service-based with low-paying jobs.Add to that a shortage of affordable housing and high home prices, experts say, and more families from across the demographic scale are being pushed to the brink.While the county remains better off than the state average on most indicators of poverty and well-being, many trend lines show it is moving in the wrong direction. Consider these dramatic changes between 2000 and...
from the San Luis Obispo TribuneA meager income from Social Security is forcing one Grover Beach widow to ponder options that include moving in with one of her children, a last resort the independent-minded woman fears more than deathBy Sarah ArnquistWhen her husband of 42 years died in November, Josephine Klivans suddenly had to learn to live without him—and his income.The Grover Beach woman, who turns 79 on Sunday, relies entirely on monthly Social Security payments, which fell to $1,391 a month from $2,060 after Harvey died and his payments stopped.Her expenses, though, didn’t drop.,span class="fullpost">Her rent and utilities average $1,200 a month. In addition, she has to put gas in the car and food on the table and pay her copayment share of the cost for medical appointments and...
from the San Bernardino SunRobert Rogers, Staff WriterArticle Launched: 03/04/2008 10:16:51 PM PSTSAN BERNARDINO - There's something going on in this working-class neighborhood north of downtown, and if it works, it just might be the economic tonic to power poor and working-class residents through the tough times.It's called the "Free Tax and Benefit Access Center," a collection of five computers outfitted with a special tax program and a handful of employees who specialize in navigating the labyrinth of public assistance programs.Anyone can come into the center, which operates in the new D Street offices of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN.The center's goal, according to ACORN officials, is to connect local working and out-of-work families with the...
from the Lompoc RecordBy Amanda BrooksLompoc High has been approved by the Board of Education as a schoolwide Title I school, allowing the school's federally-funded anti-poverty program for 9th and 10th graders to be expanded to the 11th and 12th grades.School officials are now developing a comprehensive plan that will address the educational needs of a larger number of at-risk students while using the same amount of money - about $200,000, according to district Director of Curriculum Diane Burton.In a schoolwide Title I school, all students can use equipment or materials bought with Title I funds. In “targeted assisted schools,” which LHS is currently, only students identified as low-income and at risk of low achievement would be allowed to use them.Though being in a schoolwide...
from the Marin Independent JournalJennifer UpshawThe federal poverty line is leaving seniors behind in Marin and elsewhere, an East Bay nonprofit group said Tuesday."They find in their old age they can no longer take care of themselves and the government is not paying them back and it's just not fair," said Susan Smith, director of the California Elder Economic Security Initiative, a program of the Insight Center for Community Economic Development in Oakland.Forget the old federal standard - we have something better, initiative officials said Tuesday as they presented a new index at a state Senate subcommittee hearing in Sacramento.The elder economic security standard index indicates that the poverty line covers less than half of California seniors' basic costs, they said. The federal...
from The San Francisco ChronicleOn a typical day in San Francisco's largest housing project, teens ditch school to take the bus to a funeral. A woman wanders into the liquor store to buy Cheetos for her young grandson and a 20-ounce beer for herself. Two 3-year-old boys ride their tricycles down a steep hill patched with trash and broken glass.Such is life in Sunnydale, quite possibly the most dangerous, depressed and decrepit area of the city. The dilapidated barracks that make up the development are lined up on a hillside in the shadow of the Cow Palace, opposite McLaren Park in Visitacion Valley.An estimated 1,633 people live in the square mile of concrete housing that was originally built for soldiers in World War II. Once considered a nice place for a family to live, the development...
from The California ChronicleBy California Political Desk(Oakland, CA) – Congresswoman Barbara Lee (CA-9) released the following statement upon House passage of her Congressional Resolution to cut poverty in half over a decade:"As co-founder of the Out of Poverty Caucus, I am happy that the House has unanimously passed my legislation, which sets a national goal of cutting poverty in half over the next ten years."Yesterday our nation honored Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.´s legacy of justice and equality, and in the coming weeks, we will develop an economic stimulus plan to support families struggling economically. It is then very timely that we make eradicating poverty a national priority."Over 37 million Americans—more than the population of my home state of CA—are in poverty and the...
from The San Francisco ChronicleVictoria Colliver, Chronicle Staff WriterThe state introduced a Web site Tuesday that helps consumers find out how much hospitals are willing to discount care for uninsured patients.The site makes California the second state in the country, after New York, to give consumers a tool to shop and compare charity care or discount payment policies."This will allow them to determine whether they are getting a fair shake. Uninsured people are likely to be charged three to four times what an insurance company pays for exactly the same service," said Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access California, a consumer advocacy group.Hospitals have been criticized in recent years for being overly aggressive in trying to collect payments from patients, many of...
from the Central Valley Business TimesTulare has highest percentage; Sacramento lowest• Overall, 41 percent of children in povertyIn eleven counties of the Central Valley, 927,562 people were living in poverty in 2005, according to estimates released Wednesday by the Census Bureau.Of those, 381,474 or 41 percent, were children under 18 years of age or younger, the report says.Poverty numbers by county with percentage of total population and then percentage of children:• Fresno: 177,498 (20.8 percent; 30 percent)• Butte: 39,786 (19.2 percent; 22.8 percent)• Kern: 149,772 (20.8 percent); 28.3 percent)• Kings: 24,912 (20.6 percent; 25.4 percent)• Madera: 24,389 (18.3 percent; 27.3 percent)• Merced: 43,837 (18.6 percent; 25.6 percent)• Sacramento: 181,110 (13.6 percent; 19.6...
from The Marin Independent JournalNancy Isles NationMarin's lowest wage earners can look forward to a 50 cents-an-hour raise that begins Tuesday when the state minimum wage is increased from $7.50 to $8.The increase largely affects 1.5 million workers in California who are considered the working poor."Minimum-wage workers perform some of the most important jobs in our society as home-care workers, janitors, nursing home attendants, security guards, child care workers, sales persons, farm workers and restaurant workers, among others," said Art Pulaski, executive secretary-treasurer of the California Labor Federation. "These hard-working Californians have struggled for years to support their families while earning near-poverty wages."Pulaski called the increase a step in the right...
from The Los Angeles TimesBy Ari B. Bloomekatz, Los Angeles Times Staff WriterThe 9-year-olds were smiling broadly as they raced through past lessons and their favorite books.Kari Vides commented that her friend Daniel Ruiz "gets math problems really fast" and then pointed to a wall where student-rendered posters geographically positioned her charter school, which is tucked behind a McDonald's on East 7th Street in downtown Los Angeles."We live in the Milky Way, we live on planet Earth, we live on the continent of North America and in the state of California. We live in the city of Los Angeles," Kari said, pointing to student representations of each.What the self-proclaimed future scientist didn't mention was that within the city, Kari was downtown; more specifically, on skid row.It's not...
from Inside Bay Area42 percent of Oaklanders living at or below federal poverty level, new report saysBy Kamika Dunlap, STAFF WRITERTrinette Grant, a single mother, said she had to do what she had to do working 14-hour-long shifts as an independent delivery truck driver with no benefits at the Port of Oakland to support her two children."I had no choice," said the 36-year-old mom. "I had to make ends meet."Grant worked as a non-union truck driver for about four years, making $11 an hour before she landed an opportunity to join the Teamsters Local 70 and earn a small wage increase and health benefits.Although her situation has somewhat improved, Grant is a part of Oakland's many residents who work full-time but still struggle with poverty issues, low-wage jobs and making a sustainable...