SUMMER 2009

GOOD

INNOVATING

COMMON FOR THE

cbreaking the

povertyofIRCLE

SH FTIssue 1

in Silicon Valley

2009//contents

editor in chief

THOMAS ULRICH

publisher

RICHARD OKUMOTO

production & art director

MATTHEW MOUNTFORD

managing editor

COLLEEN WATSON

layout & design

SUZANNE YADA

section editors

HEIDI ROMSWINCKEL-GUISE

KATIE ALPIZAR

features editors

KIMBERLY TSAO

ALLIE FIGURES

photo editor

DEREK SIJDER

copy editor

KIMBERLY TSAO

distribution manager

CHRIS BAUSINGER

Together,we build a brighter future

There’s no better feeling than working together to create positive

change and improve the health and well being of our communities.

Kaiser Permanente is helping communities transform themselves

into healthy places to live, work, learn, and play.

2009//contents

SUMMER

ISS

UE

1

PROFILES

FEATURES26 / / The Solut ion to Homelessness

A mayor and league of advocates have finally

found an economical solution to homelessness:

f ind them, house them, save them

As a model for chi ldren’s publ ic health

care st i rs nat ional debate, we f ind that

i t was born in our own backyard42 / / Expanding Chi ldren’s Health Care

The CEO of United Way Si l icon Val ley

searches for ways to provide everyone

with education, health care and income22 / / Interv iew / / Hutton

Snapshots of San Jose’s invis ible

populat ion — and where they

lay their heads at night

34 / / Photo Essay / / The Homeless

One man’s humbl ing descent

into poverty as he struggles

to keep his fami ly af loat

47 / / Other Voices / / Kohl

NEWS

LOCAL

10 / / Front l ines

From immigrant banking to

poverty Olympics, social ly

innovative programs aim to

help stabi l ize the economy

NA

TION

AL

STAFF

SH FT

SH FT

SHSH FT

SH FTSH FT

SH

editor in chief

THOMAS ULRICH

publisher

RICHARD OKUMOTO

production & art director

MATTHEW MOUNTFORD

managing editor

COLLEEN WATSON

layout & design

SUZANNE YADA

section editors

HEIDI ROMSWINCKEL-GUISE

KATIE ALPIZAR

features editors

KIMBERLY TSAO

ALLIE FIGURES

photo editor

DEREK SIJDER

copy editor

KIMBERLY TSAO

distribution manager

CHRIS BAUSINGER

special thanks //

TIM MITCHELL (design adviser)

MIRI CHAN (contributing designer)

DEREK MOSER (contributing designer)

JACK HUSTING (contributing photographer)

front and back cover //

PHOTOGRAPHY BY

MATTHEW MOUNTFORD

Featuring Leila and

Laurie Rodriguez (Page 18)

writers //

MARK POWELL

JESSICA FROMM

ALLIE FIGURES

AMARIS DOMINGUEZ

Together,we build a brighter future

There’s no better feeling than working together to create positive

change and improve the health and well being of our communities.

Kaiser Permanente is helping communities transform themselves

into healthy places to live, work, learn, and play.

lighting technician | JACK HUSTING

Given the worldwide reach of our workplaces, the challenges of global warming and the current economy, we can’t ignore the need for effective global leaders. The actions or inactions of today’s leaders have repercussions that are quickly felt around the world.

The Global Leadership Advancement Center strives to solve this problem.

A research institute in the College of Business at San Jose State University, its mission is to advance the field of global leadership and disseminate best practices to help organizations, management professionals and SJSU students to function more effectively in today’s international work settings.

To prepare themselves to think like global leaders, participants practice skills learned by tackling local social problems and implementing creative solutions in our own multicultural, multi-ethnic backyard.

Growing tomorrow’s global leaders in the Silicon Valley

The Global Leadership Advancement Center

Growing tomorrow’s global leaders in the Silicon Valley

www.sjsu.edu/cob/centers/global/

Contact Dr. Joyce Osland osland_j@cob.sjsu.edu

GLAC is pending formal approval by the GS&R Committee of SJSU

isitors and new arrivals to our home here in the Silicon Valley are greeted with an incredible

landscape of beauty, business opportu-nities, academic options and poverty.

In our summer issue, we will shift your attention from global, national and even state poverty issues to the poverty facing our neighbors living within our hidden communities.

Poverty is vast, elusive, complex and difficult to measure. It has mul-tiple points to address and debate. But poverty is typically measured in either absolute or relative terms.

The most common measure is the poverty line, set by the U.S. government. Under this criteria, the Silicon Valley holds 9 percent of its population captive to poverty, con-siderably below the national average of 13 percent. But, when we adjust

this measure for the high cost of living, absolute poverty jumps to 14 percent. On a relative basis, we have a high poverty rate, reflecting a high median income with a high degree of inequality.

As we dissect poverty rates in the Silicon Valley we also see an alarming proportion of Latinos, African Amer-icans, children and the elderly above the averages. What is disconcerting is that this occurs within working families. Especially hard hit are the 43 percent of children in poverty in single-mother households.

We are lucky to have many organizations fighting this battle; National Center for Children in Pov-erty, Alpha Project, Just Neighbors, Family Housing, Save the Children, and many more.

We cannot identify and resolve all of the issues surrounding poverty, but we can elevate your awareness

and bring solutions that you, our reader, may contribute to develop and support.

Our vision at SHiFT is to become the catalyst for the New Social Contract in the Silicon Valley. Our mission is to provide the commu-nications platform to bring togeth-er the invisible communities, the solution providers and each of you.

SHiFT hopes to inspire power and change.

Please consider becoming a mem-ber of this change by supporting the motivated and dedicated students at San Jose State University. Please visit our website to see how you can become a part of SHiFT.

Thank you,Richard Okumoto

image // MATTHEW MOUNTFORD

SHiFT Magazine is published by San Jose State University’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication department in collaboration with the College of Business.

Breaking THE Circle OF Poverty

letter from the publisher //

RICH OKUMOTO

V

BusinessRich has more than 30 years of experience in Silicon Valley technology companies. He has held the positions of CFO, VP & GM, and CEO.

Rich is a Principal with Miller / Okumoto, Inc., a management consulting company.

EducationHe helped develop and will be an instructor for the first financial literacy course at SJSU. Rich is also an instructor in the off-campus MBA program at SJSU.

Rich Okumoto’s Influences

SHIFTSHIFTSHIFTSHIFTSHIFT

SHIFTSHIFTSHIFTSHIFTSHIFT

6 SUMMER 2009

t our first staff meeting six months ago, we watched a documentary about pho-

tographers Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange and Gordon Parks. They cap-tured the plight of the working poor – sharecroppers, janitors and migrants – during the Great Depression for the Farm Security Administration.

With the onset of the depression, Lange left the studio for the street. With our first issue of SHiFT, photog-raphers, writers, designers and editors left the classroom for the commu-nity. And like Lange, Evans and Parks, we captured the lives of a working class at the brink of despair.

Samantha Rodriguez’s cover sto-ry, A Packed-In Family, reflects fam-ily life in the new American century. Challenged by a struggling economy, high rent and even higher medical costs, Samantha and her family live on less. With her parents declaring bankruptcy shortly after the dot-com bust and never recovering, she worries whether they can provide the family with dinner each night.

But Colleen Watson’s feature story about Healthy Kids reminds us that we are a community of prob-lem solvers. Nearly a decade ago, the Santa Clara Family Health Plan, Working Partnerships USA and People Acting in Community To-gether created a program to insure thousands of children from families that did not qualify for Medi-Cal.

Like so many innovations from our entrepreneurial culture, the Healthy Kids initiative has found a national voice. In February 2009, President Barack Obama signed legislation based on Healthy Kids

that expanded health care to an ad-ditional 4 million children by 2013.

Mark Powell describes another promising idea in his feature entitled Destination: Home. He tells the story of Willie, an unemployed ac-countant who landed a job recently at half the pay he once earned.

Like the middle-class family Samantha Rodriguez describes in her cover story, Willie too faces astronomical health care bills and housing costs.

Enter Destination: Home, a partnership between local govern-ment and Applied Materials, Adobe Systems and Kaiser Permanente to provide a complete range of services to homeless of Santa Clara County. Willie is giving back to the communi-ty thanks to career counseling, short-term medical care and a place to live – proof that a homeless shelter can be much more than a revolving door.

Jessica Fromm looks for addi-tional answers in her interview with Carole Leigh Hutton, president and chief executive officer of United Way Silicon Valley. For Hutton, improving the income, education

and health care for people like Willie advances the common good.

After the collapse of Wall Street in the 1920s, Americans stopped measuring success by wealth alone. The 1930s marked a golden age for artists, photographers and writ-ers. Visionaries like Henry Luce launched Esquire, Fortune, Life and Newsweek to enlighten and inspire readers. Today, we struggle with many of the problems people of Dorothea Lange’s time faced.

Will we define our success by those who have the most or how we care for those who earn the least?

Enjoy this first issue of SHiFT Magazine. Like the Depression-era magazines we aspire to emulate, we promise to bring you stories and pho-tographs that celebrate our communi-ty and raise the concerns of neighbors whose voices we seldom hear.

Thomas Ulrich

image // DOROTHEA LANGE

ADDRESS: SHiFT Magazine, One Washington Square, San Jose, CA 95192-0055. PHONE: 408.924.3245Copyright © 2009 SHiFT Magazine, a San Jose State University publication. All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission is prohibited.

A

letter from the editor //

TOM ULRICH

AHEAD OF THE CURVE

7SHiFT mag.us

i

t

t i

a

b

a

g

In four Bay Area counties, 227,826 children are enrolled in the California Free or Reduced Lunch Program. In 2008, together

with our community, we helped 15,000 of these children by providing them with a new backpack containing the tools they need to succeed.

Help a child get a great start on the school year. Sponsor a Back-to-School Drive or, as an individual, purchase a backpack through our online store.

www.FamilyGivingTree.org

The California state government is attempting to enable mainly immigrants and the poor to open bank accounts. The program, Bank on California, seeks to create 100,000 accounts over two years among residents in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose and Fresno. Without bank accounts, people cannot build a credit history or securely save their money.Source: New York Times

bay area donationsHewlett-Packard will donate $250,000 to Tipping Point Community, a San Francisco grant-making organization that funds 22 Bay Area poverty-fighting groups. HP decided to donate $100,000 in cash and $150,000 in technology. The donations put Tipping Point Community at $2 million, and 100 percent of that goes directly to fighting poverty in the Bay Area. Source: Fundraising Success Magazine

immigrant banking

K$70

Income

needed

by a family

of four to

survive in

San Jose

frontlinesnews across silicon valley

a year

10 SUMMER 2009

generous teens

The Catholic Charities of Santa Clara County is hoping to reduce the poverty rate by half by the year 2020 with its Campaign to Cut Poverty in Santa Clara County. According to its website, elements for the success of the campaign will include creating awareness, build-ing coalitions, advocating for policy changes, developing more efficient services, and increasing public and private funding dedicated to pre-venting and ending poverty. Source: Catholic Charities of Santa Clara County

cutting poverty

Numerous teen-related programs and foundations in the Silicon Valley are giving money to help im-poverished lives around the globe. Students from Los Altos High School joined a nonprofit created by a teacher at their school called One Dollar for Life in 2007, and raised nearly $26,000 to help chil-dren in many different countries. Project Give started at Eastside College Preparatory School in East Palo Alto after receiving $10,000 from the John and Marcia Gold-man Foundation of Brentwood. The amount was given to Bay Area charities dedicated to cancer, AIDS and leukemia prevention.Source: San Francisco Chronicle

39 percent of local jobs pay less than

K$30K

supplemental incomeIn Santa Clara County, 49,360 people receive Supplemental Security Income grants. These grants provide benefits for people’s basic needs but leave them ineligible for food stamps. Because of the state budget crisis, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger plans to reduce the grants from $907 to $830 per month, the minimum required by federal law.Source: California Budget Project

a year

11SHiFT mag.usphotography // JACK HUSTING

model // TAMMY TRAN

Tonight in America, there are

1 in 4 Califo

children in povertyGrowing up in poverty can cause permanent damage, according to a new study. Neuroscientists from the American Association for the Advancement of Science found that children growing up in low-income homes have a high level of stress, which can hinder neural development.

Source: New York Times

bambooWhat does bamboo have to do with poverty? Prosperity Initiative, an organization based in Hanoi, is looking at ways bamboo can help increase revenue for poor farmers in rural areas. More than 1.5 billion people rely on bamboo in some way. The group aims to increase bamboo production in developing countries and sell to both domestic and foreign buyers.

Source: CNN

part-timersStates can receive the first installment of federal stimulus money if they meet requirements by providing documentation of workers’ current and recent earnings. This helps lower-wage workers who frequently enter in and out of the work force. States must also have two of the following: people looking for part-time work, people who left jobs for critical family reasons, dependents who require benefits, and people who are in training programs that already had previous assis-tance. Currently four states have qualified—Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico, and New York.

Source: New York Times

74 4,313

12 SUMMER 2009photography // JACK HUSTINGmodel // TAMMY TRAN

money to mexicoMoney sent home by Mexicans living abroad shrank by more than 18 percent compared to the previous year, the biggest monthly drop on record, according to the central bank. Crackdowns on undocumented immigrants and lack of jobs are attributed to this decline.

Source: The Associated Press

poverty olympicsWith the 2010 Vancouver Olympics around the corner, a group of concerned citizens formed the Vancouver Poverty Olympics. When the Vancouver Olympic partners negotiated to bring the event to their prov-ince, they promised things such as affordable housing, keeping homelessness from increasing and giving low-income renters rights. This group believes mon-ey used for the 2010 Winter Games could be used toward ending poverty in the province.

Source: Vancouver Poverty Olympics

Tonight in America, there are

news briefswhat’s happening across the nation

are in rnia.

Source: National Alliance to End Homelessness

74 4,313people without a home.

13SHiFT mag.us

The Women’s Funding Network

refurbishes cell phones and resells them

to raise funds for programs that help

women and children out of poverty.

Phones may also be recycled to become

emergency phones for the elderly and

women in danger of domestic violence.

These phones are equipped with a

one-touch button to dial 911. Not only

does recycling phones help those in

poverty but it also helps the environment.

Recycling 1 million cell phones reduces

greenhouse emissions equal to removing

almost 1,400 cars off our roads for a

year. Almost 70 percent of people living in

poverty globally are women, according to

womensfundingnetwork.org. In the United

States, more than 14 million women live in

poverty and 13 million children below the

poverty line.

The Extraordinaries is another organiza-

tion designed to use the power of the cell

phone to help those in poverty or in need

of assistance. The Extraordinaries’ cell

phone application allows a user to

volunteer short bursts of time for a

variety of causes. It can involve translating

a microfinance loan, helping immigrants

improve English skills, transcribing

subtitles used in human rights videos and

other possibilities. The idea came from

recognizing that not enough people have

time to volunteer. However, many spend

countless hours on their cell phones,

sometimes waiting in line or stuck in

traffic, so why not do something

productive and charitable while you wait?

You can find more information about

the project and ways to get involved at

www.theextraordinaries.org.

The poor in India have found several ways to use the cell phone to bring them out of poverty. Fishermen use cell phones to communicate with potential buyers to find the best rate for their catch. Indian farmers can take pictures of crop pests, then send the photos by cell phone to biologists who can help identify the bug.

Individuals may use a cell phone’s text messaging capabilities to ask medical professionals about AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. It allows medical professionals to send patients reminders and information about medicine they may be taking or proper follow-up care for certain health conditions.

GrameenPhone, a division of Muham-mad Yunus’ pioneering microfinance bank, started a program in the 1990s that gave poor women in Bangladesh a cell phone to start a business and charge others in the village to use the phone. Now that cell phones are more plentiful in the villages of Bangladesh, the bank has begun pilot projects that

has given more than 70,000 street beggars small interest-free loans and cell phones, encouraging them to earn money by reselling airtime. In the future, the bank plans to install small kiosks in villages that will offer online browsing, agricultural and health care information, video calls and access to government reports.

Brian Richardson and Charles Rowlinson founded Wizzit to remedy the small number of people in South Africa without bank accounts. Because more people have cell phones than bank accounts, they could use cell phones to make payments and carry out transactions. Wizzit’s slogan cleverly says: “My bank in my pocket.” The service comes at a

very low cost to the consumer. It is a pay-as-you-go system, and Wizzit also issues a debit card that can be used with the account. This allows individuals to have monetary power by swapping credit card info via phone at a flea market or using a mobile to pay at a business that no longer accepts cash. Many businesses do not deal with cash because of crime.

The Daily Mail, a U.K.-based newspaper, reports that 60 percent of the world’s population has some type of subscription to a cell phone. In 2002, there were 1 billion cell phones users, and by 2008 there were a stagger-ing 4.1 billion. Developing countries account for about two-thirds of cell phone users. Asia and Africa are among the countries with the fewest number of cell phone users.

cell phones are ubiquitous. seen in the pudgy fingers of an elementary school student to the weathered hands of a great grandmother, these devices not only help people communicate but they ring in an economic revolution.

UNITED STATES

How cell phones areending world poverty

research // KATIE ALPIZARdesign // MIRI CHAN

14 SUMMER 2009

The Women’s Funding Network

refurbishes cell phones and resells them

to raise funds for programs that help

women and children out of poverty.

Phones may also be recycled to become

emergency phones for the elderly and

women in danger of domestic violence.

These phones are equipped with a

one-touch button to dial 911. Not only

does recycling phones help those in

poverty but it also helps the environment.

Recycling 1 million cell phones reduces

greenhouse emissions equal to removing

almost 1,400 cars off our roads for a

year. Almost 70 percent of people living in

poverty globally are women, according to

womensfundingnetwork.org. In the United

States, more than 14 million women live in

poverty and 13 million children below the

poverty line.

The Extraordinaries is another organiza-

tion designed to use the power of the cell

phone to help those in poverty or in need

of assistance. The Extraordinaries’ cell

phone application allows a user to

volunteer short bursts of time for a

variety of causes. It can involve translating

a microfinance loan, helping immigrants

improve English skills, transcribing

subtitles used in human rights videos and

other possibilities. The idea came from

recognizing that not enough people have

time to volunteer. However, many spend

countless hours on their cell phones,

sometimes waiting in line or stuck in

traffic, so why not do something

productive and charitable while you wait?

You can find more information about

the project and ways to get involved at

www.theextraordinaries.org.

The poor in India have found several ways to use the cell phone to bring them out of poverty. Fishermen use cell phones to communicate with potential buyers to find the best rate for their catch. Indian farmers can take pictures of crop pests, then send the photos by cell phone to biologists who can help identify the bug.

Individuals may use a cell phone’s text messaging capabilities to ask medical professionals about AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. It allows medical professionals to send patients reminders and information about medicine they may be taking or proper follow-up care for certain health conditions.

GrameenPhone, a division of Muham-mad Yunus’ pioneering microfinance bank, started a program in the 1990s that gave poor women in Bangladesh a cell phone to start a business and charge others in the village to use the phone. Now that cell phones are more plentiful in the villages of Bangladesh, the bank has begun pilot projects that

has given more than 70,000 street beggars small interest-free loans and cell phones, encouraging them to earn money by reselling airtime. In the future, the bank plans to install small kiosks in villages that will offer online browsing, agricultural and health care information, video calls and access to government reports.

Brian Richardson and Charles Rowlinson founded Wizzit to remedy the small number of people in South Africa without bank accounts. Because more people have cell phones than bank accounts, they could use cell phones to make payments and carry out transactions. Wizzit’s slogan cleverly says: “My bank in my pocket.” The service comes at a

very low cost to the consumer. It is a pay-as-you-go system, and Wizzit also issues a debit card that can be used with the account. This allows individuals to have monetary power by swapping credit card info via phone at a flea market or using a mobile to pay at a business that no longer accepts cash. Many businesses do not deal with cash because of crime.

The Daily Mail, a U.K.-based newspaper, reports that 60 percent of the world’s population has some type of subscription to a cell phone. In 2002, there were 1 billion cell phones users, and by 2008 there were a stagger-ing 4.1 billion. Developing countries account for about two-thirds of cell phone users. Asia and Africa are among the countries with the fewest number of cell phone users.

cell phones are ubiquitous. seen in the pudgy fingers of an elementary school student to the weathered hands of a great grandmother, these devices not only help people communicate but they ring in an economic revolution.

UNITED STATES

How cell phones areending world poverty

research // KATIE ALPIZARdesign // MIRI CHAN

15SHiFT mag.us

orking on community change and finding solu-

tions for poverty, Scott Myers-Lipton has devoted time and effort to a project he feels will change many lives in the Gulf Coast. Myers-Lipton, an associ-ate professor of sociology at San Jose State University since 1999, started the Gulf Coast Civic Works Project, which aims to cre-ate 100,000 jobs for residents af-fected by Hurricane Katrina.

Dr. Martin Luther King inspired Myers-Lipton’s devotion to the so-cial works project.

“Dr. King’s vision was a communi-ty where every citizen had decent housing, a living wage job for all that were able to work, and a so-cial insurance program that guar-anteed a middle-class income for those who were not able to work. The Gulf Coast Civic Works Proj-ect was seen as a step to create his vision,” Myers-Lipton says.

Myers-Lipton challenges students in his social action class to serve their communities by organizing groups that tackle issues such as homelessness and other forms of poverty. By doing this, the students would set out to make change with-in social policies, so that they could experience firsthand taking action rather than just reading about it in their textbooks.

In 2006, students created the Student Homeless Alliance to promote awareness of homeless-ness in San Jose. That November, the group set up its first campus sleep out, “Poverty Under the Stars,” to stress the reality of pov-erty many people face. The night featured a showing of Spike Lee’s

film, “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts.”

Myers-Lipton wanted to do more, however — then the idea came: “Why not do in the Gulf Coast what was done some 70 years ago in the New Deal public works projects? This new public works project could rebuild the schools, hospitals and playgrounds that were so badly damaged in Hurri-cane Katrina.”

Residents will help rebuild their own communities by repairing homes, hospitals, schools, parks, roads and bridges. The jobs would cover needs such as plumbing, elec-tricity, construction and air condi-tioning. If the workers don’t have the necessary skills, paid appren-ticeships would provide the train-ing needed to get the jobs done.

“In the past two years, the proj-ect has sponsored two other large-scale trips to the Gulf Coast in order to connect the students to the issues,” Myers-Lipton says. “We have also tried to breach the distance by connecting the issues that people are facing in the Gulf Coast to the issues surrounding college campuses.”

Myers-Lipton and some stu-dents organized the first “Louisiana Winter,” a trip to see the devastation first-hand. Students and faculty from more than 20 uni-versities traveled to the Gulf Coast to promote the project.

On November 1, 2007, the Gulf Coast Civic Works Act, HR 4048,

was introduced to Congress. Since its creation, awareness of the act has heightened.

Through the website, www.olvingpoverty.com, individu-als can help in a myriad of ways.

Myers-Lipton has written a book, “Social Solutions to Poverty: America’s Struggle to Build a Just Society,” and is currently working on a new book entitled “Rebuild America,” due out this fall.

WOne professor's journey to fight poverty

"Those who visit the

website can help by

adding the project to

their MySpace or

Facebook... "

Professor of Poverty profile // AMARIS DOMINGUEZ

16 SUMMER 2009

anuel and his 3-year-old daughter Christina live with his cousin and a friend in a

small apartment in South San Jose. He and Christina share the biggest room in the apartment, but the 600-square-foot home is not large enough for his extended family.

“These aren’t the best living situa-tions for her, but as for now I can-not afford to give her a room by herself,” Manuel says.

Currently, Manuel pays $675, or about half the rent, to share the two-bedroom apartment with two other people.

He never dreamed of raising his daughter on the brink of poverty. He earns enough to hover above

the poverty line, but not enough to live comfortably.

Christina’s mother has remarried and established a new life in San Jose. As a part of the custody deal, Manuel is allowed equal time with Christina and feels he has no other choice but to live in the area to be a part of his daughter’s life.

As outlined by the California food stamps program, Manuel and Christina do not qualify for gov-ernment or non-government assis-tance. The requirements only take into account the minimum necessi-ties for food and earned income but fail to add child care, health care or transportation needs.

“I feel like a whole group of people is being forgotten,” Manuel says. “And I know there are people out there worse off than me.”

The U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Health and Hu-man Services define poverty at the federal, not county, level. That poverty line does not measure up when compared with Santa Clara County living costs. Manuel’s “middle-class” status reflects his income, but not his need.

“Either way, the government won’t see me,” he says. “I make too much and too little to be noticed on their radar.”

In Silicon Valley, 15 per-cent of the population is living in poverty – three percent higher than the national average, ac-cording to Deborah Reed, former direc-

tor of research at the Public Policy Institute of California.

Private programs are finally ac-knowledging Manuel’s struggles. Emmett Carson, CEO of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, has taken the responsibility of directly addressing the poverty issue. SVCF, the fourth largest foundation in the nation, is funded by $1.5 billion in assets, and agrees to match each donation dollar for dollar to con-tribute to the community.

“People have to work multiple jobs, work off the record, and many families have shared living arrangements and expenses to get by,” Carson says. “The federal poverty line doesn’t help us much in California because most poor people here do not meet the fed-eral poverty standard.

“At SVCF, we are trying to provide resources like financial education, literacy and job training. We are engaged in helping people under-stand public policy,” he says.

“(The federal government) is being more generous with regulations,” Carson says. “There is going to be new changes in food stamp al-locations by county, allowing each county to use their own discretion to enable more to qualify.”

As for Manuel, he is keeping his fingers crossed, but he realizes it might be a long time before his family receives additional aid. Carson is leading the way, spur-ring change from the top down, encouraging his peers to rethink how they can help this struggling demographic.

MA father's story in raising his daughter in poverty

"I make too much and too little to be noticed on their radar."

WALKINGTHELINEprofile // ALLIE FIGURESillustrations // DEREK MOSER

17SHiFT mag.us

orning plans in my house are gener-ally avoided since getting eight people ready and out the door is interesting, to say the least. Typically, the first ones up

get the bathrooms before anyone else, but then after that it’s a free-for-all. Between waiting for an empty bathroom, eating breakfast and getting my act together, I hardly notice the chaos around me. “Don’t use the water!” gets shouted numerous times throughout the house before anyone gets in the shower, to avoid scalding or freezing water. I have to adopt a form of tunnel vision in order to get what I need from around the house and stay calm, since squeezing in and out of the one small hallway is enough to drive anyone mad. Once I get myself ready, I can handle anything else that needs taking care of, like helping my niece get dressed, or finding my brother’s lost shoe, which happens just about every morning. When everyone is ready to go, car assignments must be coordinated to make sure we all have a space and nobody is left behind. Chaotic as the mornings can be, we make it work somehow.

Imagine playing out this scene every day. Yeah, welcome to my life.

I guess I should introduce myself before con-tinuing. My name is Samantha Rodriguez and I’m a 21-year-old junior at San Jose State University. Because of financial reasons, I still live at home with my parents (and everybody else) while I work a summer job now that I am out of school. Our house has only three bedrooms, but we man-age to squeeze in eight (sometimes more) people. My boyfriend and I share one of the rooms; my

older brother, his wife and his 8-year-old daughter occupy another; while my parents get the mas-ter bedroom and bathroom to themselves. My younger brother acts as a nomad around the house, sleeping on the couches or on the floors in a bedroom every night. We live on one paycheck and only shop at Wal-Mart or Target for minimal generic supplies and necessities.

Mvoice // SAMANTHA RODRIGUEZ

A packed-in

FAMILY“With three bedrooms and eight

people, life gets hard.”

When money gets tight and space gets tighter, so does a family’s bond

18 SUMMER 2009

photography // MATTHEW MOUNTFORD

Life wasn’t always like this. I grew up in a stable household with everything I could ever ask for. Most of my childhood memories consist of biannual trips to Disneyland, weekend getaways, American Girl dolls, and just about anything else I wanted. My parents worked hard during the week to give my brother and me everything they didn’t have when they were young.

My mother comes from a middle-class Polish/Swedish family with five kids, so money was spread pretty thin. My father grew up in a poor Mexican family with his three sisters, mother and father. He could not even afford to finish high school, so he dropped out to join the Army. My mother and father strove to give my brothers and me every-thing, no matter the cost.

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When I was 7 years old, we moved to a great part of the city with the best schools and safest neighbor-hood. Our house had five bedrooms, three bath-rooms, complete with hot tub and pool. In 1996, my parents were elated that they were going to have an-other baby, and my mom decided to leave her job to raise him. We were the typical American family with a three-car garage, 2.5 kids, and a bright outlook for our future. Life was good, we were happy, and we couldn’t ask for more. Unfortunately, though, this storybook childhood didn’t last long.

t the beginning of the new millennium, my world changed. My father was diagnosed with fibromy-algia, his furniture business was failing, and my

mother had to go back to work, just so we could afford rent. That same year we were forced to move out of our “dream” house because the owner decided to sell it from under us. We got lucky and found a house just seven doors down that was relatively the same size, but much more expensive to rent.

I quickly noticed that our family was not as affluent as I had previously believed. Because of my father’s dis-ability, he decided to give up his business entirely. By this time, my younger brother was 4 and I was 12. Even at such a young age, I noticed subtle differences in our ev-eryday lives. We stopped going to Disneyland as much and the weekend trips ceased. Allowances became smaller and came less often. I also noticed a change in the stores we went to and the brands we bought.

I started to worry when our rent kept increasing and I heard my father on the phone with our landlord, explain-ing why payments were late. Since my dad stopped work-ing, we were relying on my mother’s paychecks to cover the rent, and sometimes that wasn’t enough. My parents were borrowing money from anyone who could help, like our church, my grandma and even one of my uncles. Finally, it became too much to keep living in that house.

In the spring of 2002, we moved out of that house, my old neighborhood, and away from all of my friends. Since my older brother and I were already in junior high, it did not affect our school assignments, but my younger brother had to attend a different elementary school. Though the rent was dramatically less, the house itself was older and smaller than we were used to. We had to condense from 3,000 square feet to 1,500, which was not an easy task. We held numerous garage sales to get rid of our excess and make some money in the pro-cess. In that same year, my parents filed bankruptcy. All

their credit card debt was wiped away, but they could not obtain new cards for five years. Times got really hard, and it took its toll on the whole family.

For the past seven years we lived on one income, Wal-Mart shopping, and scrap-ing by week to week, paycheck to paycheck. In high school, I turned down invitations to parties and dances, not because I didn’t like having fun, but because I could not afford the tickets and new outfits like my friends could. My parents told me that I could either go to prom or get a high school yearbook in my se-nior year. Since dances don’t last and yearbooks do, I decided that having the physical reminder of my senior year would be less expensive and last a lot longer than a night at prom would.

espite our money problems, my parents still try to help anybody they can, taking in rela-tives who would have nowhere else to go. First,

they let my cousin stay with us while he attempted to get his life back on track. He came to us homeless, on drugs and addicted to alcohol. While staying with us, he went to support groups and finally seemed to have people to lean on. Unfortunately, after a year and a half, he was almost back to where he started, despite my parents’ numerous attempts to support him. They had no choice but to ask him to leave.

A few months ago, my parents took in my half-broth-er, his wife and his 8-year-old daughter. They were evict-ed and had nowhere else to turn. I remember getting a heartbreaking call from him as I rode the bus to school, telling me what was happening and how he didn’t know what to do. If we hadn’t taken them in, they would probably have been living out of their car. They rented a storage space for all their furniture, gathered up their belongings and moved into one of our three bedrooms. My other brothers were displaced – one sleeps on the couch or wherever he can, while my older brother took up residence in our garage before he moved out.

Money problems can affect everything from health and teeth to clothes and food, as my family has been forced to find out. My family, though, is fortunate enough to have medical and dental insurance for our basic needs through my mother’s work. However, they do not cover any unnecessary procedures. My father cannot get hearing aids, though he is almost deaf in one ear and close to it in the other. Also, our dental

“Life is difficult without money. Actually, that’s an understatement.”

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coverage is so minimal that we have to wait until we can afford to get a tooth pulled. My father needs dentures, but they’re out of the question. I’ve needed braces for years, but there is no way I can get them now.

Living with eight people in such a small house can be pretty annoying at times. Laundry days have to be coordinated, or we all end up washing clothes on Sunday night, leaving someone’s clothes wet for Mon-day morning. Since my brother and his family have moved in, we have adopted a chore list where every chore gets assigned to one person per week, so nothing goes unattended.

Little things can irritate even the most patient person-ality, like mine, when so many people live in one house. Like going into the shower only to find my shampoo or soap bottle empty. Also, the cars we own are all more than ten years old and have a myriad of problems with them. We only have three cars between the lot of us, so we just pray that they can keep on chugging until we can afford to replace them.

Despite all of our financial hardships, we always man-age to scrape by, especially with the help of our family, friends and church. My church family was a great force in my life during those tough years, taking me to things free of charge, raising money for my family and always keeping us in their prayers. They were the only way I managed

to stay sane in my formative and tumultuous high school years. In 2005, my senior year of high school, my church raised $4,000 for my family because they knew how rough we had it. I still have trouble believing that people could be so generous – it absolutely blows my mind, even now. Without monetary help from those around us, I don’t know how we would have made it this far.

Life is difficult without money. Actually, that’s an understatement. Life is stressful, hectic, and pretty depressing without money. If my family did not have the intense kind of love and togetherness we have, there is no way we would be making it right now. Despite all the stress we are under, we find time to bond over funny movies, fam-ily meetings, and our favorite TV shows. We may not have money, but we have love, and in times like these, you have to see the good in whatever you can. All the problems we’ve gone through have only made us stronger, and I am lucky to con-sider my family my best friends.

The eight residents of Samantha Rodriguez’ home “Life is difficult without money.

Actually, that’s an understatement.”

COVER GIRL //Leila Rodriguez

is 8 years old and Samantha’s

niece. She sleeps in a bunk bed with

her mother and father.

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story // JESSICA FROMM

wd dasd saeDRTillustrations // MATTHEW MOUNTFORD photo illustration // DEREK MOSER photo // JACK HUSTING

*

utton, who originally moved from the Detroit snow-belt to sunny California to become vice president and executive editor of the San Jose Mercury News, knows a thing or two about how communities work.

Sitting in her glass-doored office at the United Way Silicon Valley headquarters inside the Sobrato Center for Nonprofits in San Jose, Hutton sips coffee out of a

steel travel mug and elaborates on the causes of poverty in Silicon Valley and what the United Way is doing to help.

“One of the critical underpinnings of self-sufficiency is hav-ing a reasonable enough income, an income that can support your family,” Hutton says.

With a “Live United” pin tacked to the lapel of her black-and-white skirt suit, Hutton’s perfectly French-tipped nails tap on the table as she answers questions about how education and income are so vitally linked.

“If you don’t have some sort of education, if you don’t gradu-ate from high school, if you don’t have some post-secondary trade school, your earning capability is automatically dimin-ished by 40 percent, versus somebody who does graduate from high school. Something post-secondary is fundamental to being able to earn that income, so that makes education the second building block (of United Way),” she says.

“And then, the third building block is health, and that means both access to health care when you need it — because you can’t go to school and you can’t go to work and earn a living if you’re not healthy — and also access to some preventa-tive care,” Hutton says. Originally from Massachusetts, Hut-ton attended Michigan State University, graduating in 1978 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism.

In her 30-year journalism career, Hutton worked her way up to publisher and editor of the Detroit Free Press, and later vice president of Knight Ridder, Inc., until the company was sold in 2006. Hutton then worked as executive editor of the San Jose Mercury News until January 2008, after which she became CEO of the United Way Silicon Valley.

Hutton was always involved in some form of community leadership throughout her three decades in journalism. While at the Detroit Free Press she oversaw the company’s Free Press Charities. More recently she graduated from Community Leadership San Jose, a program that challenges local leaders to deepen their commitment to the community.

Currently she serves on the leadership team of Step Up Silicon Valley, a campaign from a local Catholic charity to cut poverty, and is part of the leadership group of Santa Clara Coun-ty’s Destination: Home, an initiative to end homelessness.

*NOT FOR PROFIT

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says Carole Leigh Hutton, president and chief executive officer of United Way Silicon Valley. “The long term idea is to get folks from a position

where they need help, to a position where they don’t need help.”The United Way emphasizes three building blocks on its

mission to advance the common good: education, health and income.

What we’re all about is moving people towards self-sufficiency,

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Hutton says the jump she made from newspaper publishing to nonprofit work with United Way was not a big one.

“You learn a lot about how the community works in journalism because you’re constantly examining it and are close to things,” Hutton says. “A lot of people go into journalism thinking they’re going to right wrongs and fix things, so it’s very similar to what drives people into nonprofit, charitable work.”

“In the last several years of my journalism career, I was involved in a lot of nonprofit board work. So I had a taste of both, and I certainly understood the similarities. They’re both mission-driven, really, so it goes both ways. You don’t really go into journalism to get rich,” she says.

“Well, in nonprofit work, you’re very much driven by the need to right wrongs, tackling injustices and helping. It’s more altruistic and more mission-driven than journalism is, but there are a lot of similarities. You find that many times, people who leave journalism go into nonprofit work. In fact, this commu-nity is littered with former journalists who are now working in nonprofits,” Hutton says.

Now, Hutton is the leader of the Silicon Valley chapter of United Way, a national network that works to create long-lasting community change by addressing the underlying causes of the most significant social issues.

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antrudHutton says that becoming independent in Silicon Valley

is a tougher hill to climb than it is in many other parts of the country.

“About 25 percent of the people in Santa Clara County aren’t self-sufficient. They’re not living comfortably. They have to make decisions every month between paying the PG&E bill or paying the rent or buying enough food or child care,” Hutton says.

“Most people want to be self-sufficient, but it’s very hard here. It’s such an expensive and challenging place to live. The continuum of lowest income to highest income in Silicon Valley is quite extraor-dinary. We live in a society that is based on the notion that there will be low-income people filling low-income jobs.”

United Way has been working to bridge this gap, a precipice that has widened since the economic downturn. The recession has hit United Way and other social services hard, their funding slashed from both private donors and government supplements.

“I had no clue I was coming into this organization at the begin-ning of a period in which we would see really rapid downturn in the economy and such a volatility on a national level,” Hutton says. “You have rapid unemployment, changes in unemployment. That results in a dramatic increase in the need. The impact of that falls significantly on the nonprofit community.”

“When government spending is down, the burden falls more on the nonprofits. Unfortunately, in a really bad economy, charitable giving tends to go down too, so it’s a vicious cycle. It’s sort of a double whammy on nonprofits,” she says.

“Right now, we’re seeing people in the community who never before needed food from a food bank, or rental assistance, or utility assistance. They need those things now because they lived paycheck to paycheck, and the paycheck is gone,” she says.

In order to combat these funding cuts, United Way has been reaching out into the community to let both citizens and organizations know that their help is needed more now than ever.

“One of the first things we did last year was form a coalition of community groups called Open Arms. This was an effort to communicate with the com-munity to say, ‘Everybody needs to keep giving. It’s absolutely essential to keep giving. Give at whatever level you can. Give to whatever organization you feel comfortable giving to, but keep giving,’” Hutton says.

“Here at United Way, we brought together a group of some of the leaders of the biggest organizations in the county. We did that because at United Way, we see part of our function is to take that high level view and to pull orga-nizations together and say, ‘How can we help one another? What can we do?’ So, we think we need to function in a leadership role among the community of service providers and community-based organizations,” Hutton says.

United Way has launched a slew of programs in the last year to combat the increasing need for social services in Silicon

Valley caused by the spiraling economy. Along with helping un-derprivileged families receive their allotted tax refunds, United Way has also started a financial literacy training program to help low-income people to use banks again.

“We launched a program late last year to get people who don’t use banks to use banks, because there is a real economic impact on them. People who don’t have bank accounts go to check cashing places or payday loan places, and they don’t save money. Payday loans are just insidious, the APR on a two-week loan can be 400 percent,” Hutton says.

“The people least able to pay absurd amounts of interest can end up paying that at a payday loan operation. Where, if they had a bank account, and were just able to have the tiniest cushion, they might avoid that. So, they are losing money over years and years, just by not having bank accounts,” she says.

“What we’ve done is tried financial literacy training, even for people who have had trouble with accounts before. One in five households in California doesn’t have a checking account. Even worse, one in two doesn’t have a savings account. You can never catch up. You’re never ahead. You’re never even flat,” Hutton says.

“Financial literacy can be a challenge. It can be a compli-cated, overwhelming thing. Particularly, if somebody is new to the country, if they don’t have much of an education, maybe there is a literacy challenge or a language challenge. Getting people into the financial mainstream is very important, but you can’t just dump them in there,” she says.

Hutton says that these three things – a decent income, access to health care and prevention, and the education to achieve that sustainable income – are just the fundamental building blocks to improving the lives of people in our communities. //

When government spending is down, the burden falls more on the nonprofits. Unfortunately, in a really bad economy, charitable giving tends to go down too, so it’s a vicious cycle.

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SoLUtion photography // DEREK SIJDER

illustrations // MATTHEW MOUNTFORD

story //MARK POWELL

the

homelessnessto

Find them. House them. Save them.

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8City Homeless Outreach coordinator Jarrod Gray, left, and volunteer Sergio Salazar look for a possible homeless encampment beneath a city street bridge. 27SHiFT mag.us

hen it came to the issue of chronic homelessness in Santa Clara County, Supervisor Don Gage thought things weren’t exactly as they seemed.

In fact, he figured they were worse.County officials reported 7,202 homeless individuals in a

single night in 2007 -- about 200 fewer than during a search two years ago. Gage, however, believes many homeless indi-viduals rarely make themselves available for such a count.

“You don’t see the homeless very much,” Gage says. “Most people are under bridges or sleeping wherever. We really had to look for them to count them, and that just goes to show you that when it’s out of sight, it’s out of mind.”

Gage, San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed and many volunteers are hoping to not only bring the area’s homeless population into view, but to welcome them into homeless prevention centers, respite centers and, with effort, permanent housing, via a project known as Destination: Home.

The project’s roots are traced back to 2007 when, despite an availability of resources, services and housing production,

the Silicon Valley community “was not on track to end home-lessness or solve the affordable housing crisis,” says Carol Lamont, executive director of Destination: Home.

Lamont says Gage and Reed convened with other local leaders with the intention of solving both these issues, and eventually clearing a path for the inception of the “Blue Ribbon Commission on Ending Homelessness and Solving the Afford-able Housing Crisis in Santa Clara County.”

The commission studied the dynamics of homelessness and the lack of affordable local housing over the course of nine months, Lamont says, eventually deciding the region lacked the “political will,” as well as the ability to properly use current resources, to effectively chip away at homeless-ness in nearby communities.

Lamont says that chronic homelessness is an urgent, albeit sometimes divisive topic.

“Homelessness is painful and unhealthy for those who experience it, and it is morally repugnant and demoralizing for others,” Lamont says.

illie would sluggishly pull his car into the parking garage across the

street from the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library in downtown San Jose. Finding a

fitting spot, he would park, then recline in his seat and close his fatigued eyes in hopes of drifting off for at least

two, maybe three hours. That’s all he’d ever get before a security guard would rap on his window. Willie couldn’t sleep

there overnight, the guard would tell him. The situation was nothing new to Willie. He would drive off in search of another empty garage or barren lot to reacquaint himself with sleep. He’d find another place, a few blocks down San Fernando Street this time, knowing that in another couple hours he would be spotted and asked to move again. And he would.

Just a few years earlier, Willie was “living the good life.” He was working in the accounting and data processing field and buying tickets to see the San Jose Sharks hockey team. He had a decent income, his own residence and no major medical problems keeping him down.

But now, he had no income, no home — a wandering man whose only immediate thoughts were near child-like: Please, just a few more minutes of sleep.

“You learn to take a little nap somewhere, then move along, then take a nap somewhere else,” Willie says. “Homeless people learn where they can sleep and where they can’t.”

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8A man sleeps on the 24-hour bus line nicknamed “Hotel 22.”

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Maureen O’Malley-Moore, Gage’s policy analyst, says most of the issues presented to the committee boiled down to a single question: Who would be responsible?

Who would be responsible for helping homeless individuals find jobs?

Who would be responsible for providing them short-term medical assistance?

And, most importantly, who would be responsible for not simply limiting homelessness, but ending it.

Gage, Reed, and the rest of the commission have decided it will be them.

“We understand the problem,” says Gage, who also hypoth-esizes that the actual number of homeless individuals should rise as many people suffer through a downtrodden economy.

The 2009 Joint Venture Index of Silicon Valley, released in January, reflects Gage’s fears. The index states the lack of af-fordable housing and the current mortgage crisis should likely allow for rising rates in homelessness in the coming months. The index also paints a demographic picture of the county’s official homeless count.

Individuals between the ages of 41 and 50 make up the highest percentage of any age group at 29 percent.

Those aged 31 to 40 years old account for 24 percent, and the 22-to-30 age bracket make up another 21 percent.

According to the index, less than 1 percent of homeless peo-ple are under the age of 18, though it doesn’t specify whether this refers to single persons, or if families are included.

The index reports that the county’s homeless population is mostly Caucasian, at 36 percent of the overall total.

Following whites, Hispanics and blacks/African-Americans make up 27 percent and 22 percent respectively.

Forty-two percent of homeless individuals have earned only a high school diploma or an equivalent general education develop-ment degree. And 35 percent don’t even have that. Those who

finished “some college” requirements account for 14 percent, and individuals who have completed a bachelor’s degree or higher make up 5 percent of the total.

“It’s an unfortunate thing,” San Jose Police Department Sgt. Tim Porter says of homelessness. “The most important thing to remember is the responsibility to provide care.”

Porter and other city officials are fully aware of the need for providing care in the wake of recent numbers regarding death in homeless individuals in Santa Clara County.

In 2008, 55 homeless people died on county streets. Another 27 died while in shelters.

Despite working in the shadows of these figures, Destina-tion: Home proponents say they see few reasons to not believe their private-public cooperative project won’t bring success.

“This model works,” O’Malley-Moore said. “This model works.”The organization currently has just two full-time staff mem-

bers: an executive director and a program manager. It exists

herewere times when I

was really depressed,” Willie says, “especially out in the street riding in the bus all night.” In 1994, Willie was laid off from a job he’d held for 15 years. Soon after, he was diagnosed with diabetes and high blood pres-sure. After that, Willie was jobless for two years. He eventually found work again, but at 50 per-cent less pay than at his previous employer. Over time, the lack of sufficient income caught up with Willie and he could no longer afford to pay rent.

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under fiscal sponsorship of United Way Silicon Valley and uses both private and public funds to develop two key initial pro-grams: a medical respite center, and a “one-stop homelessness prevention center,” both of which opened in late 2008.

The Boccardo Regional Reception Center, located off Monterey Highway just south of downtown San Jose, offers the homeless who have been recently discharged from the hos-pital a chance to receive nonemergency follow-up care.

O’Malley-Moore says that giving homeless people the opportunity to recover at a respite center was a more cost-effective solution than merely turning them back onto the street once released from the emergency room.

“It’s expensive to leave them on the street,” she says, add-ing that lack of recovery time and constant admission to local hospitals drains far more public funds. “So many (homeless) people use the emergency room as primary care.”

Porter expresses a similar outlook, saying emergency room costs could be reduced with respite centers.

The public could save tens of thousands of dollars per person. According to Gage, one mentally ill homeless person who uses public services such as Valley Medical Center on a regular basis, or is jailed after an incident in site of law enforce-ment, potentially costs taxpayers $60,000 a year.

Placing homeless individuals into more permanent housing (the goal of the other current Destination: Home center) and out of emergency rooms and jail cells could end up costing only $16,000 per person, Gage says.

On the subject of law enforcement intervention, O’Malley-Moore says she would like to see local police officers refrain from detaining some individuals unless they have to.

“We hope they would bring them to a one-stop center or service provider rather than book them into jail,” she says.

Porter says the prospect of officers transporting homeless individuals to center doorsteps is a definite possibility, but adds such cooperation would “not be in lieu of jail time” if criminal activity is suspected.

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4Chris, a newly homeless man in San Jose, has a smoke near First and Santa Clara streets.

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“We do not arrest people for being homeless,” Porter says. “It’s not a crime to be homeless.”

Porter says police protocol for encountering homeless individ-uals is as follows: First, initiate contact with the individual and determine if he or she is engaging in any unlawful activity, or if he or she requires medical attention. If it’s the former, the indi-vidual is taken to jail. If it’s the latter, an ambulance is called.

Willie, however, says he does recall times when law enforcement officials became hostile when happening upon him during one of his naps.

“Sometimes police can be very aggressive in getting you to move from where you have parked overnight,” he says.

Porter adds he is aware of several encampments around the city of San Jose where homeless individuals congregate, operating as small independent communities. And although many of these encampments occur on private or state property where trespass-ing laws can be enforced, Porter says San Jose police officers do not intend to evict or further displace these individuals.

“Our goal is not to remove these people, but see if anyone needs any (medical) attention,” he says.

The second Destination: Home facility currently in opera-tion does seek to remove homeless individuals from their cur-rent locations -- and into more permanent housing.

The Georgia Travis Center, located on Commercial Ave. in San Jose, is operated in coordination with InnVision, an organization “dedicated to empowering homeless and at-risk families,” according to its website.

While the Boccardo Regional Reception Center is intended for private, personal care, the Georgia Travis Center is meant for advising small homeless families, usually women and chil-dren, and providing pathways for them to find jobs, gain ben-efits, and secure affordable, permanent housing.

The facility, which exists as a drop-in center, also offers meals, laundry services, showers, transportation availability, a mailing address and access to a telephone. On-site caseworkers are also expected to personally work with families to properly assess their needs. InnVision also states that the center holds daily workshops focusing on topics such as money management, domestic violence and conflict resolution. Individuals can also produce résumés at a computer lab and seek employment.

“You needed a one-stop shop,” Gage says.And getting people into permanent instead of temporary hous-

ing is as much by necessity as it is by preference. Gage says the federal government is no longer looking to throw

funding toward temporary housing, hence the major push to house the homeless.

“We skip the shelter part and go to housing,” he says.

Though Destination: Home coordinators have the oppor-

tunity to guide the homeless toward permanent hous-ing, just who exactly qualifies for such a gift is difficult to determine, O’Malley-Moore says.

“Obviously, some folks would never come in (to a center),” she says. “Some of them don’t trust anyone.”

O’Malley-Moore says individuals who continue to show effort toward getting off the streets, whether by applying for Section 8 housing vouchers, seeking employ-ment, or participating in other services, will be especially considered for the chance at a residence of their own.

“Some people that come in are the ones that are just tired of living under a bridge or by water,” she says. “They want to get housed, they want to get medical attention.”

Gage adds that a program like Destination: Home must be a public-private co-op in order to make items like Valley Transportation Authority “Uplift” transit passes, which al-low homeless individuals the chance to travel to and from work, a reality. Destination: Home executive director Lamont also says the Housing Authority of Santa Clara County agrees to reserve 200 Section 8 Housing rental assistant vouchers every year for chronically homeless people.

On the “private” side of this public-private initiative, three companies are pledging a total of $800,000 toward Destination: Home. Applied Materials, Inc., the project’s first corporate funding partner, agreed to donate $500,000 over the next three years. Adobe Systems, Inc. offered to donate a three-year, $150,000 grant in support of case management services for the homeless. Kaiser Permanente also contributed $150,000 to support case management services to “help house and rebuild the lives of those discharged from local hospitals” to the medical respite center, according to Lamont.

Lamont adds that there is “a high level of cooperation and much enthusiasm for the programs” among parties concerned.

In terms of public funding, the county sets aside more than $50 million per year to fund social services, and Destination: Home does not require “new money” to function, O’Malley-Moore says.

“It is taking funds that are already there,” she says.Lamont agrees that the program is cost-effective, but that

overall, “the value of helping people with desperate needs builds a better community for all.”

The goal of Destination: Home in the short term is to house 300 new homeless clients a year. Lamont goes so far as to predict that at least 250 once people designated as chronically homeless will have permanent housing by the end of 2009.

Willie says the homeless people of Silicon Valley can take their lives from the streets and into housing with a little help.

“I have a lot more respect for people on the street,” Willie says. “I see them as survivors. We have learned to live and survive in this valley. We know how to make our lives work when we have to.” //

8“Our goal is

not to remove these people, but see if anyone needs any medical attention.”

8DONATE // GIVE // SAVE

Georgia Travis Centerwww.InnVision.org

Boccardo Regional Reception Centerwww.ehcLifeBuilders.org

32 SUMMER 2009

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8A young man resists medical care after being cut over his right eye in a fight on Nov. 12 in San Jose. A bag was put over his head after he spat at para-medics, and also as a precaution to block the transmission of blood.

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p r i so n e r s

streetphoto

DEREK SIJDERessay //

JERRY HOLMES, 44Home: under a bridge Holmes has been in and out of prison his entire life. He has shown symptoms of both schizophrenia and alcoholism.

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NAME UNKNOWNHome: under a bridge

A Honduras immigrant living under a street bridge cries as he explains that he is depressed and has dental pain. Members of the homeless outreach program informed him of San Jose City services where he could receive free treatment nearby.

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LOUIS SANCHEZ, 55Home: local shelter, or under a

bridge if he misses the 3 p.m. curfew.Sanchez is in a mariachi band and plays

three times a week for tips. He is religious and enjoys singing gospel songs in Spanish. His accounting, which he keeps on a napkin, shows that he earns $650 a month in tips.

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Home: train tracks Camping tents provide shelter for many homeless people throughout San Jose.

Encampments are commonly adjacent to train tracks and forested areas along the Guadalupe River.

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TONY NAILS, 52Home: woods

“I have been poor my entire life and have never known how to hold a job. The price of my freedom is poverty.”

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STEVEN MARTINDALE, 46Home: train tracks

We first met Martindale while documenting the homeless for our spring issue. He has

since joined the Salvation Army and now has a job and a place to live.

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PR E

V E N TA T I V E

M E D I C I N E

T H E S A N T AC L A R A W A Y

S TORY / / Col le e n Wat s on

irst it gets harder to breathe.

Panic rises and the heart beats faster.

Air is desperately drawn into the lungs but the body can’t get enough oxygen.

The air passage becomes thickly coated with mucus, the lining becomes inflamed. A violent coughing attack hits, and the muscles in the chest and neck tighten. Breathing accelerates and turns into wheezing.

To an adult, an asthma attack can be painful. To a child who doesn’t understand what’s happening, it’s terrifying — and often completely preventable.

F

43SHiFT mag.us

“Well, I mean,luckily most children are healthy.”

Model of Excellence

According to Lisa Chamberlain, a pediatri-cian at the Lucile Pack-

ard Children’s Hospital, asthma is the most common chronic disease for children

and also one where symptoms can be controlled. It’s all about

preventative medicine.“Well, I mean, luckily most children are healthy,” Chamberlain

says. “But they are healthy because they go to the pediatrician.”“We definitely do a lot to keep them thriving and healthy.”Doctors look for things parents wouldn’t, she says. They

recognize whether a child might be headed toward obesity, something a parent might not want to admit. They make sure children are developing at the correct pace, and if they aren’t, they ask why not. Doctors also look into their patients’ home life. They can suggest parenting classes and nutritional pro-grams if the child isn’t getting enough food. Doctors can also contact child services if necessary.

“The pediatrician is really the only place where the children are even thought about before they enter school,” Chamberlain says. “We make sure they are in a home where they can thrive.”

Millions of children in America are uninsured, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Though their families make too much money to qualify for public assistance, they still don’t make enough to be fully insured. A medical catastrophe would send these families reeling. Parents who might need to send children to the hospital take care of them at home until the problem requires a trip to the emergency room.

“About half the people that are uninsured don’t realize it. It’s expired or something has happened,” says Chamberlain, who sees both insured and uninsured patients.

But change is coming.On Feb. 4, 2009, President Barack Obama signed legislation

that will expand health care to more than 4 million children by 2013. It was the reauthorization of the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

“I refuse to accept that millions of our kids fail to reach their full potential because we fail to meet their basic needs,” said President Obama in a statement during the signing of the bill. “In a decent society, there are certain obligations that are not subject to trade-offs or negotiation – health care for our children is one of those obligations.”

President George W. Bush vetoed similar legislation that crossed his desk twice. He said that it would lead to govern-ment-run health care, or socialized medicine.

In 2007, the U.S. Census Bureau found that 45.7 million people were uninsured — more than 8 million were children. Of those covered by health insurance, 83 million are covered by government health care.

The original bill was created during the Clinton ad-ministration in 1997 for families that didn’t make enough money to purchase health care but made too much to qualify for Medicaid.

The bill will now cover legal immigrants and pregnant women. The new legislation eliminates a five-year waiting period before legal immigrants could be covered. It also covers a child’s mental health.

The current legislation uses taxes from the sale of tobacco to offset the rise in spending.

But where did they get the model for insuring children who need help but who don’t fall into the poverty category?

Right here in Santa Clara County.The county is full of extremes. Silicon Valley residents can

reach the height of prosperity or the depth of depravity. According to the Census Bureau, the median income of Santa Clara County is $84,265 compared to the rest of the state at $59,928.

The poverty level for a four-person home is $22,050, accord-ing to the United States Department of Health and Human Services. But in Santa Clara County, that will barely support one person. So families that make more than the poverty level do not qualify for federal aid, and yet they still struggle to find the money necessary to insure themselves and their children.

At least eight Californians die each day because they are unin-sured, according to a report released by Families USA, a national health care advocacy organization in Washington, D.C.

In 2000, the Santa Clara Family Health Plan, along with Working Partnerships USA (an organization of the local labor council) and People Acting in Community Together made plans to insure the county’s children. This privately funded initiative would also have no restriction regarding immigration and has an eligibility income level of up to 250 percent of the federal poverty level. The program is called Healthy Kids.

“It was estimated 13 percent of the children in the county did not have health coverage — no health, eye, dental, or men-tal health coverage,” says Kathleen King, the executive director of the Santa Clara Family Health Foundation. “We have less than 3 percent currently without insurance.”

This was the first program like this in the nation. It was a radical idea to insure all children in the county. The funding for this group was initially from private donors and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, but that has grown to include the City of San Jose, the County of Santa Clara and more.

A study by the University of San Francisco has also shown that children who have access to medical coverage are less likely to miss school and don’t go into emergency care as fre-quently. Parents also have more peace of mind because they know their children will receive medical care when they need it. An additional survey conducted by the university showed that children enrolled in Healthy Kids were more likely to get preventative care as well as dental care than those without.

Making Children a Priority

44 SUMMER 2009

“Healthy Kids has improved the health of children in the Bay Area,” King said in an e-mail. “In 1998, one in every seven children did not have health coverage. Physicians are happier. They are seeing more children but because the children are receiving the medications they need, their doctors are more satisfied with their work. Healthy Kids is one of the most suc-cessful policy efforts to come out of Santa Clara County and has taught key groups how to work together.”

The survey also found that the children enrolled in Healthy Kids generally have two parents where only one is employed, and 76 percent of the families had two parents living at home. Most of the families that are enrolled in Healthy Kids have lived in Santa Clara County for more than three years.

According to King, other counties have followed Santa Clara’s example and have expanded access to health care for children in low-income families. More than 29 counties now have Healthy Kids-type programs with more than 88,000 children who now have health coverage that would not otherwise have it.

After signing up for Healthy Kids, parents would find they were eligible for Medi-Cal or Healthy Families programs, which brought increased funding from the state.

In addition to Healthy Kids, Children’s Health Initiative was established to inform the public about different available programs, such as Medi-Cal or nonprofits.

“The foundations that have been in the program for eight years expected to support the inception, prove the benefits of health care for all children and move these children into a state or federal program,” King says.

Healthy Kids’ biggest obstacle: funding. And now Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has suggested cutting Healthy Families and other state programs as an answer to California’s budget woes, according to a May 22 San Francisco Chronicle article. The article also says that this would eliminate health care to over 1 million children, and California would lose billions of dollars in federal matching funds.

A June 3 San Francisco Chronicle article states that the budget must be balanced by June 15 or the state will run out of money by the end of July. In the article Schwarzeneg-

ger says that health care, education, parks and safety would not be cut until after cuts were made to the Waste Management Board. And though many legislators expressed concern that the governor is going too far in his cuts, others felt that California would have no choice but to cut these programs.

But even with California’s problems, the nation is trying to move in the right direction.

On Jan. 29, the U.S. Senate approved the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009, better known as the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP. Once signed into law, this legislation will continue coverage for 6 million to 7 million children and increase that coverage to 4 million more.

“With the expansion of SCHIP, if our state agrees to sup-port funding, some of this [Healthy Kids funding] will happen, but it will not be for all low-income children,” King says.

On Feb. 4, Obama signed this legislation into law, making children a priority in the United States – something that Santa Clara County has been doing for almost 10 years.

“It’s hard to overstate the toll this takes on our families: the sleepless nights worrying that someone’s going to get hurt, or praying that a sick child gets better on her own,” Obama said at the bill signing. “The decisions that no parent should ever have to make – how long to put off that doctor’s appointment, whether to fill that prescription, whether to let a child play outside, knowing that all it takes is one accident, one injury, to send your family into financial ruin.”

Santa Clara County saw a need in the health care field and stepped in for these needy families. It started with a few people knowing that something had to be done, and then they did it. //

children are uninsured in the U.S.

of them live in Santa Clara

County

71,000

8.1MILLION

Support the Healthy Family Foundation

by donating atHealthyKidsFund.org

45SHiFT mag.us

Source: Center of Disease Control

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How far will energy go?That depends on how we use it. At HP, we’re focusing our energy on developing products that use less and conserve more. In fact, we estimate that for every 12 people who use the power-saving features built into HP computers and monitors, the amount of CO2 saved is equal to removing one car from the road. An environmentally sustainable future is possible. We’ve got the energy to make it happen. Go to hp.com/go/forward.

used to teach school, but in San Josewith a family of five, I had a hard time making it in 1999. The salary came

once a month and it paid rent. My wife at the time took care of the other bills. She loved those credit cards though, and we were over our head in no time.

The dot-com boom was still strong, so I looked for a job in the industry. In a few months, I was a technical writer. My finan-cial problems were solved, and I was con-fident that I would never again look at my children and wonder if the lights would be on the next day.

It’s ten years later. The economy is the worst it has been in many of our lifetimes. I’m living with my daughter, my girlfriend, and her son. I have been laid off three times in the last ten years. Twice I had to go on unemployment.

Most recently, a contract job ended in May of 2008, and I was out of work until October. The cash and financial safety that I left teaching for evaporated like a dream. My girlfriend and I went from eating at the Left Bank in Santana Row to wondering if we would eat at all.

It becomes a game of numbers when you head into poverty. For me, the num-bers push their way to the surface of my mind late at night and drag me across my bedroom floor to the couch in the family room to try and make them work.

I added up the numbers as many ways as possible, but the answer always came out the same. I had $1800 coming in a month through unemployment. I had $1800 of rent to pay. A few months like this strained my savings. There is only so much you can scrape out of a barrel.

So rent was covered as long as we could go without food and electricity until I got a new job. I sat on the couch, looked at the scrap of paper where I ran the numbers, and pressed my fingertips into my temples.

How could this have happened? I did everything I was supposed to. I graduated college. My job was directly related to my English degree. I had nine years experience in my second profession.

“How are we going to eat?” my girlfriend would ask. She stays at home with our two special needs kids, neither of which does well in day care.

One man’s journey from Santana Row cuisine to the bread line

voice // JIM KOHLJim is the author of four books, including

“Noble Poverty: A Teacher’s Life in Silicon Valley.”

I“How could this have happened? I did every‑ thing I was supposed to. I graduated college... I had nine years experience in my second profession.”

CHAPTER in povertyA

510.557.0034www.JACKandMATTphoto.com

WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHY

JACK&HUSTING MATTMOUNTFORD

See our special contribution to

SHiFT magazine, page 22.

“Choose a job you love, and you’ll never have to work a day in your life.” -Confucious

“Something will work out, hon-ey,” I said. A paper promise is bet-ter than no promise. I didn’t know what else to say. My job and salary were strong when she came to live with me. Now I was a failure living off the state.

We learned of the Second Har-vest Food Bank and Sacred Heart Community Service. Both organiza-tions will give families food a couple times a month. We were down to a few pieces of bread and a couple cans of vegetables in the house.

I hated it. I worked hard for my college degree. I worked hard at my last contract job, and unemployment gave me 22 percent of what my gross salary had been. I refused to believe I was a charity case as I stood in line on a Monday morning at 8 a.m. to pick up some food. I looked at the floor and moved up in line only when the person’s shoes in front of me shuffled forward.

“Excuse me…” a man’s voice said.Oh my God, I thought, They found

me out. They know I have a college degree and that I have a place to live. I’m going to get kicked out.

“The bread here on this cart,” he said, “has a separate line. Please only take two items from the cart.”

Bread lines. These are the stories my grandparents would tell, but that couldn’t happen in the days of the Internet and on-demand programming, could it? Not in America, where the president told us how great things were.

At the front of the line, a woman took items from her box of food and

asked to trade it for other items that she saw on the

shelf. Beggars and choosers do exist, and I looked exactly like them to the people working

the counter. I sighed and put my eyes back on the ground where they belonged.

At the front of the line, they gave me my box of food. My girlfriend and I put our package of shame and

hope in the car and took it home.I applied for jobs every day. I got

some phone calls and took some interviews, only to be passed over time and time again. “I want to talk to a few more people,” one hiring manager told me. “It’s an employers’ market, you realize.”

Maybe it wasn’t the economy. Maybe it was me. Maybe this was the best I deserved. Maybe my kind of hard work was not the kind that, in theory, would be rewarded in a free-market capitalist society.

The groceries didn’t last us the full two weeks we had to wait until we could go back to the food bank again. We had to use some of my unemployment money for basic food, and we ate a lot of peanut but-ter sandwiches.

“Daddy, can we go see the new High School Musical movie?” my daughter asked.

“Maybe, honey. Money is a little hard right now, and movies are a little expensive, but I’ll see what I can do.” Only a crappy father would bring his child into the world to live like this.

Twice my girlfriend’s parents bailed us out for rent. My ex-wife and her boyfriend bought us gro-ceries a couple times. My parents

helped with rent too. I sold every CD the used CD store would take. I sold a lot of the books I’d been collecting since high school. My girl-friend sent her jewelry to the Cash for Gold people. I sold my wedding ring on eBay.

The soup kitchen serves food to the hungry at 4:30 p.m. each day.

“This your first time here?” one couple asked.

“Yes.”“The food here’s real good. Real

good.”I smiled. A friend of theirs rode up on a

bike draped with plastic bags loaded down with recyclables.

My stomach knotted as it got closer to 4:30. I couldn’t do it. If I didn’t do it, my daughter wouldn’t do it, and then she wouldn’t eat to-night. I don’t remember what they served me that night. I couldn’t describe the taste to you anymore than I could explain the specifics be-tween two pieces of blank printer paper. But my family ate.

Humans are supposed to be adaptable. They developed in many different places on earth, and no matter the location, they did what they had to do to make a life for themselves. I did what I had to do as well. I adapted to being a char-ity case with a college degree. I got used to disappointing my daughter time and time again with the list of things I could not afford. I accepted help from those who cared about us. With all my evolution into a pov-erty-stricken, educated man, I never got over the shame.

I just want to work and provide the needs and wants my daugh-ter has. I’m not asking to be rich, though I wouldn’t turn away mil-lions, but just existing is not enough. I guess what got me through were hope and the love from my family. You have to believe that the oppor-tunity is out there and will present itself when the time is right. Though with no food in the cabinet and no payday in sight, always keeping hope is the trick I’ve yet to learn. //

“Maybe it wasn’t the economy. Maybe it was me.”

49SHiFT mag.usimages // JACK HUSTING

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editor-in-chief // THOMAS ULRICH PREVIEW

sk Pedro Tortoledo to explain world trade and he offers a homegrown proverb that

reads like a migrant worker’s article of faith: No hay mal que por bien no venga – there is no bad that comes without a good.

Before trade representatives from Canada, Mexico and the United States ratified the North Ameri-can Free Trade Agreement, Pedro harvested 20,000 pounds of corn a year from his 8-acre rancho in Jalisco. Like thousands of campesi-nos from the region, he abandoned the land he loved because he could not compete with farmers from the U.S. who sold subsidized corn to his neighbors for as much as 30 percent below the cost of production.

Once the agreement took effect, Pedro joined a groundswell of mi-grant farmers desperately searching

for work. Some drifted to northern Mexico to pick tomatoes for $7 a day. Others, like Pedro, endured a treacherous cross-country journey that brought them to the wind-swept coastal terraces of central California.

But Pedro has reason to celebrate. Jim Cochran, president of Swanton Berry Farm, has awarded him and other members of his field crew part ownership of Cochran’s 80-acre organic vegetable, kiwi, olallie-berry and strawberry farm.

“The plan is revolutionary,” says Mar-tha Guzman Aceves, a legislative ad-vocate for the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation. “It creates wealth for the lowest wage earners in the state.”

In its first year alone, the shares and cash contribution allocated to Pedro as part of the plan are worth as much as a contract farmer pays his family to harvest sugar cane from the fields where he once grew corn.

Pedro and his co-workers at Swan-ton Berry Farm have more to cel-ebrate than the nation’s first em-ployee stock option plan for migrant workers. Learn more about how forward-looking farmers are chang-ing the face of U.S. agriculture in the winter issue of SHiFT Magazine.

AThe innovation and celebration of Pedro Tortoledo

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51SHiFT mag.us

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“We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics.”Franklin Delano RooseveltSecond Inaugural 1937

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