Spartan Daily

Living hand to mouth: Exploring poverty in San Jose

Jasper Rubenstein, Spartan Daily

After living on the streets of San Jose for three months, Susanna Beouchan moved into a woman’s and children’s shelter. She has been living there for the past six years, and despite her situation, her faith and membership in the First Church Disciples of Christ has kept her spirits high.

Susanna Beouchan peered intently at the white, pocket-sized Bible in her hand.

Sitting in the shade outside the Salvation Army's Emmanuel House on North Fourth Street in the heart of downtown San Jose, she is one of about thirty people waiting for the hot lunch that will be served just after noon.

Cast haphazardly around the small yard of the Emmanuel House — a homeless shelter and public feeding center run by the Salvation Army — are shopping carts piled high with ragged blankets and clothes, and weathered bicycles held together with duct tape.

The people are all different — young and old, white, black and Latino, clean and dirty — but all of them are here.  They are waiting for their hot meal and shower; they are receiving help where they can before they move on to the next place.

These are some of the homeless in San Jose, those who live in poverty every day.

According to recently released statistics from the 2010 Census, poverty rates climbed to 15.1 percent in the United States, affecting 46.2 million people — nearly 1 in 6 Americans, the highest it’s been since the census first started measuring poverty in 1959.

In Santa Clara County, poverty rose more than a percentage point to 10.5 percent, with a median income of $85,002.

Beouchan said she lived on the streets for three months and then in a shelter for six years with her son John.

“It wasn’t easy for me and my son,” she said. “Every day is a struggle out there. Sometimes you don’t know where your next meal is going to come from, where you’re going to make ends meet, where you’re going to get your clothes.”

Beouchan said her son was taken away by Child Protective Services and is now living with family in Hawaii.

“There is a bunch of people out there,” she said. “They’re living on the streets and under overpasses.”

Poverty in Silicon Valley

According to sociology Professor Scott Myers-Lipton, associate chair of the sociology department, the current economic crisis is the reason why there has been a spike in poverty, but this is not a new issue.

“From the founding of our country, it has had a poverty crisis,” he said. “If you look at the early documents in the 1800s, 1790s, poverty was seen as one of the major issues of the day.”

According to the 2010 census data, 16.3 percent or about 6 million Californians had incomes below the federal poverty line of $22,113 for a family of four, up from 15.3% in 2009.

Wiggsy Sivertsen has worked in counseling services at SJSU for 45 years. She said she’s seen ups and downs when it comes to need in Silicon Valley, but she said the current dip has a lot to do with high unemployment.

Sivertsen said there is a growing gap between the haves and the have-nots in Silicon Valley.

“You certainly can’t say this valley is poor,” she said. “All you have to do is get on the freeway and drive to work in the morning. I must pass two or three million (dollars) worth of vehicles in the morning.”

Sophomore business major Brenda Murakami said she was not surprised by the census statistics about the increase in poverty in San Jose.

“I think it has a lot to do with unemployment right know,” she said. “You could lose your home and find yourself on the streets and it makes me think sometimes.”

Help for those in need

Sacred Heart Community Services, a nonprofit organization whose stated mission is to help combat poverty, provides food, clothing and educational services to about 54,000 people in the San Jose or Santa Clara County areas, according to its website.

According to Jay Pecot, fund development manager for Sacred Heart, the center provides a three-day food supplement from its food pantry to about 375 families per day. Additionally, about 320 people receive clothing from Sacred Heart’s clothes closet every day.

Pecot said one of the things that goes overlooked in the Silicon Valley is the high cost of living for a family of four — at least $63,000 a year compared to the amount set by the federal government of just over $23,000.

Sacred Heart uses a self-sufficiency measure for Santa Clara County produced by the Insight Center for Community Economic Development, a national research consulting and legal organization that works with foundations, nonprofits and government agencies to quantify self-sufficiency, according to the center's website.

“It costs about three to four times as much as the federal poverty line to live in this area,” Pecot said. “All of this is tied to the high cost of, first of all, housing, which has gotten worse in that last couple of years, and also the high cost of food, the high cost of transportation.”

According to Pecot, the current business climate is not encouraging growth.

“The number of times that we see 400, maybe 500 families in a day is becoming significantly more common than it ever was,” he said. “A lot of it is due to the underemployed or the discouraged worker or just overall people just not able to make it in this area.”

Talar Abadjian, a junior social work major, said she began volunteering in the clothes closet at Sacred Heart twice a week to better understand the people in the community who use their services.

“I think I knew about the poverty,” she said. “But identifying people’s faces and just seeing how real it is and that it’s not just statistics, (I’m seeing) that there’s actually people who go along with those.”

Paul Leuty, a professional bicycle mechanic and director and founder of Spokes to Folks, said San Jose has been a beacon for the homeless because of its mild climate and the programs that help those in need.

Every Saturday morning for the past two and a half years, Leuty has done repairs on the bikes of homeless people at the Salvation Army's Emmanuel House.

Leuty said he had been invited to say grace at an Easter service at a homeless ministry when he saw the bikes of the homeless people were in bad shape.

“At that time I’d never had any experience with the homeless,” he said. “I just offered to help three people and that was 1,100 people ago.”

Susan Marcus said she and her husband Robert have been bringing bags of donated clothes, toiletries, sheets and other small items like Tupperware to the Emmanuel House for six years.

She said in the last couple of years, since the economy has taken a downturn, she has seen more people taking clothes.

“Before we never saw that many seniors,” Marcus said. “Now they’re coming for food and clothes. I know the economy is affecting them.”

Poverty at SJSU

Poverty is much more than just homelessness, Sivertsen said.

“When we think of poverty, we think about the homeless people, the people with the shopping carts and the old raggedy clothes and the bottle in the old paper bag, et cetera,” she said. “That’s what we think of. We don’t think about those people in the middle that are really living in poverty, living from hand to mouth, because they’re not out on the streets.”

Sivertsen said those people include students.

“I have students living out of their cars,” she said. “That happens a lot. I have women who have kids living in their cars. It’s tough and it sort of depends if you’re a traditional student … you’re more likely to find money that will help you get through school. But if you’re 30-years-old … there aren’t a lot of jobs out there for you, so you could be living in your car.”

Sivertsen said she doesn’t think we’d find a lot of students sleeping in their cars in the garages or surrounding neighborhoods, but we would find some.

“It’s certainly a bigger problem now than it was three years ago,” she said.

Sgt. John Laws of the University Police Department said it’s very rare for UPD to find students sleeping overnight in the parking garages.

“I’m certain there are plenty of students who are well below the poverty line,” he said. “They’re working beyond their means to create better lives for themselves.”

UPD has responded to calls of people sleeping in buildings on campus, but these are not students, Laws said.

Pecot said Sacred Heart sees a lot of young people using their services, including younger professionals who have recently entered the professional workforce.

“It’s like the biggest tragedy,” he said. “We see people coming in with nursing uniforms here. They’re the ones who should be out there taking care of people and now we’re having to care of them. That just seems completely wrong.”

Jackie Qu, a senior liberal studies major, said she thinks it doesn’t seem like poverty can affect students because they often have help from family or loans.

“I think the word 'poverty' means people who are in those situations where they can’t meet their sufficient needs for food, shelter, just the necessities,” she said. “A lot of people are having to cut back. I have family who have lost their jobs and they haven’t been able to bounce back yet. Everyone has this fear of that.”

Sivertsen said there are not a lot of options on campus for students who are in need of help.

“I’ve put my hand in my pocket and taken out money in my pocket and give it to students for the weekend more now than I have in a long time,” she said. “That’s kind of a barometer for me. Kids come by that I know and I’m looking at them and they don’t look they’ve been eating, then I know they’re having a tough time and I’ve seen that number go up a little bit.”

The counseling department does have a small emergency fund for students who are in dire need, she said.

For Sivertsen, poverty is not something students or the community should ignore.

“I can get in my car, close my windows, turn on my music or turn on the news, drive home and never see a single solitary social problem if I don’t look,” she said. “I don’t think that’s good. I think we all need to see what’s really going on.”

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homeless-10 After living on the streets of San Jose for three months, Susanna Beouchan moved into a woman’s and children’s shelter. She has been living there for the past six years, and despite her situation, her faith and membership in the First Church Disciples of Christ has kept her spirits high.