“No matter how hard I work and how much I save, it’s still not enough for me”

Mrs. Wendy, a Honduran mother of three, believes that only the good will of a friend allowed her to continue living with her family in California.

“The rent is terrible,” said the woman, who has two jobs and is struggling to meet her family’s basic expenses.

A friend let her stay in her three-bedroom house without charging her rent. “We thought it was temporary help while I got a job and could save a little,” said Mrs. Wendy, “but how much I work and how much I save, it’s just not enough for me.”

On weekends he works in a restaurant, and on weekdays he cleans houses, for more than a year he has not had a day off. Because two of her three babies are Americans, she is helped with food or medical care if they get sick, but she cannot rent a place to live.

“In places where they rent apartments, they told me that if they are well paid for one person with a stable job,” says Mrs. Wendy. “Now it’s difficult to rent, but it’s much more difficult for me, I need at least two bedrooms, my income is not very good, I have three dependents and I work without a contract, nothing is fixed.”

The immigrant mentions that she had a used car but had to sell it to get to southern California, the only place she was offered help. “I don’t know how long we will be like this, but we live in such a fragile situation that any small change is like a tragedy for us,” he said.

According to a study just released by the nonprofit United Way of California, Mrs. Wendy’s life is similar to that of more than 3.7 million families in California.

Those who face the most lack of resources despite working are Hispanics (51 percent) and African Americans (45 percent).

Seven out of ten single mothers in California, or 576,000 households, earn less than they spend monthly on maintaining their home.

Hispanic immigrant single mothers bear the heaviest burden, according to this study, they represent the sum total of all the most economically vulnerable groups, even if they work full-time.

Nearly 60 percent of immigrant families in California, 37 percent of naturalized Americans, and 29 percent of Native Americans struggle to make ends meet.

The biggest expense faced by families in California is housing. All communities in the state are facing this situation, but it is getting worse from Los Angeles County to the Mexican border.

The price of the apartment that the person we identified as B lived in went from $450 to over $3,000 a month without any change to justify it.

When the true cost measure is applied in California, the results show that families with incomes below their state spending are 240 percent larger than those registered in the official poverty line.

Elise Buick, director of United Way in Los Angeles, said in a video conference call that in the county, “a third of families are struggling to make ends meet, but that includes at least half of Hispanic and African American families.”

“The biggest problem is housing, housing and housing,” Buik said.

“The days of renting a decent apartment for less than $1,000 are long gone. And while we see that half of the families in Los Angeles pay more than a third of their income on rent, many families spend 90 percent of their income on housing.

Buick stresses that in order for the family to survive, they now need at least three full-time minimum wages; Thus, we see that many families spend a third of their earnings on housing.

The outlook does not appear to be changing anytime soon as “not only is there no more affordable housing, but we also have a 200,000-unit shortfall” in Los Angeles County, he warned.

The situation is similar in other regions of the country. Marie Perez Dowling, president of Kern County’s United Way, which serves the entire San Joaquin Valley, said a family of four in her region needs an average income of more than $78,000 a year to survive and be financially secure.

According to that average, “two out of five households are currently struggling to survive” in the Central Valley, said the director of the region, which has the largest agricultural production in the state.

Henry Gascon, the organization’s director of programs and policy, said it was “unacceptable that in a nation that is the fourth largest economy in the world, 34 percent of families barely make ends meet.”

He explained that this is less acceptable “when we know that in 97 percent of these homes, at least one adult works full-time to support their families.”

Assemblyman Miguel Santiago of Los Angeles commented that the report demonstrates the suffering he saw in the state of California, that “Being the fourth largest economy in the world, people live in extreme poverty when they cannot pay for their roof and food.” “.

Santiago stressed that he will use the report to propose “a budget that more reflects California’s values” and contributes to poverty reduction.

For his part, Senator Steve Padilla of San Diego said he would start a conversation with his fellow legislators to “address poverty in California’s labor sector and convince them that this economic model is not sustainable.”

The senator praised the United Wat study for providing credible information to present to the legislature.