Posted on 11/13/2006 2:04:54 AM PST by goldstategop
Thousands struggle in the shadow of affluence The signs of poverty are everywhere in Long Beach, if you care to look. By Greg Mellen, Staff writer
LONG BEACH - Take a walk in Long Beach and what do you see?
Stray from the palm-lined streets by the ocean shore, the bustling hubs at Pine Avenue, the Pike or Belmont Shore; leave the manicured lawns of the Virginia Country Club area or the Bixby neighborhoods, and there's another Long Beach.
It is the Long Beach that struggles daily to make the rent, rather than the one that plops down a fortune for an ocean-view condo.
It is the Long Beach that relies on food stamps, free school breakfast and lunch programs and charity groups' grocery giveaways, not the one that dines on lower Pine Avenue.
It is the Long Beach that must decide between food and clothing for its children. Where closets become bedrooms in overcrowded homes, where asthmatic children gasp for air and others are made sick by vermin in their homes. Where crime, gangs and drug abuse are the landscape, rather than limos, high-rise condos and Rollerbladers.
This is the Shadow Long Beach that lies just a few blocks from the Grand Prix route television viewers see each year when the car race comes to town.
This is the Long Beach where residents work - often more than one job - but still struggle to pay for the basics.
People like Verhillio Herrera and his wife, Elizabeth, who work three jobs between them to support their three sons, and still must rent out a room in their two-bedroom apartment to make ends meet.
This Long Beach lives on the edge.
It is the Long Beach that consists of people like Charlene Daniels, a single mother who escaped an abusive relationship and now works full-time and goes to school while raising her four kids.
Or Antonio Talavera, who has collected cans to support his family since losing work because of a back injury.
It is people like Serey Hong, a single dad and survivor of the Cambodian genocide, who sleeps on a fold-out cot in his living room and worries about his son, who struggles to maintain good grades while majoring in biochemistry at Cal State Long Beach and working part-time.
It is elderly people such as Rosalyn Jones, who owns her own home but has to spread out paying utilities through the year so she can afford heat in the winter and often has to turn to local churches for groceries at month's end. Or Phay Lok, crippled by a stroke and unsure how he'll survive.
They are of all races. Most try to do the right thing. All dream of a brighter future, if not for themselves, then for their kids. And all face long odds of achieving the kind of lifestyle many residents in Long Beach take for granted.
By the numbers According to the most recent Census in 2005:
About 89,000 or 19 percent of Long Beach residents live under the federal poverty line of $9,973 annually for an individual and $19,971 for a family of four with two children.
About 34,000 or 28 percent of children in Long Beach live in poverty.
Of the Long Beach poor, about 40 percent earn less than half the poverty-level wage.
Long Beach ranked No. 6 in the nation for the concentration of its poor in 17 downtrodden neighborhoods.
The median income of families in Long Beach ($46,477) is 13 percent less than the median income of families in Los Angeles County overall ($53,431), 24 percent less than the state overall ($61,476) and 17 percent below the national median ($55,832). If Long Beach were a state, its family income would rank 44th, between that of Tennessee and Kentucky.
And those figures reflect just the people "officially" in poverty. Many, many more are near the poverty line and struggle to make ends meet in one of the costliest areas to live in the United States. The poverty threshold makes no allowances for regional differences in cost of living.
About 28 percent of families in Long Beach make less than $30,000 for a family of four, when several studies say a family in Southern California needs to make roughly $60,000.
As bad as the numbers seem, a year ago it was feared they were much worse.
The 2004 U.S. Census, which later was debunked, ranked Long Beach No. 6 in overall poverty (28.6 percent) and No. 3 in children in poverty (45.2 percent). The 2005 Census, which was much more precise and included a larger sample size, showed those numbers had apparently been greatly exaggerated.
In the most recent data, Long Beach was No. 26 in overall poverty and No. 31 in children in poverty among cities with populations of more than 250,000.
Experts caution that the so-called "drop" in poverty doesn't reflect widespread improvement. Rather, they say, the wide swing is a statistical correction, not a meaningful change in the city's makeup. And even in the kinder light, the numbers are harsh reminders that poverty is persistent, pervasive and unrelenting.
Angela Reynolds, a planner who studies poverty in Long Beach, wrote in a recent study, "Whether Long Beach ranks second or 22nd, one thing is certain, poverty in Long Beach needs to be recognized as a real issue deserving even more focused attention and study from all levels of government before it can be successfully addressed."
Muted picture Walk the streets of Long Beach away from the commercial and entertainment hubs and see for yourself.
Hard times are everywhere. But they're not always what you expect.
When most people think of poverty, they think of places like Detroit with burned-out storefronts and decaying tenements, Reynolds says.
That's not Long Beach.
In California and Long Beach, beauty and despair can seem almost indistinguishable.
On a sun-splashed day, when the purple-flowered jacarandas are in bloom on Sixth Street, the woman wheeling the baby carrier filled with free food from the Bread of Life store at the Second Samoan Church may disappear into the landscape.
A Panamanian woman in the Willmore City district sits beneath an exotic flowering tree. The roof on the house behind her is falling in.
Stroll through the Central Area and see quaint California Bungalows hard up against boxy apartments overflowing with residents.
Then you might understand the frustration of J. Verduzco, who bought and painstakingly restored a $500,000 home on Loma Vista Drive in Willmore City.
Now he wants to sell. It's too much hassle, he says, dealing with the noise from nearby apartments, the chaos, the graffiti.
Although he loves the proximity to the beach, Verduzco says, the neighborhood is "just too busy."
Howard Smith, 46, shares an apartment in the West Gateway area near downtown almost literally in the shadow of the gleaming World Trade Center.
He gets by on $1,400 a month on disablility and odd jobs, while he strives to find a place for himself, two of his kids and one grandchild.
He says living in poverty in Long Beach is like "living under a rock."
As Smith steps out of his apartment to have a smoke in the early morning, he can stare at the glittering facades of downtown. But it is another world.
Side streets off Anaheim Street or Pacific Coast Highway teem with children playing during the late afternoon until night falls. After dark, the thoroughfares are given to a different sort of trade, as prostitutes and drug dealers take over.
Almost all the houses have barred windows and heavy metal-mesh doors.
Inhabitants are slow to answer. As if studying the person at the door. As if weighing how bad the news will be.
Apartments are pushed together, surrounding tiny courtyards. Buildings are built out to property lines.
Mothers and grandmothers congregate on front porches while toddlers rattle about.
These neighborhoods are dotted by payday lenders, pawn shops and dollar stores.
The neighborhoods may be on the Westside or in the Central Area or North Long Beach. They may be just past the city borders in Signal Hill, Paramount, Bellflower, Hawaiian Gardens, Downey, Lynwood, Compton, Carson or Wilmington. But they're all one community - the community that's just trying to get by.
Full circle Poverty as an issue has once again gained traction not only locally, but regionally and nationally.
The pictures of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina awakened much of the country to the desperate poverty of many of its inhabitants.
Mayor Bob Foster made poverty an issue in his successful election campaign.
"I'm not happy with 19.2 percent in poverty and with all the kids in poverty," Foster says. "We've got to work hard to change that. ... It's a difficult situation, but I feel optimistic we'll reduce that number."
More than 40 years after Lyndon Johnson famously began his "war on poverty," it is staring back, as resolute and deep-seated as ever.
Although there were declines in poverty through the mid- to late 1990s, it has risen in recent years.
Despite a robust five-year stretch during which the economy expanded by 12.5 percent in gross national product, poverty went up in each of those years, except in 2005, when it was unchanged. Since 2000, poverty has risen 1.3 percent.
Two groups - the Brookings Institution and Initiative of a Competitive Inner City - placed Long Beach high on their lists of the worst 10 cities, prompting local officials to take a hard look.
The 2003 and 2004 U.S. Census reports also placed Long Beach in the top 10, but the 2005 Census essentially negated the findings of three previous Census reports. There are those in City Hall who are spinning the 2005 report as a validation that things are improving in Long Beach.
Already the jokes that "poverty has been solved" and "what poverty?" are circulating, even though the Brookings and Inner City studies did not rely on faulty 2004 Census data, but the more complete 2000 numbers.
Recently, Reynolds unveiled a report on poverty in Long Beach that has been circulating through government. Based in part on the 2004 Census data, the report looked at Long Beach poverty in the context of the Brookings and Inner City studies and suggested ways to strengthen education, workforce training and families to fight poverty.
What effect the report and latest numbers will have remains to be seen.
Many cultures Listen to the voices in Long Beach, and you hear a bazaar of accents and dialects.
Diversity is a source of community pride in the "International City." But it is also a concern, because these are often the languages of our most impoverished.
These are the voices of immigrants seeking better lives but facing enormous obstacles. These challenges include finding jobs that pay better than subsistence wages and obtaining educational and language skills necessary to move out of cultural and linguistic isolation.
According to the 2005 Census, about 216,000 Long Beach residents speak a foreign language, including 169,000 (37 percent) who speak Spanish. More than 21,000 residents list their households as "linguistically isolated."
Three pillars Those who study poverty tend to agree that there are three major elements to the poverty equation: education, employment and housing/cost of living.
When the bells ring at Long Beach schools, you see a multicultural dash for the doors. But are the students getting the support and education they need?
Talk to Vernon Daniels: His mother, Charlene, was illiterate for much of his school career, meaning he was learning on his own.
Observe the eight children of Saline and Vath Chhum. They've gone through much of their schooling with little parental support.
"Sometimes I speak to them, and they don't understand," Saline Chhum says, through a translator. "Lots of times we don't know about what they're doing."
That's changed in the Chhum and Daniels families. Charlene completed a literacy program and attends Long Beach City College and the Chhums are in a Cambodian literacy program and learning English and parenting skills.
Overall, Long Beach is a poorly educated city. About 19.4 percent of the population between 18 and 24 lacks a high school diploma, according to Census data. A Harvard study put the number at 31 percent. Among people in poverty, 47 percent of those older than 25 lack a high school degree.
Joel Handler, a UCLA sociology professor and nationally renowned expert on poverty, says education has to be made available to children in poverty before they ever reach school, and in most cases that's not happening.
"I don't exaggerate when I say we're committing national suicide with these children (in poverty)," Handler says.
Employment Walk into the shops and eateries that have blossomed in Long Beach, and you'll see an active and engaged workforce.
The good news for Long Beach is the economy has been producing jobs.
The bad news is, they are not necessarily the jobs that will lift residents out of poverty.
"The real test is to try to break the low-paying job issue," Mayor Foster says. "A lot of jobs don't pay and (changing that) is difficult to do."
Thus, while Long Beach was No. 2 nationally in inner-city job growth at 3.7 percent, wages actually declined, according to one study.
Long Beach has been changing from a manufacturing and industrial economy to a service economy, with health, education, professional and business services, retail, trade and tourism growing, according to the Long Beach Jobs and Business Strategy report.
According to the city's poverty white paper, tourism, arts and hospitality jobs average about $19,000 per year, less than one-third of the average manufacturing job ($63,182).
Researcher Joel Kotkin says the good news is Long Beach has "people who are working and looking to go up rather than seeing themselves as poor."
"The key thing is, will (the city) be able to generate an upwardly mobile blue collar economy?" says Kotkin, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation.
Housing Look at the homes of Long Beach. There are quaint Craftsman bungalows, Spanish Colonials and Victorians. Many are much more mundane, but just about all are beyond the reach of the poor. Even the cheapest one-bedroom house listed in Long Beach goes for $270,000.
According to Susanne Browne, attorney for the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, housing and housing affordability is the central issue in the poverty equation.
"Studies show that the one thing that will help poverty is stable and affordable housing," Browne says. "That's something that's enormously lacking (in Long Beach)."
Take a walk Tour the streets of Long Beach. Linger for a moment at the corner of Pine Avenue and 10th Street and see the people lining up at Catholic Charities.
Stroll along Pacific Coast Highway near Magnolia Avenue, or along Anaheim Street, or on Santa Fe Avenue near Admiral Kidd Park and a whole other Long Beach comes into focus.
As Marissa Gray, a mother who lives with her family in poverty says, "If (people) don't know there's poverty (in Long Beach), they're blind." ------------------------------------------------------
Single mothers carry heavy burden of poverty Day after day, women in Long Beach fight to give their children food, clothes and a safe environment. By Greg Mellen, Press-Telegram Staff Writer
LONG BEACH - Want to know what terrifies a young mother?
Maybe it's facing a daily procession of trucks while escorting a child to day care. Wondering if the next truck to pass will initiate the next asthma attack - the inflammation of the airways in the lungs, the gasping for air - in a squirming 3-year-old.
First comes the chugging roar that drowns out any attempt at conversation. Then the whirl of dust and debris that forces Danielle Roberts and her daughter, Antoninette Valdez, to turn their faces and cover their mouths and eyes. Finally, the acrid stench of diesel exhaust from the parade of trucks making their way to the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles.
Any of these can trigger the attack.
Roberts and her daughter face this every day with every passing truck in a ceaseless procession as they make their way along Anaheim Street to Antoninette's day care at the Long Beach Multi-Service Center.
This is what it means to be poor in Long
Danielle Roberts, 29, and her daughter Antoninette Valdez, 3, cross Anaheim Street at a busy intersection during their morning commute to Antoninette's day care in Long Beach. Robers fears that dust and exhaust from passing trucks irritate her daughter's asthma. (Stephen Carr / Press-Telegram)Beach. Marissa Gray offers a seat on her frayed couch but cautions not to sit on the far end, because the springs are broken.
Meanwhile, Marissa's 4-year-old daughter mugs for the visitor under a framed picture of a black angel.
There's no art on the walls of Charlene Daniels' living room. Nor is there a couch. Instead she offers a seat on a delicate wooden chair next to a small table dominated by a portable radio and CD player. There is no other furniture in the living room.
Although there are no pictures, there is a horseshoe over the front door, turned upward for good luck.
This is how it is for the poor in Long Beach.
Roberts, Gray and Daniels aren't unique. Not by a long stretch. They are just a few of about 7,400 single mothers raising families in poverty and struggling to make the rent in Long Beach. They are among the 29 percent of single female parents in Long Beach whose families live in poverty.
Gray's four children and three of Daniels' four kids are among the 28 percent of the poor in Long Beach who are children. Daniels' oldest son, Vernon Daniels, recently came off the list when he turned 19.
It's a cool, overcast morning as Roberts begins to coax her daughter out of sleep.
It's barely past 7 a.m., but if Roberts is going to make it to work at Catholic Charities by 9 a.m. she needs to hustle, even though the offices are just a five-minute walk away.
The 29-year-old mom wishes she could afford to drop her child off at the day care center across the street from her Chestnut Avenue apartment.
Instead, she lugs Antoninette to the Multi-Service Center, where free day care is offered for homeless and recently homeless mothers.
Roberts nuzzles and teases Antoninette awake. An episode of "Dora the Explorer" plays on a portable DVD player while Roberts dresses the child and fixes her hair.
The two share a double bed in a narrow bedroom in their two-bedroom apartment, an upstairs unit in an older building.
The living room is modestly furnished with a couch and love seat. Leaning against one wall is a child's fold-up table with the ubiquitous "Dora" artwork displayed.
The paint on the walls is faded, and Roberts worries it may contain lead, but otherwise the unit appears clean and well-kept.
The rent is more than she can afford and the extra bedroom is something of an luxury, but she is so happy to have a place of her own, after years of staying at the homes of friends and family, that she can't imagine moving out.
The furniture is used but of good quality. Roberts says all of it was given to her, either from people who were going to dispose of the items or, in the case of a dresser in her bedroom, picked up by a relative at a garage sale.
"When I first moved in, I didn't have anything at all," Roberts says. "I try to make it look homey."
Just having a home to call their own is a new experience for the pair. Roberts acknowledges going through a bad stretch in her teen years. She dropped out shortly after entering high school and spent years abusing drugs - speed was her favorite - and drifting from one house to another.
It took tragedy and jail time to break her from her downward spiral. First was the death of her younger brother, Anthony Roberts, in a possibly gang-related killing in a motel room.
It was an event that struck Roberts hard. In her apartment is a photo of her late brother, with a white rosary draped over the frame.
Although Roberts says she got clean in 2003, after learning of her pregnancy, trouble still followed. She did two months in Orange County jail for cashing a stolen check. Roberts says she has since had the crime expunged from her record.
After Antoninette was born, Roberts stayed with family members until she found a job through AmeriCorps, an organization that places volunteers with social service providers such as Catholic Charities and Habitat for Humanity. Roberts earned a stipend of about $950 a month working for Catholic Charities.
She recently concluded the program and is eligible for an education award.
Working moms
Changes Roberts says she'd like to get a high school diploma. Not a general equivalency degree, but an actual diploma.
Whether she will be able to pursue that dream remains to be seen.
While the AmeriCorps program gave her relief, it runs for 10 months, and her term recently expired. Roberts says she recently applied and tested for a job with the county and is awaiting the results. Also ending soon will be her eligibility for free day care. At that point, Roberts may face a number of unpleasant decisions.
Her mother, who lives in Norwalk, helps financially when she can, and Roberts gets food stamps and can pick up food at the Catholic Charities pantry, but it's barely enough.
"I don't want to move home (with her mother) because it's too crazy, too chaotic," Roberts says.
But part of poverty means not always being able to make the choices you'd prefer.
In the meantime, she has more immediate concerns.
As Roberts tries to get her child out the door for day care, the two engage in typical morning negotiations between mother and child.
Antoninette wants milk, not juice; grapes, not a banana.
Eventually they make it down the stairs and out the door.
Roberts says she tries not to feed her daughter in the morning, even when she's hungry - partly because the mom doesn't want to spoil Antoninette's appetite before the free breakfast at day care, and partly because milk, juice and fresh fruit are costly.
The day's departure
The two make their way toward Anaheim Street, avoiding puddles of standing water and sidestepping trash, including discarded beer cans and a nip-sized bottle of vodka.
Roberts has to repeatedly remind Antoninette not to lose her "chunkas," or flip-flops. At Anaheim Street, they wait for a bus. Either the city bus or the county MTA bus will take them west over the bridge that crosses the Long Beach (710) Freeway to their destination.
Near Caspian Way, they disembark and walk along the sidewalk by the Harbor Auto Wreckers and J&J Auto Body, while the parade of trucks roars by.
As Roberts passes a parked car she admires, she quips, "There's my car."
"I'll buy you one for Christmas, I promise," Antoninette replies.
Inside the Multi-Service Center, Antoninette, or "Fred" as she is inexplicably called, runs down the hall while her mom signs her in. After hugs and kisses, Antoninette rushes off to join in a discussion about dinosaurs.
"Now I can take care of myself," Roberts says as she walks back to catch the bus. While sitting at the bus stop, Roberts attempts to apply makeup as passing trucks kick dust into her face.
When Roberts arrives at work, three people wait outside Catholic Charities, even though a sign reads that clients aren't seen on Fridays. A woman who speaks only Spanish is looking for food, another says through a translator that she's seeking aid to pay an electric bill that must be settled before she can get service in her new home.
Catholic Charities helps with those services.
Roberts writes down a phone number for the woman to call, then walks into work.
It's 8:48 a.m. when she signs in.
`Stepped on'
Gray, 31, says what angers her is not so much being poor, which is bad enough, but the attitudes of others.
Gray is a veteran in dealing with agencies that provide aid. She receives subsidized housing through Section 8, food stamps and medical help, both for the seizures she has suffered since high school and for one of her children's asthma.
As a result, she feels alternately like a beneficiary and victim of public aid.
"It's like being on the bottom of the stack and being stepped on because you're poor," Gray says. "You get shook around because of the stereotypes of people."
Gray has been poor since she gave birth to her first son when she was 18.
She says she'd love to leave Long Beach but feels trapped. A native of the area, she's probably here for the long haul.
Her two-bedroom apartment is small but tidy. The windows, like all those in the building, are barred, as is the front door. Hers is the last apartment in a row of four on the second floor.
Periodically, heavy footsteps thud from somewhere on the floor above. There is a loose stone step on the staircase to the second floor.
In addition to the faulty green couch, the living room has a couple of stuffed chairs, a small dining table with four chairs wedged near the kitchen and a small artistic piece of furniture used as an entertainment center. On it sits a television set and a DVD player.
On a wall is a framed painting of women strolling with parasols.
Gray speaks with strength and confidence, mixed with equal parts of wariness and insecurity and spiced with occasional indignation.
She insists she's not looking for a handout, but needs help. She feels victimized by circumstance, but has her dignity. She wants to be seen as a human and not a number.
Gray says she was a certified nurse's assistant, like her mother, a native of Trinidad who sits opposite her daughter. Gray is one of the late William Gray's 12 children, whom he had with several women.
"My father spread his seed," Gray says jokingly.
Lost job
Gray says she lost her healthcare job because of her seizures, which she claims were misdiagnosed. Now she sells time-share properties part time for Marriott. She estimates she made about $10,000 last year, well below the poverty line for a family of five.
Her goal is to take classes at the Regional Occupation Program and renew her nursing career. But it's not easy.
Although she's willing to talk about her struggles, Gray is sometimes sketchy on details and doesn't want pictures taken of her or her family.
"I don't want people in my business," she says.
Gray is adamant that she's not just living off the dole. She works when she can, and she scrapes by any way she can.
That means stretching the $268 per month she gets from food stamps. It means utilizing free school lunches, enrolling her kids in free after-school programs. It means trips to McDonald's or other eateries only on special occasions.
She bristles when it's pointed out that some people might consider her television and DVD player as luxuries.
"We had to work real hard for that TV," Gray says. "And we have to work hard to keep that light going."
As with most single mothers, Gray says child care is a particular concern and a major obstacle to finding work.
When it's suggested that the city provides child-care services, she jumps up.
"Show me," she says. "Show me, I'll sign up."
According to Farah Naz-Kaleghi of the Long Beach Community Improvement League, which offers subsidized day care among its programs, Long Beach is unable to meet the demand for free and subsidized day care. She says there is a demand for 14,000 slots that is not met.
Even though she's poor, Gray says, she won't sacrifice the safety and welfare of her children to sub-par day care.
"You have to screen a program first," Gray says. "You can't just drop your kid off because there's an adult there. Especially with all that's going on these days."
Too many times, Gray says, children are left without proper guidance.
"You have children watching children and giving guidance when they're seeking it themselves," Gray says. "I see a lot of children walking around trying to figure it out on their own. So I limit my work for my children's safety."
Overall, Gray sees poverty as a disease that deadens people.
"There's so much distance between us. There are so many walls built. People are afraid to ask each other questions, even to say `Hi.' Afraid to get into someone's space. They don't want to look like they're prying," Gray says. "I try to overcome that. It's very hard with the stereotypes."
If anything, Gray wishes people would just understand that people in poverty are doing their best.
"Most of us are trying to use the system to get off the system," Gray says. "But they treat everyone across the board the same. It's depressing. You want to see yourself in a better life."
Long days
The streets are almost deserted as Charlene Daniels checks out from her job at The Breakers assisted living complex.
She hurries through the Promenade toward the bus stop. Sidestepping several homeless men sleeping on the sidewalks, she hustles for the safety - and for the light - of the bus stop.
It's not the homeless who bother Daniels. After all, she was among them not so long ago. It's the darkness that scares her, and has since childhood.
She misses the 11:30 p.m. Cherry Avenue bus and will have to wait another hour for the next one. She doesn't mind. The lights of the bus stop comfort her.
In a way, the light and dark are appropriate metaphors for Daniels, who has made the journey from illiteracy, despite receiving a diploma from Jefferson High School in Los Angeles, to a point where she is now an avid reader.
Learning to read
What literacy has meant to Daniels is hard for her to express, but the closing lines in a poem she wrote entitled "My Wish" come pretty close:
"To hold a book up to my eyes is freedom.
And a wish come true."
Now that she can read, Daniels is able to work full time at The Breakers and even provide medications to residents.
Perhaps more important, being able to read has given her hope and belief in herself that she can succeed and provide a better life for her children.
When Daniels speaks, the faint hint of an accent breaks through. Although born in the United States, Daniels spent a significant part of her childhood in the Central American nation of Belize.
While there, Daniels did not attend school, and it set her behind educationally. After returning to the United States, she did not graduate until she was 21, and says she couldn't so much as read a street sign.
In part because of her low self-image, Daniels says, she became involved in an abusive relationship.
"It got to the point where I can't do nothing, I can't go nowhere, and nobody could call the house," Daniels says. When they went out without the father, she says, "It got to the point where the children would look at me when we were going home and say `Do we have to?"'
Eventually, when she saw her children starting to mimic some of the father's talk, Daniels says she decided it was time to leave.
One day she packed up her children - Vernon, George, Terri and Zoila - and moved out.
"We left to go to school and we didn't come back," Daniels says.
That was seven years ago. Vernon is now 19 and lives at home while attending Long Beach City College, where he's majoring in criminal justice and working part time. George, 16, goes to Long Beach Poly. Terri, 14, just started at Lakewood, and 12-year-old Zoila, known as Kizzie, goes to Marshall Middle School.
Hard times followed Daniels when her children were young and included periods of homelessness, when they would sleep in parks and use public facilities.
Daniels' life turned around when she enrolled her son in a family literacy program at Burnett Elementary School.
She soon learned that to participate in the program, not only the child but also the parent had to be involved in a learning activity.
Daniels says she had always hid her illiteracy behind an intimidating front and tired excuses, such as forgetting her glasses.
"I was embarrassing myself," Daniels says. "So I came in with attitude."
There was another consequence of her attitude.
"(My children) were getting aggressive and fighting," Daniels says. "So whatever I was portraying, they were picking up on."
Eventually, slowly and begrudgingly, Daniels says she let her defenses down.
"I had to rely on and trust people," Daniels says.
She says she was given a tutor, even sat in on some of her child's classes, and at 31 was given the best gift of her life: the ability to read.
Daniels says during that time she also learned to hug and kiss her kids.
"So far, I've turned my whole life around," Daniels says.
Daniels recently earned her associate of arts degree and a certificate in special education at Long Beach City College. She is returning to gain additional certification in elder care and one day dreams of opening a special education facility or one to help battered women.
Turning a life around can be a slow and uneven process, and Daniels still faces significant struggles providing for her children on a job that pays $16,000 a year.
What furniture she has in her three-bedroom apartment is bare. The family has no drapes; instead blankets or sheets, including one from the Disney movie "Aladdin," serve the purpose.
After six years on a waiting list, Daniels says she finally earned Section 8 housing assistance, which allows her to pay only $500 a month on a $1,500 apartment.
Daniels' two sons share one bedroom and her two daughters another. Invariably Kizzie seems to find her way into her mom's bed.
Daniels doesn't own a car.
She also can't afford day care for Kizzie and doesn't trust her teenage children to be out in the streets. The younger kids are required to go home right after school.
"So far, thank God, that has been working out," says Daniels, adding that she checks up on the kids via phone.
Second job needed
For a while during the summer, Daniels may have moved slightly above the poverty line. What that required, however, was two jobs and 16-hour shifts.
In addition to working at the Breakers, she was doing at-home health care.
As summer was coming to an end, Daniels says, "Right now I'm living on energy drinks."
Although she hated to give up the home health job and the needed income, Daniels realized she couldn't work two jobs and attend school, which started again in August.
As a result, making ends meet remains difficult, and Daniels says she's going to have to find a second job to help Vernon pay for his schooling.
"We struggle with food and rent to have a little extra," Daniels says, adding that she would like to learn how to better manage a budget.
On a warm weekend day, Daniels and the kids load up snacks, a blanket and games and take the bus down to Bixby Park.
There they put out the blanket and engaged in a cut-throat game of Uno.
"Oh, it's on now," Kizzie says after mom forces her to pick up a bunch of cards as a penalty in the game.
Eventually, the kids gang up on mom and the game dissolves into a gigglefest.
Later, as the teenagers wander off together, Daniels takes time to fix what Kizzie called her "nappy" hairdo into stylish corn rows.
Not all problems are easily solved. For example, there are always unplanned expenses.
"OK, when (the children) say they need shoes, that's a whole new thing. And you have to say, `So, how are we going to do this when we ain't got no money?' The kids know we struggle so they're not materialistic," Daniels says.
To solve the shoe crisis, Daniels found a two-for-one sale.
Her days are still long. She works from 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. at The Breakers.
It's often physical work - helping patients bathe, answering emergencies when a resident falls or becomes ill, transporting them to the cafeteria for dinner.
If Daniels is lucky and catches the 11:30 bus, she can be home by midnight.
When she arrives, Daniels says, she checks on her children's homework, which they are told to leave out for her each night. Then, after a short night's sleep, it's up at 6 a.m. to get Kizzie ready and ride on the bus with her to school.
On a night when Daniels is accompanied by a reporter and photographer on the bus, she comes home to find George and Kizzie splayed out asleep on the living room floor.
When she thinks about her children, Daniels is mostly happy. Kizzie is a good student and volunteers at the school library, Terri has joined the track team at Lakewood, George is on pace to graduate and Vernon is busy with school and work.
"Right now they're great," Daniels says. "They're not in gangs, they're not stealing, they're not beating up people, and they're staying in school. So I say I'm doing pretty good."
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Bridging the divide between father and son Family: From Cambodia to L.B., father and son work to pay the bills and to understand each other. By Greg Mellen, Staff writer
LONG BEACH - The tensions between the father and the son are ancient and familiar. The son doesn't understand. The son doesn't appreciate. The son procrastinates.
The father doesn't understand. The father is overbearing. The father lectures.
In many ways, theirs could be almost any father-son relationship. But here is the twist.
The father, Serey Hong, 48, comes from the perspective of a victim and witness to the atrocities of the Cambodian genocide. The son, Sophannarith, or Sonny as he is called, is a modern American teenager.
Late at night they sit close together in the cramped $680-a-month apartment they share in a complex behind a single-family house near Long Beach City College's Pacific Coast Campus. Hong eats warmed leftovers from a lunch program he helps supervise for elderly Cambodians. The son, who has just returned from a late shift at Target, munches on food from Del Taco.
They barely speak. A few feet of physical space
Sophannarith "Sonny'' Hong, 19, grabs a quick meal after working the late shift at Target in Long Beach, as his father Serey Hong, 48, watches television. Sonny shares a small two-bedroom apartment with his sister, Rosetta, and their father. (Stephen Carr / Press-Telegram)separates them. But how to describe the rest of it - the chasm that divides them? "I sacrifice my life for (my son)," Hong says. "I build a bridge so (he) can go across. I don't know when he'll learn, but he's my son."
Meanwhile, the son doesn't know what his father expects of him. He is majoring in biochemistry at Cal State Long Beach, carrying a load of 15 units each semester and working 20 to 22 hours a week.
"I mean, it's a lot of work, and I'm just trying to hold it together," Sonny says. "I'm only an average student, and I'm trying to deal with my dad and all the pressure. I have to look past that and focus on what I have to do."
So the questions linger across the divide.
How can the son ever understand the life his father led, the insanity his father witnessed? How can he appreciate the fears, the guilt, the insecurities that his father will forever carry?
And what of the father? How can he understand that his son's world is not the same as his? How can he appreciate the pressures and temptations a boy faces growing up in a poverty-stricken, gang-plagued inner city?
How do the two get to the place where the father lets go and realizes that his and his son's visions and needs are not the same? Where he realizes that his best intentions for his son often drive them apart? And where the son accepts that the father's goals for the son come from a place of love, not dissatisfaction?
The tensions are ancient and familiar. But here they have a twist.
They also have a backdrop. And that is the struggle to make ends meet.
In Long Beach, 4 percent of single male heads of house and their families live in poverty. Until recently, Hong was among them. Although Hong recently got a second job that may technically lift him and his family above the poverty line, he still struggles to make the rent.
Seeking understanding On a weekday evening, Hong sits in the two-bedroom apartment he shares with his son and his 16-year-old daughter, Rosetta.
Sonny is at work, cramming in as many hours as he can before fall classes begin at Cal State Long Beach.
Rosetta, a junior at Lakewood High, is sequestered in her room talking on the phone.
As Hong talks, he leans forward at the waist, and his words are laced with intensity and sincerity.
Hong survived the Cambodian killing fields, a time when between 1 million and 2 million Cambodians were either executed as enemies of the state or died of starvation, malnutrition or disease.
His last image of his mother is still vivid. He says one day she left to spend time with her mother in a neighboring town, and he never saw either woman again.
Hong and his brother, Hong Hor, were also separated by the Khmer Rouge. The brother survived and still lives in Cambodia. The two brothers have seen each other just once since Hong fled.
In 1979, after the Vietnamese drove out the Khmer Rouge, Hong returned to his home in Phnom Penh. In the house was a small black-and-white photograph of his mother, his last reminder of her. While in a refugee camp, Hong had an artist draw a picture of the deteriorating photo.
The artist and Hong became separated in camp while the artist had the photo, so the drawing is the only reminder Hong and his family have of his mother.
Several years ago, Rosetta scanned the drawing of her grandmother and colorized it on a computer. Hong e-mailed copies to his brother and cousins in Cambodia.
Since moving to Long Beach and gaining custody of his two children after a court dispute with his ex-wife, Hong has worked a series of part time jobs and studied incessantly.
And yet, for all his accomplishments and skills, Hong holds himself back.
As a young man in Cambodia, survival hinged on invisibility. Knowledge often meant death as the Khmer Rouge sought a pure communist state untainted by Western learning.
Hong not only learned to hide his abilities, he seems to have internalized the belief that he is somehow lacking - in ability, in intelligence, in worth.
So Hong gathers and hordes knowledge.
When he came to the United States, Hong had no English skills. He has since learned the language and become remarkably articulate, much more so than most of his countrymen. And yet, he habitually apologizes for language deficiencies.
He has earned a general equivalency diploma. He even passed the Postal Service entrance exam and worked briefly for a post office in San Juan Capistrano before he was forced to give it up because he couldn't find early morning child care for Rosetta when she was young.
At Long Beach City College, Hong earned an associate's degree in sciences, plus certificates in electronics and air conditioning and refrigeration. He has also received a certificate in custodial sciences from the adult school on Willow Street.
When it's suggested he could be an interpreter for the courts, he dismisses it.
"Oh, no, no. I am not good enough," he says.
He has similar reactions to suggestions that he go into one of the more lucrative professions he's studied.
When asked about rejoining the Postal Service, he says he doesn't think he could pass the exam again.
Instead, Hong works part-time as a playground supervisor at Edison Elementary School, for which he makes $11.70 an hour for a 20-hour week. He usually also works 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday at Burnett Elementary supervising the playground. Hong has been invited several times to apply for a promotion, but declined. He says he almost didn't apply for the job he now has because of his insecurity about his language skills.
"I'm still scared," Hong says. "The kids say I could be promoted to site leader, but I think `Maybe I can't do that.' That's why I'm discouraged all the time. You know in the Pol Pot (regime), they stepped you down."
Hong was recently hired by the Asian and Pacific Islander Older Adults Task Force to work with senior Cambodians, teaching them English, leading exercise classes and helping his boss, Aaron Va.
The job pays $800 a month, but it is still a struggle for Hong to pay expenses and rent. He sleeps on a rickety roll-out bed in the small living room of his apartment.
He doesn't have health insurance and worries incessantly that he is one injury or medical setback away from devastation. As a result, he exercises diligently.
"What will happen if something happens to me?" Hong asks. "What would happen to the money?"
Hong also despairs because it seems to him every time he makes an advance, there's a setback.
After he got the second job, he received a letter telling him he and his daughter were no longer eligible for food stamps. Hong says he'll fight the decision, noting that his schedule is not stable, and he doesn't get paid when school is out.
Still, it's another level of stress.
Hong says he only recently opened a bank account. Before, he cashed his checks at the market and never had any money at the end of the month.
And then there was Sonny's recent minor car accident that drove up the family's car insurance rates $40 a month. And so it goes.
Recently, Sonny delayed paying for his car insurance. Hong harped on him to put the payment in the mail. Eventually, on the final day before a late-payment penalty would have been imposed, Hong made the payment for his son.
For all the frustrations, Hong has to feel some pride about his boy. While some Cambodian kids have fallen prey to gangs and other temptations, Sonny is striving for something better.
He could have gone either way.
When Sonny was younger, he and some friends were caught spraying graffiti and sentenced to community service.
Sonny admits he had gang ties and says, "It was pretty bad back then."
Luckily, the arrest helped straighten Sonny out.
"I just started looking ahead and thinking this probably isn't the way to go," Sonny says.
Since then, Sonny has found a different circle of friends and left that life behind.
Hong says his daughter is excelling at school and is no problem.
During a visit to Hong's house, a reporter looked into Sonny's room. There, on a chair, was an open calculus book. And school wasn't even in session.
Maybe the father and son aren't as different as they think. Gathering knowledge Family pride
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
Unchecked immigration, godless public schools, along with a culture of death, have helped to create this monster.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
That makes no sense. Do you have the idea that there used to be no poor people?
The funny thing is that as I am reading it I am overwhelmed by what they have.
Nobody is starving. Nobody is dying of cold.
There is no "monster" here.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
Heat in the winter? Isn't Long Beach in Southern California?
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
Yep.
Although Roberts says she got clean in 2003, after learning of her pregnancy, trouble still followed. She did two months in Orange County jail for cashing a stolen check. Roberts says she has since had the crime expunged from her record.
Just doing speed for years, committing felonies....
When was the last time you were in jail?
You think that maybe some of her problems might be self made? In fact pretty much all of them.
We're not talking about welfare queens here.
Uh huh.
Gray has been poor since she gave birth to her first son when she was 18.
And then went on to have 3 more all without a dad.
They could easily be you and me.
I feel for Hung but what can you do about a man who will not even try to pass a exam he has passed before to get a better job?
Would you do that? Not even try?
Yeah, it sucks to be poor. Pretty long article just to say that. Heck, I could post my own sob stories, so could my wife. The ones I feel sorry for are the physically and mentally handicapped, or sick and injured, who have to rely on gov't largess. The rest of 'em can do like my wife and I did... get a job, go to school on student loans, and get a better job. Don't like being poor? Physically and mentally able? This is America, land of opportunity. Do something about it, or shut the hell up.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
Pelosi's fault
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
"They could easily be you and me."
Speak for yourself. Barring injury or illness, it'll never (again) be me! If the worst did occur, it would suck royally, and people in bad shape, physically or mentally, really do have something to gripe about. The rest of 'em need to get their butts in gear, if they want a better life. I sure as heck ain't handing 'em one on a silver platter.
"human story"
Most of these people have "chosen" their own "story."
They have chosen to come heeere with no education. They have chosen to be unmarried. They have chosen not to care if their children are educated. I am tired of being the fall guy for other peoples bad choices. I hope the ones trying to make good choices succeed.
Just out of curiousity, can you point me to which 10 year period between 1900 and 2000 that was characterized by full employment, affordable housing and no working poor?
Okay, which 5-year period, then?
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
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