San Diego’s safety net is in tatters. There is no county hospital and no school of dentistry. In order to receive County Medical Services, the health care program for indigent adults, people have to sign a lien against any future property they might own. And so, a “student-run” program has become part of the safety net.
The number of unemployed in California, the rate of unemployment, the average duration of employment: all of these indicators have risen dramatically since 2007. However, there is a less-known job indicator that also has risen dramatically and may have more to do with stalling a job recovery in California than any other: the number of workers involuntarily working part-time.
An innovative program that helps drug addicts retake control of their lives with healthy eating, stress reduction and natural supplements has been cut from the Sacramento Drug Court’s recovery program because of budget shortfalls.
Adrian Avila was a 17-year-old street graffiti artist who had a job at a local hot dog stand when he wandered into the offices of Silicon Valley De-Bug eight years ago. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for. But he found it.
Oakland Unified School District’s Excel and Mandela high schools have found the right formula to keep students engaged and invested in educations – and they are sharing it with the public. With a focus on public service, Excel High School’s senior class recently stood before the student community and the public and discussed, presented the facts and defended their dissertations on varied topics. Some of these included teen pregnancy, homelessness, the affects of drugs and alcohol on families, single-parent households, literacy and even police violence.
The city of Citrus Heights might have been the least walkable city in the Sacramento region, and it faced significant challenges to changing that status. But with the help of the California Healthy Cities and Communities program and a process that leaned on residents for ideas and organization, the city has made significant progress.
Having been raised by immigrant grandparents, and being a farm worker myself, I found myself struggling as an undergraduate at Stanford University. Social and emotional support from two classmates, also from “low-performing” high schools and from immigrant families, helped pull me through. My dream was to return to the Central Valley as a physician to help smooth the way for others in similar circumstances to be successful in college and achieve their professional dreams.
If state revenues are climbing next year, why does California face an $18 billion budget shortfall? For a couple of reasons: mainly the need to retire this year’s deficit and cope with costs that are programmed to rise automatically in the year ahead.
The neighborhood kids who spend afternoons playing in Santa Ana’s Chepa’s Park may have heard tales of Josephina “Chepa” Andrade. The woman known as “La Reina de la Logan” united a generation of activists in a fight against city hall and helped to create the park that now bears her name. But they probably aren’t aware that her legacy is living on at the other side of the park’s handball court. One of Chepa’s four daughters recently moved with her extended family into a new, four-bedroom home after winning a city lottery to buy the house at below market rates.
An East Oakland center for young people is an oasis of hope in a community in crisis. It provides counseling, job training, recreation, health care and more. Soon it will host a series of meetings between Oakland police officers and local youth to try to reduce tension between law enforcement and the community.