Ventura County Civic Alliance — Livable Communities Newsletter

The Business Case for Racial Equity

SCAG (Southern California Association of Governments) Facts

by Stacy Roscoe

Top Curve: High Income (>$60,000) saw job losses of 13.0%

 Center Curve: Middle Income ($27,000 – $60,000) saw losses of 22.4%

 Bottom Curve: Low Income (<$27,000) saw losses of 35.1%

SCAG is composed of 191 cities, 6 counties, 19.1 million people, and 67% of California’s disadvantaged communities. All of this has created the 15th largest economy in the world with a $1.2 trillion Regional GDP. SCAG has been tasked with developing an Inclusive Economic Recovery Strategy (IERS). This article is a summary of some of the baseline data used in SCAG’s work that details the issues at hand for developing an inclusive economic recovery in Ventura County, California, and the rest of the country.

Status of the SCAG Economy:

Before the pandemic, SCAG median household income grew 7.1% in 2019 to $76,981 (faster than the national rate of growth).

As the graph above shows, lower-income SCAG residents saw higher employment loses between January 2020 and April 2020, and will likely see a slower recovery

Baseline Data – Ventura County

1. Even before the onset of the pandemic, Ventura County was experiencing a prolonged period of weakness.

2. The county’s labor force shrank in each of the last 7 consecutive years.

3. The county’s population shrank in 3 of the last 4 years, and net domestic migration has been negative since 2011.

4. Ventura County GDP growth declined in 4 of the last 5 years.

5. Job growth is dominated by low paying sectors while high paying sectors are in sustained decline. This divide is creating bi-model distribution of incomes in Ventura County.

6. Because the impacts of the pandemic are felt disproportionately among the economically vulnerable, SCAG expects pre-pandemic compositional changes to accelerate.

Baseline Data – Statewide

1. The income gap has grown faster in California than in the country as a whole.*

2. The richest Californians have seen record wealth gains this year.*

3. Those that already work paycheck to paycheck have been hit hardest.*

Baseline Data – Nationwide

1. Black and Hispanic workers faced 1.6 to 2.0 times the unemployment rates of white counterparts.**

2. Households with less than $30,000 in income faced double the unemployment rates.**

3. Women have accounted for 56% of workforce exits since the start of the pandemic, despite making up 48% of the workforce.**

4. The average earnings of persons of color in the US are 63% of the average earnings of whites of the same age and gender – roughly $25,000 per year versus $40,000.***

The Economic Impact of Closing the Gaps

1. Raising the average earnings of people of color to match those of whites by closing gaps in health, education, and opportunity would generate an additional $1 trillion in earnings, a 15% gain.***

2. Under current consumer spending patterns, $1 trillion in higher earnings would translate to an additional $800 billion in spending.***

3. Addressing racial inequalities by 2050 would result in an additional $2.6trillion in spending.***

4. Closing the earnings gap for people of color would increase federal tax revenues by $450 billion and state and local tax revenues by $100 billion annually.***

5. Between 1975 and 2018, if median income had grown at the same rate as GDP, median earners would make $92,000 per year versus the current median income of $50,000 per year.****

Developing an inclusive economic recovery is definitely good business and good economics!!!

SCAG will continue work to develop its strategy and will continue stakeholder reviews through the summer before its final report is published.

SOURCES:

*  2020 California Governor’s Budget Proposal

**  McKinsey & Company, Achieving an Inclusive US Economic Recovery, Feb 3, 2021

***  The Business Case for Racial Equity, a Strategy for growth, by Ani Turner (Altarum) – WK Kellogg Foundation 2018

**** Trends in income from 1975 to 2018, Rand Education and Labor, Sept 2020

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United Together We Can End Homelessness

by Amy Duganne, Director of Homelessness Initiatives, United Way of Ventura County

Creating opportunities for everyone in Ventura County means addressing the issues of housing stability and homelessness. Limited affordable housing supply, extremely low vacancy rates, and prohibitive and rising rents make home access for those with housing barriers exceedingly challenging. Homelessness and housing instability have only been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, with the crisis’s impact spanning the job market, rental market, and housing programs county-wide. Eviction moratoria are keeping households housed, but also force stagnation within our rental market, impeding would-be renters. As the gap between housing costs and incomes widens, the outcome is that more of our community become homeless.

The face of homelessness is diverse: young families with children, transitional age youth, seniors, veterans — all ages, genders, races, and ethnicities. Although each story is unique, all people experiencing homelessness share one thing — they do not have a safe nor appropriate place to live.

The simple, but not easy, solution

The solution to homelessness is straightforward: housing ends homelessness. Everyone needs a safe place to call home. When we connect individuals and families experiencing homelessness to housing and services, we provide the platform from which they can improve their quality of life, pursue goals, and thrive in the community. Prioritizing housing represents a belief that people need food and a place to live before they are able to find employment, budget properly, or confront substance use issues. Studies have shown that those who are housed are more likely to participate in job training, attend school, discontinue substance use, reduce instances of domestic violence, and spend fewer days hospitalized. Additionally, providing access to housing can directly result in cost savings for communities because housed people are less likely to utilize emergency services, including hospitals, emergency shelters, and jails.

Moral urgency and community impact

Individuals and families living in cars, tents, and other provisional housing cannot wait for help – they need it now. Recognizing that affordable housing cannot be built fast enough and looking to mobilize and inspire an integral segment of our community, the United Way of Ventura County launched a Landlord Engagement Program (LEP) as part of its initiative to end homelessness. The program aims to increase the rental housing available to those with housing vouchers and housing subsidies. By engaging landlords and offering participation incentives, the LEP is recruiting, cultivating, retaining, and growing the number of housing champions within our community. The LEP is achieving landlord participation by addressing their key needs and concerns:

·        Responsive customer service

·        Timely rental payments

·        Assistance with inspection processes attached to housing voucher programs

·        Liaising with the housing/homelessness system

·        Mitigation of loss of income during move-in lag time

·        Connecting tenants to supportive services and education in good tenancy

·        Repair/damage mitigation, should the need arise

The LEP integrates with housing and homeless service programs county-wide, dedicating itself to housing search activities. Acknowledging the strained capacity of programs within the broader system, the LEP also provides supplemental tenant case management services to help meet the intensity of support often needed by those with housing vouchers trying to locate a rental, complete the application process, move in, and remain stably housed. This purposeful and action-oriented strategy is working. In sixteen months since the LEP’s inception, over fifty households have been housed throughout Ventura County.

Shifting the narrative

United together we can end homelessness in Ventura County. Public awareness is critical — educating, destigmatizing, and dispelling myths around what it means to be homeless and what is requisite to prevent and end homelessness. Advocacy is critical — driving public policy, engaging community and leadership in political advocacy, recommending solutions and activating resources. Compassion is critical — “It is hard to argue that housing is not a fundamental human need. Decent, affordable housing should be a basic right for everybody in this country. The reason is simple: without stable shelter, everything else falls apart.” (Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City)

For more information please visit: unitedtoendhomelessnessvc.org