Gilroy – By day, Shawna Osteen sells soft pretzels to the
shoppers who peruse the Gilroy outlets, looking for a quick snack
before they hit the sales.
Gilroy – By day, Shawna Osteen sells soft pretzels to the shoppers who peruse the Gilroy outlets, looking for a quick snack before they hit the sales. At night, she scrapes together meals for her and 7-year-old daughter Ashley: soups and pastas purchased with food stamps at the 99-cent store, rice and beans donated by St. Mary’s Church.
“I’ve got to shop wisely,” she explains, gesturing to the cabinets in her narrow kitchen. To be self sufficient in Santa Clara County, a single parent needs to make at least $22 per hour, according to county advocacy groups. Osteen’s $9 hourly wage falls far short.
The single mother works Santa Clara County’s No. 1 most common job – retail salesperson – but it doesn’t feel so No. 1. Until recently, Osteen poured more than half her monthly pay into a two-bedroom Gilroy apartment; now, she rides the bus to work from a pint-sized one-bedroom in San Martin. When she can’t spare bus fare, she makes the 60-minute walk to work. It’s been three years since she bought herself clothing, and even small luxuries – a new toy for Ashley, school pictures, a fast-food meal – are beyond her budget.
“Families are spending the bulk of their incomes just on rent, utilities and food,” said David Cox, director of St. Joseph’s Family Center. “Something has to give. These families are literally living on the edge.”
Countywide, families are feeling the squeeze as expenses rise and incomes drop. Real median household income dropped 11 percent from 2000 to 2005 – a $9,011 decline, according to Working Partnerships, a San Jose nonprofit aimed at narrowing the gap between rich and poor. Today, roughly 20 percent of area workers earn less than $12.27 an hour, the San Jose living wage as of July 2006. Poverty has risen, and the middle class is thinning while more and more workers earn less than $10,000 a year.
“Living here isn’t what we thought it would be,” said Rebecca Prieto, as translated by St. Joseph’s family partner Erica Leon. Prieto moved to Gilroy six years ago from Veracruz, Mexico, and commutes every night with her husband, Daniel Pineda, to a San Jose restaurant, where the two work as cooks. Their two oldest children, both teens, clean stables in San Martin to pitch in. “You have to work hard day-to-day, and we don’t earn much.”
High rents lead to overcrowding
and longer commutes
Prieto and Pineda earn $2,600 a month and pay $1,500 to rent three tiny rooms, tucked behind an Alexander Street home. Their five children sleep on bunk beds and mattresses, sometimes sharing beds when the family rents the third room to make ends meet. In 2005, nearly 23 percent of Santa Clara County renters spent more than half their income on housing, an increase from 18.3 percent in 2000.
The couple has applied for Section 8 housing subsidies, but the waiting list is long, especially for their sprawling family. Moving farther from San Jose might spare them some rent, but the couple already shells out $130 a week to fuel their minivan. Rents are a delicate balancing act. Move to the city and you’ll pay more rent; move away and you’ll pay more gas.
“Most people just overpay,” said Dennis Lalor, executive director of South County Housing. “The other ‘strategies’ are overcrowding, settling for substandard housing or moving to an area where the job market is weaker and housing costs are lower. So you can earn wages here, pay rent there – but then your transit costs go up. None of those options are any good.”
Osteen pays $650 a month for her crowded one-bedroom apartment off a gravel road in San Martin. In the bedroom, two mattresses jostle for space. A dresser barely fits into a corner. But the single mother is relieved to finally have a place of her own, cramped though it might be. In the past, she’s split an even-smaller apartment with her ex-husband’s mother, and rented a room in a San Martin boarding house “full of drugs, lots of drama. Things I didn’t need to be around, let alone my daughter.”
Drive through the Glen View neighborhood in central Gilroy, and you’ll see dozens of trim, single-family homes, the picture of the American dream. But watch the number of cars that pull in, and the overcrowding becomes evident, said Dennis Grundhoefer, who does community outreach and education for GANAS, the Glen View Alliance.
“It’s deceiving,” said Grundhoefer. “Single-family residences are being rented out to multiple families – usually at least two families, with an average of two or three kids in each.”
Childcare, health expenses add up
Sky-high housing costs mean families scrimp on other necessities, even food: In 2005, 99,798 adults experienced food shortage: nearly 18,000 more than in 2001, Working Partnerships reported. More than half of them had jobs. To keep her cupboards stocked, Osteen relies on donations from St. Mary’s Church, food stamps and the occasional two-for-one sale at Safeway.
“Otherwise,” she said, “I can’t afford a dang thing there.”
Thankfully, some expenses have lessened. Health care has become more accessible for Santa Clara County children, due to public health insurance programs aimed at kids. But for their parents, the average price of annual family job-based health coverage in the county has nearly doubled in price, from $1,477 to $2,883 in the past six years, Working Partnerships calculated. Osteen heaps praise on Medi-Cal, which covered her expenses to remove an ovarian cyst and smooth out post-surgical complications last year; Prieto and Pineda enrolled their children in Medi-Cal, but haven’t enrolled themselves. Job-based health insurance would cost the couple $300 a month, Pineda said.
Child care is another headache. The average cost of childcare has risen 40 percent from 2000 to 2005, according to Working Partnerships. Parents who earn minimum wage can’t pay someone else minimum wage to watch their children, said Grundhoefer, let alone something more. More frequently, parents split childcare with friends or family, paying them what they can. Prieto’s cousin watches their five children at night, when the couple leaves for San Jose; the couple pays her $30 to $50 a week, when they have the cash.
“For families with children at home, the cost of day care and the cost of transportation can be outrageous,” said Cox. “Many two-parent families would love to have dual incomes, but the gas makes it a moot point.”
Those with dual incomes fear they’re losing touch with their kids. Gangs and drugs menace their children, and many parents can’t be home to ward them off. Asked if he wants more time to spend with his children, Pineda said, “Of course.”
“But we have to work,” said Prieto.
One-quarter of county households need help to make ends meet
The explosion of South County retail has brought hundreds of new jobs to the area, mainly sales jobs such as Osteen’s. In the county, more people work as retail salespersons than in any other occupation, at a median hourly wage of $10.73, Working Partnerships reports. Highly-paid software engineers are a close second; $9.67-hourly cashiers aren’t far behind. Gilroy’s retail renaissance has been particularly notable, making the town’s name all but synonymous with shopping.
“Retail has increased dramatically in this area,” said Larry Cope, director of the Gilroy Economic Development Corporation. “It provides jobs for individuals that might have been unemployed before, or maybe worked for a lower wage.”
Overall, he said, “wages continue to go up, but they don’t always keep up with the cost of living in any particular area.”
Despite the proliferation of big-box stores and strip malls, job availability has dropped 15.4 percent countywide from 2000 to 2005, according to Working Partnerships. Manufacturing and business services have declined 30 percent, and electrical assembly jobs, which paid a median hourly wage of $12.86, dropped 70 percent. The figures worry Sylvia Montoya, who guides local workers toward better-paying jobs, offering training, computer access and resume help as a supervisor at the Morgan Hill One-Stop.
“In my opinion, we don’t have enough jobs,” she said. “Retail just doesn’t pay enough.”
“Sure, we have Target. We have Wal-Mart,” added Abbie Serrano, a One-Stop job placement specialist. “But they’re paying such low wages. With that money, how can you survive?”
The nonprofit group Californians for Family Economic Self-Sufficiency defines self-sufficiency as the minimum income necessary to meet a family’s needs without assistance, based on local costs. For a single parent of one, Santa Clara County’s self-sufficiency wage is $22.10; for two parents of two children, the wage is $14.11 each. Twenty-five percent of county households fail this standard, requiring help from public agencies or private charities to get by. Since 2001, Working Partnerships reports, the number of county households receiving CalWORKS aid has grown 38 percent.
Unfortunately, said Grundhoefer, the self-sufficiency standard is far above the cut-off for many federal programs, which rely on a national poverty standard that doesn’t account for the Bay Area’s bloated costs. For HeadStart, for example, a family of four needs to be receiving public assistance or earning less than $20,650 a year.
“In the area where we live,” he said, “that means you’re probably living under a bridge.”
Fortunately, Osteen hasn’t had to be self-sufficient: Family members have pitched in, offering rides to work, watching her daughter on her weekend shifts, and sharing food and furniture as they can. They’re the reason Osteen has stayed in South County, despite the soaring rents.
“I don’t want to uproot my daughter,” she said, “and not having my family – that would be the hardest thing of all, for me.”
Behind her apartment, alongside the small green patch of land where she grows sweet peas and lettuce, she collects aluminum cans, bagging them to redeem for nickels apiece. Every few months, the haul brings in about $30, which Osteen gives to her daughter as allowance. One month, Ashley spent it on a camping trip with her aunt, exchanging the bills for graham crackers and marshmallows. It’s a small indulgence, but one that her mother is happy to give.
“I don’t want to keep saying no all the time,” Osteen said firmly, as Ashley yelped and giggled outside the apartment. “I’d like to reward her for doing well in school, for helping me around the house. I want to be able to give her a ‘yes’ a little more often.”
