Leaders urged to join poverty fight

from The Mercury News

CAMPAIGN NOTES POOR IN WEALTHY VALLEY
By Renee Koury

Some of the wealthiest people in the world live here, but an estimated 120,000 people in Santa Clara County still live below the federal poverty level, a room full of South Bay policy-makers was told Tuesday.

Catholic Charities USA brought together at its multiservice center on East San Fernando Street many of the county's social service workers and policy-makers, urging them to join its ambitious multiyear national campaign to reduce poverty by half within the next 14 years, nationwide and in Santa Clara County.

``There are a lot of people not only living at poverty level in Santa Clara County, but a lot more are living on the edge,'' said Gregory Kepferle, chief executive of Catholic Charities of San Jose. ``Today we are announcing a campaign to get a broad coalition of people involved and to get the momentum to put more resources into ending poverty for more people.''

Catholic Charities USA's president, the Rev. Larry Snyder of Virginia, traveled to San Jose to urge local leaders to jump into its ``Campaign to Reduce Poverty in America.'' The campaign proposes to work on legislative and other initiatives to improve access to education, health care, affordable housing and jobs that pay wages high enough to support a family, Snyder said.

Chief among them are reforms aimed at immigration and broader access to health care on a national level. But Snyder asked local officials to expand upon existing social programs, saying many states including California are ahead of the national curve in helping the poor. California's minimum wage of $7.50 an hour, for example, exceeds the proposed federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.

San Jose and Santa Clara County also have taken greater initiative in health care reform, Kepferle noted, in part by passing the Children's Health Initiative of 2001 aimed at providing health insurance to the estimated 71,000 uninsured children in Santa Clara County. The county also has initiated programs to help first-time home buyers and provides support for several homeless shelters.

San Jose City Councilman Forrest Williams, who attended the forum, said the challenge in Santa Clara County is to turn the attention of success-driven valley industrialists to the plight of those just scraping by. Wealthy innovators surrounded by hard-driving Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, he said, tend not to notice the struggles of those outside their social circles.

``This valley is tough in the sense that everything is about the people who are driving and pushing and striving and pushing,'' said Williams, a former engineer for IBM. ``Many times, they're far away from the other ills of the society. They don't experience it every day. They're thinking, `How many molecules can I pack on this chip?' They're always pushing the edge. That's why we're the tech leaders. So the poor and the disadvantaged don't get the attention.''

Most people are more concerned about cuts to the San Jose Repertory Theatre or other arts groups than the deficiencies of social programs, he said.

But, Williams said, movers and shakers might be more willing to funnel valley wealth toward the disadvantaged if they see a bottom-line benefit.

``If they know there will be more educated workers, there might be a willingness'' to support social programs, he said.

San Jose City Councilman Sam Liccardo, who also attended the Catholic Charities meeting, said he helped serve food at a Fifth Street soup kitchen last weekend and was surprised to find many of the poor were employed San Jose residents. ``They were working in very-low-income jobs,'' he said. ``They worked every day but they still had to come to the soup kitchen.''

Foothill-De Anza Community College District Chancellor Martha Kanter described efforts to assist immigrants in obtaining citizenship and paying for college. Rep. Zoe Lofgren's district chief of staff, Sandra Soto, said the San Jose Democrat wants to review a proposed federal Dream Act that would help thousands of undocumented high school students gain legal status and get in-state college tuition.

Eric Weaver, executive director of Lenders for Community Development, stressed the importance of helping the poor gain assets such as savings accounts, saying one-fourth of people in the nation have no assets, leaving them on the edge of homelessness.