A representative from the center on policy initiatives, a nun, and a lawyer finally have something in common. Susan Duerkesen, Sister Justin Church and Todd Philips came to Mesa and discussed the poverty rate in San Diego.
“There are many cases where a person is one paycheck away, one car payment away, one doctor visit away from living on the street.” said Susan Duerksen.
The over all poverty rate in the United States is 12.6%, which is quit low compare to other countries. If you look at the requirements to be in poverty it’s a joke.
If you’re a single adult living on your own you have to be making less then $10,210 to be considered in poverty. No average single adult can survive on $10,210 alone.
A rising problem for the community is water prices. Water prices for homes is rising 11.75%, for apartments 18.5%, and for business 2.4%. This will not help the poverty rate at all.
Sister Justin Church a nun from the Roman Catholic is very involved in getting the working class out of poverty. She is involved with Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice.
They go out to the committee and do rallies to get the working poor raises and to get benefits. They also do demonstrations at business. Such as washing janitors feet and scripture readings. They also visit many council meetings and write letters to editors about the subject.
San Diego in five years has risen from having the ninth least affordable housing to the sixth least affordable housing. San Diego is the third least affordable city in California.
On average a new detached home is $835,794. The average re-sell for a single family home is $555,000.Fore closure has jumped to an outstanding 66.5% in the last year.
For a family to make rent they need to be earning $22 hr. Minimum wage is $7.50 and is rising to $8 in 2008. In San Diego 172,000 employees earn less than $8.35.With the fast rising of housing and the slow rising of minimum wage poverty is rising with that.
The reason why housing has become so unaffordable is because the amount for land has gone up because the availability has gone down.
“The poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer,” said Susan Duerkesen.
An incident that happened a while ago regarding Westfield mall angered their janitors. The owner of the Westfield mall empire gave his entire salary of 11million dollars to the poor in Australia. When the underpaid under appreciated janitors found out they threw a fit. Nothing came of this but some very upset employees.
CPI (center on policy initiatives) has come upon some strategies. They would need to improve jobs, get job quality reports and have more jobs available that taxpayers would fund. The number one thing is community involvement. With the community in the know about the economy and active in what happens the working poor will have a chance.