California Divide

When Dontae Lartigue left foster care right before his 19th birthday in 2009, finding housing in Santa Clara County was one of his biggest obstacles. He struggled to find places he could afford on his $12 an hour wages at Walmart, and with a limited income and no rental history, landlords were often wary of […]

Updated Jan. 10, 2020 Lee este artículo en español. In 2017, Susanna Cardenas-Lopez left her home in Salinas to visit her brother in Idaho. Three days into her trip, she called her husband and told him they needed to move there. Back in Salinas, Cardenas-Lopez and her husband were left out in the cold after their […]

Nigel Duara, a national, multi-media journalist, will join CalMatters to cover poverty and inequality issues as part of the California Divide project, a unique collaboration among major state news organizations. Duara most recently worked as a Los Angeles-based national and climate correspondent at VICE News Tonight on HBO. Previously, he was a national correspondent based […]

Low-wage workers will ring in the new decade with bigger paychecks as a round of minimum wage hikes takes effect on Jan. 1. Currently, the state minimum wage is $11 an hour for businesses with 25 or fewer employees and $12 an hour for larger employers. Beginning Jan. 1, both those rates will increase by […]

Starting Jan. 1, a new California law will require some businesses to re-classify independent contractors as employees — granting them benefits such as overtime pay and the right to join a union. Businesses and organized labor both heavily lobbied lawmakers over the bill, and while some industries won exemptions, others did not. The law is […]

When she went to La Clinica de la Raza health center in Oakland for a routine checkup, the 54-year-old immigrant told her doctor she was under a lot of stress. Work had begun to dry up for her husband, a day laborer, and money was tight. Marta, who asked to be identified by a first […]

El Cajon's population is more than 70% white, its politics conservative Republican. But it's changing as it becomes home to one of the nation's largest populations of Chaldeans, a persecuted religious and ethnic minority from Iraq.

A surprise eviction notice changed the lives of Juan Vera, his wife Maria and their three children forever. A representative of the apartment complex in Downey, where they had lived for more than 20 years, handed Maria an envelope.  Maria doesn’t understand English, so Camila, her 14-year-old daughter, read it to her.  “Did you see […]

Kenda Williams, 51, went to West Coast Dental in Torrance to treat the shooting pain in her molar. She spent the day in a drug-induced haze. Williams later found out she had signed up for two credit cards that day to cover her dentist’s $9,055 bill. Unemployed and on Medi-Cal, the Los Angeles resident had […]

The Trump administration finalized a rule Wednesday that will cut off food stamps to roughly 688,000 American adults by requiring states to enforce work requirements. The U.S. Agriculture Department said the move will save about $5.5 billion over five years. The rule takes effect in April 2020. “This is about restoring the original intent of […]