MORENO
VALLEY, Calif. — The freeway exits around here are dotted with people
asking for money, holding cardboard signs to tell their stories. The
details vary only slightly and almost invariably include: Laid off. Need
food. Young children.
Mary
Carmen Acosta often passes the silent beggars as she enters parking
lots to sell homemade ice pops, known as paletas, in an effort to make
enough money to get food for her family of four. On a good day she can
make $100, about double what she spends on ingredients. On a really good
day, she pockets $120, the extra money offering some assurance that she
will be able to pay the $800 monthly rent for her family’s
three-bedroom apartment. Sometimes, usually on mornings too cold to sell
icy treats, she imagines what it would be like to stand on an exit ramp
herself.
“Everyone
here knows they might have to be like that,” said Ms. Acosta, 40,
neatly dressed in slacks and a chiffon blouse, as she waited for help
from a local charity in this city an hour’s drive east of Los Angeles.
Both she and her husband, Sebastian Plancarte, lost their jobs nearly
three years ago. “Each time I see them I thank God for what we do have.
We used to have a different kind of life, where we had nice things and
did nice things. Now we just worry.”
Five
decades after President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a war on poverty,
the nation’s poor are more likely to be found in suburbs like this one
than in cities or rural areas, and poverty in suburbs is rising faster
than in any other setting in the country. By 2011, there were three
million more people living in poverty in suburbs than in inner cities,
according to a study released last year by the Brookings Institution.
As a result, suburbs are grappling with problems that once seemed
alien, issues compounded by a shortage of institutions helping the poor
and distances that make it difficult for people to get to jobs and
social services even if they can find them.
In
no place is that more true than California, synonymous with the
suburban good life and long a magnet for restless newcomers with big
dreams. When taking into account the cost of living, including housing,
child care and medical expenses, California has the highest poverty rate
in the nation, according to a measure introduced by the Census Bureau
in 2011 that considers both government benefits and living costs in
different parts of the country. By that measure, roughly nine million
people — nearly a quarter of the state’s residents — live in poverty.
Not
long ago, the Inland Empire, as the sprawling suburban area east of Los
Angeles is known, attracted people hoping to live out that good life.
Before the recession, it was booming; housing developments were cropping
up all the time, quickly followed by big box stores and strip malls to
cater to the new residents.
The
region was — and still is — the fastest growing in the state. But the
jobs have never really followed the people who come here looking for
cheaper housing. The median home value is $325,000 and the median rent
is $1,690, according to the real estate database Zillow. That compares
with $462,000 and $1,860 in Los Angeles.
For
many, those costs are still unaffordable. Unemployment in the region
hovers around 10 percent and nearly one-fifth of all residents live in
poverty, the highest rate among the largest metropolitan areas in the
country. By the official federal measure, nearly one-third of all
children here are poor. The number of poor in San Bernardino and
Riverside Counties nearly doubled over the last decade.
Many
would-be workers lack office skills or more than a basic education,
making minimum-wage jobs the norm for them. Many here are immigrants —
some living in the United State illegally, making them ineligible for
most government benefits. But like Ms. Acosta, many others came here
legally decades ago and had a strong foothold in the American economy — a
job, a house, cars and regular travel.
“This
is where poor people live now, and this is where they are going to
live,” said Alan Berube, an author of the Brookings Institution study.
“When poverty moved out of the inner cities it didn’t just go next door,
it went 30 miles away. But at the time those families might not have
been poor — they were just chasing the middle-class dream. Then, boom,
that evaporated.”
Prosperity Slips Away
Most
mornings Sebastian Plancarte, 39, puts on a freshly laundered, collared
polo shirt, carefully tucked in. He gets his daughter, Camila, dressed
for kindergarten and makes sure his son, Sebastian, has his homework
ready for middle school. They are out the door by 7:30 a.m. and he is
home nearly two hours later, back to wander parking lots selling ice
pops before the afternoon pickup routine begins. He is happy to be
involved in his children’s lives, but this is hardly the kind of
fatherhood he once imagined.
For
years, the couple thought of themselves as wealthy. They bought a
five-bedroom house in a suburb just a few miles east of downtown Los
Angeles, where they both worked in the jewelry district — she inspected
diamonds and he designed bracelets and rings. Making $16 an hour, plus
commissions, they earned as much as $2,000 a week. They traveled to San
Diego and Las Vegas, they bought their two children the toys they asked
for. Just more than a decade after they had emigrated from Mexico, they
believed their hopes had become a reality.
But
in 2011, Ms. Acosta was laid off. So was Mr. Plancarte, just a few
months later. They soon sold the house for far less than they had paid.
They drove east, looking for something they could afford to rent, and
landed in Moreno Valley, a city 60 miles inland that has become a common
outpost for those priced out of Los Angeles. They live in a sprawling
apartment complex designated for low-income families.
The
paletas have become a centerpiece of their lives. The couple constantly
think about the best prices for ingredients and how many pops are in
their small freezer; they take orders by phone to deliver to backyard
parties. When their son asks to get hamburgers at the local In-N-Out,
they have a standard response: “The mathematics are very simple,” Ms.
Acosta said. “If you want to eat there, we need you to sell $25” of the
ice pops.
Caught in Poverty
Articles in this series examine American hardship 50 years after the war on poverty.
“The
hardest part is the shame,” Mr. Plancarte said, sitting at his kitchen
table as his wife and daughter ate mango paletas doused in chamoy, a
blood-red sugary hot sauce. “People say to me, ‘Why don’t you find a job
over there, or at that factory or that place?’ First of all, they
aren’t there, I’ve tried. But even if they have a job, it’s going to be
paying me $8 an hour. So I’ll spend no time with my family to make less
money than I make now selling these.”
By
Ms. Acosta’s calculation, the couple earned about $25,000 last year,
nearly all of it in cash. And while it is nearly $2,000 above the
official poverty line for a family of four nationally, it is hardly
enough to meet their basic needs. By the time they pay for rent, gas,
phone, electricity and food, they have spent about $2,000 a month, Ms.
Acosta said.
Her
husband is still looking for work; in the winter months they relied
mostly on whatever she could make selling cosmetics and costume jewelry
door to door. Their lives reflect the contradictions of many living on
the edge. They have a 2001 Jeep Cherokee, a small flat-screen television
and a few remaining pieces of jewelry. They don’t have health insurance
or any savings, and they have not bought new clothes for nearly two
years.
For the last year, Ms. Acosta spent much of her time at the local Catholic Charities office,
taking self-help classes with other women in similar circumstances. She
earned $100 a month enrolling women in courses on healthy diets,
balancing checkbooks and parenting skills. She keeps a folder thick with
certificates she has earned in such classes. A letter from President
Obama thanking her for volunteering at her son’s school, calling her a
“shining example,” is tucked in a protective plastic sleeve. The few
friends she has made here, she said, are the women she has met at
Catholic Charities.
“My friends in L.A., the ones who still have money, it’s like they forgot all about us,” she said.
The
family’s economic descent has proved most difficult for 12-year-old
Sebastian, who remembers Christmas trips to Universal Studios and
regular mall excursions. Camila, 5, cannot recall anything different
from what she has now. Neither child knows that their Christmas gifts
came from charity. They are all contributing to the piggy bank in the
kitchen; if they can save enough, Ms. Acosta has promised to take them
to Disneyland this year. For now, even going to the beach an hour west
would cost too much for gas. The local park is hardly a fun outing — it
reminds them of their work selling ice pops most weekends.
“We
have to be really good actors,” Ms. Acosta said. “But after they go to
bed, we just sit and worry about how we are going to pay for things we
want to give them.”
When
his son asked for pizza recently, Mr. Plancarte took a silver bracelet
he had given his wife to a pawnshop, where he was offered a fraction of
what he thought it was worth. He accepted, too embarrassed to tell his
son they could not have pizza. Ms. Acosta recently went back and saw the
bracelet priced at $90 — more than twice what her husband had received.
Traveling More to Make Less
Sitting
inside Catholic Charities offers a glimpse of the constant need: this
family needs extra cash to pay the utility bill; this single mother
cannot find child care to allow her to work a graveyard shift; that
elderly man who came from Mexico has no way to pay for his medication.
Imelda
Santana, whose desk is just a few feet away from the entrance, is often
the first stop for requests. Ms. Santana is empathetic — just a couple
of years ago she needed help after her husband left her and she lost her
job as a loan officer amid the housing crisis. After working as a
volunteer for months, Ms. Santana was hired to sift through requests to
see which families the organization might assist. Even on the best days,
she said, there are more demands than they can handle.
“We
have people here who used to make donations now knowing what it is to
run out of toilet paper in their house and not have the money to buy
more,” she said. “Even if they get food stamps, it does not cover
toiletries. There’s just never enough.”
Suburban Poor
Number living in poverty
15 million
Suburbs
10
Cities
5
’70
’80
’90
’00
’10
Yadira
Rodriguez, 35, has traveled hundreds of miles looking for work in this
county, which is roughly the size of New Jersey. When her husband
stopped earning enough to pay for monthly expenses for their three young
children, she took a job in a factory packing boxes to be shipped to
retail stores. But the $8-an-hour job was 30 miles north of her Moreno
Valley apartment, taking her more than an hour in traffic, twice that if
she needed to take the bus.
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Since
she was classified as a temporary worker, she would leave her home at 4
a.m. only to find out at 6 a.m. that she would not be hired for the
day. On days there was work, she would arrive back home 12 hours after
she left.
“I
could not understand how this was worth the money,” Ms. Rodriguez said.
“I would get home and the kids would be tired and cranky and I didn’t
have energy for them. How was this going to make my life better?”
After
three months, she quit. Her family relies on $800 a month from the
state’s temporary cash assistance program to pay for groceries and
utilities, and gets occasional help from charities. The landlord has let
the family slide on the rent at times, Ms. Rodriguez said.
Like
Ms. Rodriguez, many would-be employees see unpredictability as a fact
of life. Many social workers see more clients working two part-time
minimum wage jobs, juggling schedules to make sure they do not
disappoint any boss and hustling to cobble together child care for
shifts that can begin or end before dawn. Many are immigrants who speak
only basic English after years of living in Latino enclaves, first in
Los Angeles, and now here.
“This
is the edge of affordability; people came here because they were pushed
out to the only place where they could afford,” said John Husing, a
local economist who has studied the region for years. “When they came
here the primary wage earner could find a job to pay the bills. The
problem is that time has passed and we don’t have a lot of jobs that
allow that anymore.”
While
many of the state’s coastal areas have begun to see signs of an
improved economy, the inland region has continued to struggle.
Unemployment and foreclosure rates remain stubbornly high here and there
are few signs that the area will boom as it did a decade ago. Housing
prices have inched up as wages have stagnated, making it even more
difficult for families to stay afloat.
“What
we have out here is more need and fewer centers of resources,” said Dom
Betro, the executive director of Family Services, a nonprofit group
that provides child care and food to needy families in Riverside County.
“We have more working poor than anyone can know how to handle. People
travel further distances to work for less pay because they have to. Even
if there is help — and that’s not always — people who need it can’t get
to it.”
Social workers here often point to a 2009 study by the James Irvine Foundation,
which showed that the region has far fewer nonprofit groups per capita
than the rest of the state, with less money funneled in from local
foundations.
“There’s
all these new problems but no new philanthropic dollars there to
address them,” said Mr. Berube, from the Brookings Institution. “In many
places there are these de facto systems in place but not the kind of
leadership to really address what’s needed.”
When
Larry Ellwell became principal of Victoria Elementary School in San
Bernardino a few years ago, he was stunned by the number of families who
could not afford necessities like clothes and dental care. When he
worked with poor students closer to Los Angeles, he said, they knew
where to find aid. But in the Redlands school district, home to a
university and well-appointed mansions, there were few free clinics or
other outlets for assistance. So he began to offer them — now the school
hosts a roving clinic staffed by medical students and a clothing
giveaway known as Victoria’s Closet.
“It’s
a lot of triage work — who needs something the most and what do they
most need,” Mr. Elwell said. “There’s no stigma anymore, because so many
people are just trying to scrape by and make it work.”
For
Ms. Acosta, scraping by recently took a new turn: She moved to the
other side of the desk at Catholic Charities, taking a job as an intake
worker. She works about 30 hours a week at $12 an hour, giving people
the same kind of help she seeks. Even now, she is not earning enough to
stop selling ice pops.
Just
a couple of years ago, when the dry cleaner called reminding her to
pick up a pair of pants, Ms. Acosta told him to give them to charity.
“Now I am one of the people taking giveaways,” she said. “I see people
all the time in worse positions than we are in. The kids are healthy, we
have a roof. Maybe that’s the best we can hope for.”
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