http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=21c82357371996cf8240a2158b4b6d4aNew America Media, News Report, Ketaki Gokhale, Posted: Jan 11, 2008
Editor's Note: As the economy worsens, Mexican day laborers living on the streets and accessing local assistance programs in California may be the canary in the coal mine for many Americans. Ketaki Gokhale is a writer at New America Media.
OAKLAND, Calif. – For someone who’s been living under the awnings of a church for the past month, Angel Gonzalez, a day laborer from Mexico, looks amazingly dapper. On most mornings, a man lets him into the church to take a shower, and then he heads over to the Street Level Health Project office on a gritty block of International Boulevard for a steaming cup of coffee and a bowl of hot food.
Hunger and homelessness among day laborers have always been cyclical in nature, says Meghan Woods, a case manager for the Oakland Street Level Project, a nonprofit agency that provides food and medical care for day laborers. But this winter, the number, and the desperation, of the homeless has exceeded expectations. Many speculate that it is a harbinger of hard times to come. “One family drove all the way from Seattle to see us, and we’ve seen lots of workers who live on the railroad tracks,” Woods notes.
Head 25 miles northwest to the smaller city of San Rafael, and the situation is much the same. The St. Vincent de Paul Society runs a soup kitchen there, just a few miles away from the Canal district, where 70 percent of the population is Latino and most work on the day labor market. More day laborers and “working poor” are showing up, which Steve Boyer – the organization's executive director – attributes to the recent downturn in the housing market. “If the economy continues to head down this path, we’ll continue to find more and more people soming in,” Boyer predicts.
According to data from the Construction Industry Research Board, the number of building permits issued in California this past November was down 45 percent from the same period the previous year. Immigrant day laborers, whose very survival depends on the availability of construction and landscaping work, were hit first and hit the hardest by the decline in housing.
Laura Perez, executive director of the Street Level Project, thinks that the threat of deportation may also have a role to play in the uptick of homelessness. “Guys disappeared last year from the corners,” she says, referring to the aggressive U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids conducted throughout 2007. The threat of raids gradually faded in Oakland, but many immigrant day laborers discovered they’d lost the nerve to go back on the streets looking for work.
For Angel Gonzalez, this winter marks the second time in his nearly 20 years in the U.S. that he’s been homeless. The first time was the previous Christmas, in 2006. “We’re good guys,” he says. “We stay away from drugs, drinking, and we’ve been working hard for a long time. But now it’s become very hard to find work on the corners.”
FULL story at link.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
