Let’s Cut to the Chase…

by Tony Chavira

From the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, edited to cut right to the bone:

Divide between rich and poor grows in LA County

Poverty continues to plague Los Angeles County more than other places in the country and the county's poor increasingly are dragging the middle class down with them, according to a report released Tuesday.

In L.A. County, 15 percent of people live below poverty. That means they survive on less than $11,000 a year for a single person and $22,000 for a family of four. Nationally, that number is 13 percent. [...]

L.A. County fares even worse, comparably, when looking at the population of "working poor" - those with household incomes of less than $44,000 a year for a family of four. From 2000 to 2008, 36 to 40 percent of the county's population was considered working poor, averaging nearly 6 percentage points higher than the state as a whole, and 7.5 percentage points higher than the nation.

Ten years after releasing a broad report shedding light on the condition of the county's poor, the United Way has seen little improvement. And they have seen some statistics get worse. [...]

The top one percent of wage earners in the county saw their salaries increase from approximately $90 an hour in 1988 to approximately $150 an hour in 2008, but the median worker saw his income fall nearly $2an hour as adjusted for inflation, according to the report. [...]

By 2008 and 2009, all job growth from the previous decade had been wiped out, according to the report.

The unemployment rate for half the decade was below 6percent. It since has rocketed to more than twice that.

That has created immediate challenges for programs to serve the county's poor.

Demand for food stamps in the county has jumped, according to Shirley Christiansen of Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services.

Last year, 250-260 families visited the food bank each week. This year, that number has grown to 360. [...]

Beyond wages, the middle class is being hit by concerns previously reserved for the county's poor, according to Elise Buik, president and CEO of United Way of Greater Los Angeles.

"Issues that we thought were isolated to the working poor are now moving to the middle class - excessive rent burden, static wages, declining or uncertain health care," Buik said.

Housing prices have come down because of the bubble, but for the first time the middle class is being hit by rents that have increased faster than wages, according to the report. More people are paying one-third of their income on rent than the previous decade - 57 percent in 2008 from 50 percent in 2000. [...]

"We have to get businesses to understand that helping the poor is not just the right thing to do. It is good for the economy and business," Buik said following the release of the report before 300 civic leaders in Los Angeles.

So what are you going to do about it?

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