Chaaaaannge!
Recession and the rising cost of living are forcing more families and low-wage workers onto the streets
By Jake Armstrong 07/01/2010
John Christian almost chuckles at the notion of ending homelessness.
Twenty-two years of living on the streets has lain bare for him one fact missing from the numerous homelessness-eradication plans hatched in that time. “Somebody has to be homeless,” the 40-year-old said, explaining his economic views from a curb near Old Pasadena. “Without that, there ain’t nothing to walk past and feel good about yourself over.”
Christian might be working if not for a methamphetamine problem. And he probably wouldn’t have that problem if a feud with his stepdad hadn’t ended with him on the streets, where he was introduced to drugs. But the streets are what he’s known since age 18, which has made paying rent and other bills on time a concept that’s “not in my programming” when a roof is overhead, he said.
He wants better, but putting a finger on a solution to his homelessness is as complex as the causes of the problem itself. “If you have 120,000 homeless people in Los Angeles County, you’ve got to have 120,000 solutions,” he said.
Christian is one of the roughly 1,137 people who may be homeless in Pasadena on any given day, a figure drawn from what advocates for the homeless call the most thorough and in-depth accounting yet of the local homeless population, revealing valuable insights into who is on the streets.
But as local social service agencies begin retooling their services to address the new and growing needs the survey helped identify, concerns are mounting that recession-fueled cuts in government-funded services that have kept many from becoming homeless may worsen a continually changing problem.
“So we’re going to see a little change. It’s not looking good down the road,” said Kitty Galt, a homeless outreach specialist who for the past 12 years has patrolled local streets for Passageways homeless services.
Changing faces
Ruben Gallegos, Galt’s co-worker for the past 12 years, is familiar with most of the men and women he encounters. But the recession that withered payrolls and employment opportunities in the last year-and-a-half has put many people he’s not used to seeing on the street. “What we’ve seen are a lot of the lower-income folks — the busboy, the dishwasher, the person who was barely making it in the first place,” Gallegos said.
Job loss or an illness in the absence of medical insurance can be the breaking point for many people living one paycheck away from homelessness, and just how many people were approaching that point was not clear until the recession kicked in, according to Gallegos. “That’s been the reality for a while now, but no one wanted to admit that until the bottom fell out,” he said.
The recession also had a negatively profound effect on families, which has put many of the area’s shelters at capacity for the past 18 months, Gallegos said. That’s left low-wage workers with fewer options when things fall apart. “If you get hit with two or three of these things and you don’t have any family to fall back on, you end up sleeping in your car,” Gallegos said.
But housing is not the solution for every person’s homelessness. Take Sean Sauceda, who has been homeless for much of the last 20 years. Raised as a ward of the state from age 2, then released from foster care after a brush with the law around age 20, Sauceda, 40, said he doesn’t want to go back to the life he knew before a breakup with the woman he followed from Northern California to Pasadena led him to homelessness.
“It was worse than it is now,” he said of his former life. “A lot of drugs, a lot of violence; they usually go hand in hand.”
He wants to work, but says he never picked up any job skills to help to that end. So increased access to homeless services like medical care and counseling are what he says would address situations like his.
“I’ve had houses, I’ve had cars, I’ve had children — I’m pretty happy,” he said.
Add it up
For the past five years, the city has partnered with local organizations to conduct an annual count of Pasadena’s homeless population. But not until this year did any of the counts include an in-depth survey gathering information on length of homelessness, health, marital status and other biographical topics necessary to help profile the population and its subgroups.
This year’s count recorded a 13 percent increase in the number of people on the streets or in homeless facilities. But the survey revealed that 51 percent of adults in those places became homeless while they were living in Pasadena, and that nearly half the women on the street are under age 40, while two-thirds of men are older than 40. It also found that 54 percent of men and 46 percent of women were mentally ill, and that 20 percent of those surveyed were substance abusers. Additionally, 43 percent were considered chronically homeless, down from 49 percent in 2005 and following a nationwide trend in the reduction of chronic homelessness.
Critics often charge that providing taxpayer-funded services for the homeless will draw in more homeless, but Lansing said the survey shows more than half have lived, worked and studied here. “It’s an affirmation that it’s important that we continue to provide the services,” she said.
With the results in hand, the survey will help agencies serving the homeless better hone their offerings to the changing population.
The count noted that while the city’s homeless population slid 20 percent from 2005 to 2008, it increased 17 percent in the past two years. The survey targeted 230 homeless adults, from which the city’s estimated homeless population was extrapolated.
Means to an end
While countering homelessness remains a struggle, a large number of individuals and families living one paycheck away from the streets or shelters could make matters worse, especially as government budget cuts loom as the economy struggles to regain a foothold.
A California Budget Project study released last Thursday found that millions in the Golden State may struggle to cover basic living expenses even if they earn the state’s $39,500 median income — half make more, half make less.
The report, dubbed “Making ends meet: How much does it cost to raise a family in California,” states that a family with two parents — one working — and two children would have to pull in at least $54,000 a year to meet basic living expenses of housing and utilities, child care, transportation, food, health coverage, payroll and income taxes, and miscellaneous costs. That means as many as half of those families may be locked in a largely unseen struggle, said Alissa Anderson, deputy director for the California Budget Project, a nonpartisan think tank that focuses on policies affecting low- and median-income families. “What really stood out for us was just how high up the income scale families need to be to make ends meet,” Anderson said.
The findings are intended to inform state lawmakers’ debates over the California’s deficit-ridden budget, from which Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposes to eliminate the CALWORKs programs’ state-supported childcare services for low- and median-income families, Anderson said. That cut may pose to the parents of as many as 240,000 children the challenge of juggling work with child supervision, a task the study shows is already financially difficult. “They need childcare to work, but if they can’t afford childcare, they can’t work at all,” Anderson said.
Additionally, the report stated that state tax increases imposed in 2009 have taken a disproportionate toll on low-income families. Among the changes was a $211 reduction in the $309 credit families received for children or other dependents in 2008, as well as hikes in personal and sales taxes, and vehicle license fees. The net effect was a 17 percent increase in the tax burden of families earning less than $20,000. However, families earning $20,000 to $50,000 saw their tax burden increase only 2.8 percent, according to the report.
Matter of perception
Being homeless and seeing millions of dollars in US aid head to crises overseas — money that could assist him and others like him — Christian finds the ultimate irony in coins and bills bearing the phrase “In God we Trust.”
“The homeless get shit on more than anybody, and Jesus was homeless,” he said, adding he believes that, collectively, the country has the resources to effectively address homelessness, but chooses not to. “The United States is a superpower, but I live in a third-world country.”
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Comments
Chevron gouged $24 billions in excessive profits in 2008, as per www.tyrannyofoil.com. Schwarzenegger should put an excessive profits tax on these profits, instead of protecting the oil corporations from fair taxation, then, there would be sufficient public funds for all the vulnerable, people programs. Big business lost the fight to eliminate domestic violence funding, so now they are coming back with a vengeance. There is no funding provision for battered women shelters in the May revise. Schwarzee picks on the most vulnerable, and not on corporate tax "deadbeats." Schwarzenegger, Shriver, Maldonado and Whitman could not care less whether battered women live or die.
posted by EarlRichards on 7/02/10 @ 12:56 a.m.
There is leadership crisis in Sacramento. Why did Schwarzenegger allow the budget crisis to happen in the first place? You cannot believe anything that comes out of Sacramento.