Good morning, Inequality Insights readers. I’m Felicia Mello.
Evelyn and Israel Avalos have shared the same studio apartment in San Rafael’s crowded Canal neighborhood for 18 years. Over their time living in one of California’s wealthiest counties, they’ve become familiar with the picturesque, mansion-studded enclaves surrounding them – places like Tiburon, Sausalito and San Anselmo.
At the same time, they’ve watched as neighbors in their overwhelmingly Latino district have lost their homes when they couldn’t pay the rent. They’d love to move to a more spacious apartment, but know their current $1,200 housing budget wouldn’t go far.
“We’re Christians, so we have to learn how to be grateful,” Israel, a pastor, said as the couple shopped for groceries on a recent evening. Still, he said, the economic chasm between the haves and have nots “should be less.”
The Avaloses live in an area where economic inequality among racial lines is especially pronounced, according to a new report from The Maven Collaborative, a non-profit research and policy advocacy group. Sixty-four percent of Latino households in Marin County don’t earn enough to cover a basic household budget, compared with 23% of white households, the report found.
The report uses the Family Sustainability Index — a measure of the cost of housing, childcare, groceries, healthcare, transportation and other essential household expenses — to examine how economic insecurity intersects with race, gender and geography across California.
Nearly 4 in 10 California households can’t cover those costs, the report found. A family with two adults and two children in Los Angeles County, for example, would need more than $128,000 per year.
Childcare has outpaced even the state’s pricey housing as the steepest household expense in most counties, according to the report. And the burden weighs more heavily on some families than others: The report found that the percentage of childless Black households statewide who are barely scraping by is nearly the same as white households with three children.
“Affording to raise three or more children in California is a luxury fueled by race and privilege,” the authors wrote.
The Family Sustainability Index does not account for government assistance programs. It does include expenses not folded into some other poverty measures, such as internet access and diapers. But even without being comprehensive in accounting for every family’s potential finances, the index provides a helpful snapshot of real time costs and how they compare to wages, said Caroline Danielson, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California who was not involved in the study.
While California’s $16 minimum wage is higher than in many states, and some cities have their own even higher minimums, the gap between those and the actual cost of living remains gargantuan in many areas. In San Francisco, the report found, a single parent of one preschool-age child earning a minimum wage of $18.07 would need to work 22 hours a day, seven days a week to cover household expenses.
Education, often seen as a pathway out of poverty, has a muted impact for some groups, the report found. Black women saw virtually no economic security bump from earning a high school diploma, and close to one-third of Black women with a bachelor’s degree experienced financial instability, double the rate for white men, the report found.
“We look at Black women as the canaries in the coal mine,” said Jhumpa Bhattacharya, one of the report’s authors. She said she hoped to spark conversation about targeting policies to help Californians who have the most trouble making ends meet. “If you’re looking at folks in the margins and you bring them into the center and you create policy that meets their needs, then you’re lifting up everybody.”
DON’T MISS
- CalFresh study. The Public Policy Institute of California examined the state’s pandemic response in changing food assistance benefits for low-income families. They found that average CalFresh benefits doubled over the approximately three years of the pandemic, including temporary and permanent expansions beyond the emergency allotments that began in March 2020. As prices for goods and services rose with inflation, CalFresh benefits increased by about 77%, adjusted for inflation, researchers found.
- Busing bill. After Texas’ Gov. Greg Abbott bragged about sending busloads of recently-arrived migrants to cities like Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Jose, and San Diego, a proposed California law would require busing companies to alert counties and cities before dropping off 10 or more passengers likely to seek emergency shelter. The “Carrier of Passengers Act of 2024,” written by Assemblymember Tina McKinnor, a Democrat from Inglewood, would require commercial transportation companies to provide a 24-hour electronic notice so public and nonprofit support services can prepare to provide aid. Last year, the California Divide team covered how cities responded to migrants arriving unexpectedly. AB 2780 passed the Senate and Assembly this week and now heads to the governor’s desk.
- Dreams for the Undocumented. A bill making national news amid the presidential elections clarifies that undocumented Californians can participate in the “Dream for All” housing down payment assistance program. Assemblymember Joaquin Arambula, a Democrat from Fresno, said Assembly Bill 1840 would bring more diversity to the loan program that provides up to a 20 percent down payment assistance for first-time homebuyers. The bill provoked criticism from Republican lawmakers and got a handful of ‘no’ votes from Democrats in the Senate on Tuesday, where it ultimately passed. The Assembly concurred with the changes and sent it to the governor’s desk Wednesday.
- Menstrual equity. A bill that would require state prisons to provide incarcerated people with free and ready access to menstrual products without inmates having to request them passed the Senate and the Assembly and is now on the governor’s desk. State prisons, local jails, and juvenile facilities must provide free period products, but “upon request.” The bill’s author, Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, a Democrat from Culver City, said a 2023 Attorney General’s report found half the facilities surveyed were not distributing the products for free. He said there were cases of corrections officers withholding sanitary products in retaliation or as punishment.
- Safe to drink? Researchers found dangerous levels of lead in the water of south LA homes, including public housing units, the LAist reports. Students from UCLA and USC, along with volunteers from the majority Black and Latino neighborhoods, gathered more than 500 water samples.
- Heat protections. Some state lawmakers are saying new legislation is needed to protect employees from extreme heat, according to Capital & Main. The news organization found that field inspections for heat law enforcement by the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health dropped by nearly 30% between 2017 and 2023. The number of violations issued to employers during that period fell by more than 40%.
Thanks for following our work on the California Divide team. While you’re here, please tell us what kinds of stories you’d love to read. Email us at inequalityinsights@calmatters.org.
Thanks for reading and we hope to see you back here next week.
Felicia, Wendy and The California Divide Team