Poverty plagues `new Appalachia'
Fertile California area home to city with top concentration of poor

By Michael Martinez
Tribune national correspondent
Published September 18, 2006


FRESNO, Calif. -- His life broken, Brian Dixon, a journeyman electrician, is happy to be hoeing weeds in the San Joaquin Valley for just $7 an hour. Though these vast flatlands are a breadbasket to America, the poverty here runs so deep that some call this region the new Appalachia.

Here in Fresno, recently designated by the Brookings Institution as having the nation's worst concentration of poor people, Dixon, 42, is living in one of 22 sheds that resemble an upscale shantytown. The place, operated by a charity, is called Village of Hope, and indeed it is. A year ago, Dixon was so depressed, he says, that he wanted to end it all. He lost his family in the process.



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Now he talks of promising tomorrows, but he holds no illusion about poverty, whose stubborn presence here is echoed throughout the country, according to 2005 figures released by the Census Bureau last month.

National poverty rates are stagnant, with 1 out of 8 Americans, or 37 million, living below the poverty line, defined as having an annual income below about $10,000 for an individual or $20,000 for a family of four.

Last year was the first year since 1999 in which real median household income showed an increase, reaching $46,326 from $45,817.

The statistics, however, offered a stark portrait of the Midwest, which was depicted as home to half of the 10 worst big cities for poverty. Cleveland and Detroit ranked No. 1 and No. 2, respectively.



A `slap in the face'

A year ago, Fresno received "a left-handed slap in the face," in the words of Fresno Rescue Mission chief Rev. Larry Arce, when the Brookings Institution said the city's poor were the most segregated in the U.S., with 43.5 percent concentrated in extreme-poverty neighborhoods. New Orleans was second at 37.7 percent--but that was before Hurricane Katrina.

The finding startled researchers because concentrated poverty had been associated with the Rust Belt, Brookings fellow Alan Berube said.

Then, last December, U.S. congressional researchers likened the economic distress of the 250-mile-long San Joaquin Valley to Appalachia. That comparison came despite the valley being home to five of nation's 10 most agriculturally productive counties.

John Steinbeck found inspiration for his "Grapes of Wrath" in this valley, but unlike the dirt-poor migrants who settled here during the Dust Bowl, it's low-skilled Latin American and Southeast Asian immigrants who heavily fill the impoverished ranks, said Antonio Avalos, an assistant economics professor at California State University, Fresno. Low-paying seasonal agricultural work also contributes to the problem, he said.

Dixon, the electrician now hoeing weeds, offered his assessment of the Fresno situation from the street level.

"It's hard to find a job around here. It's like pulling teeth," he said as he carried donated soup, hamburgers, beans and rice to his shed. "By the time you see it in the newspaper or on the Internet, the job's already been filled."

Avalos added that the poor's severe segregation in Fresno is the result of "abandonment."

"Go north in the city, everything is so beautiful there, the parks, the schools, the roads, the landscape. And then you go south. It's a completely different world. And we are the same city," he said. "It's kind of interesting, the way you see higher income levels north of the city and you also see the skin of people being whiter."



Efforts intensified

Fresno-area officials are stepping up the fight against hard-core poverty.

"There's no question that the divide between the poor and wealthy in this country is getting wider and wider," said Jim Connell, a former stockbroker who's now executive director of Poverello House, which runs Village of Hope. "It's a very dangerous situation over the long haul, for a democracy really."

The Skid Row outside his agency seems to invite the poor. Isolated. Mostly empty lots. Just a few homes. F Street is closed and gated for a block to accommodate a walled-in compound for Poverello House and other agencies. A few blocks away, two overpasses serve as sleeping quarters for other homeless.

Late last month, city officials dispatched crews in masks and gloves to clean up an encampment along two blocks of Santa Clara Street, just outside Poverello House. This was a hopeless void, soiled with human waste, yet homeless men and women napped or sat a foot or two away from the filth.

The day before, Mayor Alan Autry reportedly drove his black Jaguar to the homeless and warned them of the approaching forced evacuations. When orange-vested crews appeared, the homeless loaded their belongings into a fleet of shopping carts and moved to the overpasses; others later returned to the sidewalk.

"Where do they move us?" asked Susan Samarin, 49, who said she has been homeless for 4 1/2 years. She watched an army of city crews use front-loaders and trucks to haul away a hill of belongings.

City officials say nearby shelters offered plenty of space.

"What do you do?" asked city spokeswoman Rhonda Jorn, who had been a board member and employee for nine years at Poverello House.

Earlier this month, more than 350 city and county leaders in government, business and non-profit sectors held an unprecedented local summit on poverty.

"We all want to hit a home run and say, `My idea is going to wipe it out,'" said Gregory Barfield, chief of staff for City Councilwoman Cynthia Sterling, whose district contains many of the impoverished neighborhoods. "We have to work together to cross the finish line."

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mjmartinez@tribune.com



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