By Sarah Arnquist
March 9, 2008

On a recent rainy afternoon, a dozen or so children jumped off a school bus in San Simeon and scurried toward their homes in a nearby motel.

Normally at 4 p. m., Erminia is still at work cleaning hotel rooms when her son, 10, and daughter, 7, get home from school. But on this day during the slow tourism season, she met them at the door.

While the children began their homework, Erminia made chilies rellenos for dinner on a two-burner camp stove. The smell of charred green peppers filled the cramped motel room--the family's home for a year. Before that, they shared a house in Cambria with two other families.

Nestled next to million-dollar homes in the bucolic hills of Cambria and amid the strip of motels in San Simeon live some of San Luis Obispo County's poorest residents.

Most are Hispanic. Many are recent immigrants. Some are documented. Some aren't. Erminia, whose last name is not given, is one of the latter.

Those living here provide the backbone for the tourism industry on the North Coast, cleaning motel rooms and washing dishes in restaurants. But despite working multiple jobs and putting in long hours, many cannot afford apartment rentals, which go for nearly $1,000 a month for a one-bedroom.

So instead, they triple up in homes or crowd into motel rooms. It is common here for a family of five to occupy a single bedroom or garage turned into a makeshift room, said Maria Mendoza, who works with Healthy Start, a school-based program to help disadvantaged families.

Motels don't require first and last month rent plus deposit. Motels also are furnished, and the monthly rate of $720 is feasible even for Erminia, who takes home $1,200 to $2,000 a month, depending on the season, or about $19,000 a year to support her children.

The 2008 federal annual poverty rate is $17,600 for a family of three.

At 5 feet tall, Erminia is barely larger than a child, but deep lines in her face reveal the disproportionate share of hardships she has faced in her 27 years. Her jaw is set resolutely in her conviction that the monotony and burdens she endures are worth the oppor tunities she can give her children.

"Vivo por ellos, nada más," Erminia said -- in English, "I live for them, nothing more."

Two queen beds, a small couch and a television occupy three-quarters of the family's room. The opposite corner has a full-size refrigerator, table, microwave, blender and camp stove. Cooking pots are piled to the ceiling on the fridge.

Erminia washes dishes in the bathroom sink. There is little room for books or a computer, even if the family had money to buy them. Nor is there an area to play indoors. The hallway is dark and littered with garbage and an old mattress.

"At first it was really depressing," Erminia said in Spanish about living in the motel. "Now, I just accept it."

Nearly half of the 850 students in the Coast Unified School District live in poverty -- more than any other district in the county. Educators define poverty by the number of students who qualify for free or reduced-cost meals at school. That number increased by 55 percent over the last seven years.

School officials see the effects of poverty firsthand and are not surprised to hear about children living in motels and shared houses. They seek out these children who often need extra help to succeed.

"We might see the biggest contrast in terms of wealth versus poverty in Cambria," said John Elfers, the county Office of Education's coordinator for homeless and foster youth services.

This income gap may be widest in Cambria, but it is a growing problem throughout the county for immigrant and native-born families alike, according to social services providers, who are seeing increased demand for their services.

Middle-class status is an increasingly fragile existence. An unexpected medical problem or a lost job can easily push a family into poverty, they say.

For families already at the bottom, the ladder to escape is increasingly out of reach or nonexistent, said Bill Watkins, a senior economist at UCSB who has studied San Luis Obispo County's economy for years.

The disappearance of that ladder out of poverty worries Watkins most.

"When there's not a path of upward mobility, that's when people lose hope, and the crime rates increase," he said.

Poverty in San Luis Obispo County cannot be entirely attributed to new immigrants from Mexico or Central America, Watkins said. About 18 percent of the county's population is Hispanic. That's far less than the state average or that of any neighboring county.

About 7 percent of families in the county live in poverty compared with 10 percent across the state.

Coastal California used to have more opportunities for young families, but over the years the economy has relied increasingly on tourism, retail and other services to create jobs, which do not pay enough to support a family, Watkins said.

At the same time, he said, the housing supply has not kept pace with the demand, forcing rent and mortgage prices out of reach for most people, especially those in low-wage jobs.

"The (income) gap doesn't matter to me as long as there's a path from the bottom to the top," Watkins said. "If all you've got is rich people and people servicing those rich people plus the tourism industry-- there's no path."

As an undocumented immigrant, Erminia does not qualify for any public assistance programs. Her family does not receive food stamps, welfare or Medi-Cal insurance.

She and her children have no health or dental insurance, and her 7-year-old daughter has never been to the dentist.

"The myth is that (undocumented immigrants) get more help than those who were born here, but that couldn't be farther from the truth," said Tracy Buckingham, deputy director of the San Luis Obispo County Department of Social Services.

Children of undocumented immigrants born in the United States do qualify for Medi- Cal, food stamps and cash aid, but they represent a small portion of the county's clients, Buckingham said.

Erminia's daughter was born in San Luis Obispo County and qualifies for Medi-Cal, but Erminia said she doesn't have time to fill out the paperwork and enroll her.

By Sarah Arnquist
March 9, 2008

An increasing number of middle-class families in San Luis Obispo County are just an unexpected medical problem or lost job away from falling into poverty.

A key reason: a local economy that is more service-based with low-paying jobs.

Add to that a shortage of affordable housing and high home prices, experts say, and more families from across the demographic scale are being pushed to the brink.

While the county remains better off than the state average on most indicators of poverty and well-being, many trend lines show it is moving in the wrong direction. Consider these dramatic changes between 2000 and 2007:

• Nearly one in three students now qualifies for free and reduced-cost meals in county schools, so educators consider them impoverished. That's up 17 percent in the past seven years.
• The number of adults and children enrolled in public health insurance, Medi-Cal or Healthy Families increased by 46 percent to 33,500 from 22,891, according to the state Department of Health Services statistics.
• While home prices have been going up, the county's median income has fallen each year after peaking in 2004 at $54,442. In 2007, it was $50,698 and there are no signs of it turning around soon, according to UCSB economic forecasters.
• The number of families receiving traditional welfare cash assistance remained virtually unchanged, but the number receiving food stamps doubled to 2,895 from 1,407. Food stamps are considered a preventive measure to help keep families off cash assistance. Their rise indicates more families are hovering just above the line to qualify for full welfare.

"The squeeze on low-income, working families has definitely gotten tighter," said Lee Collins, director of San Luis Obispo County Department of Social Services.

From his vantage point as the head of the county's welfare and assistance programs, Collins said the situation seems to be worsening.

Meanwhile, governments at all levels are trimming their budgets as the state and nation's economies slow down and the possibility of a recession looms.

The cuts mean larger holes in the safety-net programs, such as Medi-Cal and welfare, at a time when more families may need a boost to keep food on the table at the end of the month, Collins said.

"The resources to battle poverty are dependent on a strong economy," Collins said. "The conundrum of our funding is when the need increases, the resources to meet those increased needs fall apart."

Admittedly, poverty is a complex problem with sources and solutions beyond a county's boundaries, said Julian Crocker, county schools superintendent. But it cannot be ignored, he said, because so many social ills--such as poor academic performance, crime or health disparities -- are rooted in poverty.

"There's an attitude that the poor have always been with us and that's just something you have to live with," Crocker said. "I don't believe that, and most people working in public education don't believe that.

"From generation to generation, education has been the stepping stone to a better quality of life."

The single mother often asks herself whether living in a motel room and working up to 80 hours a week just to survive is worth the sacrifice of leaving her family, friends and culture. Her answer is always "yes."

At least here, her children have an opportunity to receive a good education and climb out of the hungry poverty she knew as a child.

For Erminia, every day is the same. She wakes. Feeds her children, sends them to school and goes to work. In the busy summer season, she often works 12-hour days, six or seven days a week. Erminia's sister watches the children then.

She considers herself lucky. Her hourly wage is $9.25 plus overtime. At peak season, she sometimes takes home $2,000 a month after taxes.

But it's slow now. In a good month, she brings home $1,200. After paying rent and buying groceries at Food 4 Less and Wal-Mart in Paso Robles, little is left.

Her one splurge is a satellite dish for Direct TV so she can watch her "novellas" in Spanish. She doesn't complain.

"I'm used to it," she said.