Poverty fell in California during the COVID pandemic, recent data shows, largely due to state and national safety net programs, especially the expansion of federal child tax credits.

But a deadline to file for those tax credits expires November 17, prompting advocates in California and a few state lawmakers to sound alarms.

“If you haven’t been doing your taxes, now is the time,” said Assemblymember David Alvarez, a San Diego Democrat who held a press conference reminding people to file and claim the tax credits.

“As an advocate for children, and as a parent of two, I know that the need is high right now, especially for families with children as they struggle to keep up with all the inflationary pressures.”

The California Policy Lab, a nonprofit that analyzes public data, estimates about 290,000 California children living at or near poverty could miss out on the 2021 child tax benefit — leaving $928 million on the table, according to Brett Fischer, co-author of its latest report. That’s because 37% of the people who became eligible under the 2021 guidelines — mostly those making little or no income — may be unaware they need to file income tax forms to receive the credit.

“The concern is that a lot of individuals who were eligible for this credit would not end up going through the administrative burdens of applying and filing taxes in order to gain the credits,” said Hilary Hoynes, a public policy and economics professor and the Haas Distinguished Chair in Economic Disparities at the University of California Berkeley.

Tracking poverty

Contrary to many expectations, California’s poverty rate dropped from 16.4% in 2019 to a projected 11.7% in fall 2021, according to research by the Public Policy Institute of California, a non-partisan think tank, and the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality. They use the California Poverty Measure, which takes into account this state’s high housing costs and various government-funded anti-poverty programs and payouts.

Based on this measure, about 4.5 million Californians live in poverty, which is pegged at $36,900 annually for a family of four.

Millions more would have been in poverty, statistics show.

The federal government’s poverty rate generally measures income from a person’s work. Under that measure, the number of Californians who fell into the poverty income threshold — say, earning $36,900 or less for a family of four — actually rose from 10.5% in 2018 to 11.6% in 2021.

But that rate doesn’t include such government assistance as child tax credits or public benefits like CalFresh. The government counts those in its supplemental poverty measure, and the Public Policy Institute similarly counts that additional help in its poverty measure.

With that assistance, 3.9 million Californians stayed out of poverty, the institute said.

State unemployment insurance, the expansion of food assistance, utility bill assistance and rental assistance all probably helped avert a bigger crisis, analysts believe.

A spokesperson for Gov. Gavin Newsom credited much of California’s positive poverty numbers to state spending, such as the $18.5 billion the state sent to residents via direct payments, $8 billion in rent relief and $2.8 billion that helped with overdue utility bills.

“California acted swiftly to support Californians hit hardest over the past few years,” said Alex Stack, a spokesperson.

At the federal level, experts said the most impactful poverty relief was the expansion of the child tax credit, which paid families $3,600 for each child under 6, and $3,000 for children ages 6 to 17.

Sleeping in a car

In San Diego, some who received the extra money from the child tax credit say it definitely made a difference.

After sleeping in a borrowed car for four months, Angela Reyes Melo and her teenaged son have squirreled away almost enough money to put down a deposit on an apartment in Lakeside, a rural suburb outside of San Diego. Some of that $3,000 came from the expanded federal child tax credit, she said.

“It saved my life,” said Reyes, who earns about $18,000 a year as a cook while supporting her son whose disability leaves him mostly non-verbal.

Still, she worries about affording that $1,600-a-month apartment and acquiring beds and furniture. But just having a roof over their heads will be a relief, she said, likely safer than sleeping in a car or at some of the shelters.

Recently a man stuck his hand in the car while they were trying to sleep, she said, and people often fight at the temporary shelter in downtown San Diego.

“If you just look at them they start screaming… and try to fight you,” she said.

Reyes also worries that her stash of cash for her apartment is slowly being whittled away by rising food costs. “Just getting everyone a burrito can cost almost $50,” she said, referring to her four-person family.

When more is less

Advocates say there are hundreds of thousands of California families with very low incomes like Angela and her son. Some experts argue that COVID-era stimulus measures should be extended, pointing to the impact they’ve had on these families.

“It’s not rocket science for how to reduce child poverty,” Hoynes said. “We just need to give people money. And that’s what we did.”

But more money can feel like less with inflation. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ quarterly index shows wages and salaries rose by more than 5% in the fiscal year ending in September — but when adjusted for rising prices, real wages and salaries declined by 3%.

Hoynes said families said they spent relief money on basic needs such as food, school supplies, clothes and bills.

That’s how Rosalee Reyes, 29, said she spent her child tax credit. Reyes, her partner and their 18-month-old baby, Elly Rose, had been living in an apartment but recently moved into a temporary shelter adjacent to San Diego’s Civic Center downtown.

“Kids are very expensive — diapers, wipes, and things like that; the money was gone within a month,” Reyes said.

“We spent it pretty much on basic needs for Elly. At that time I did have an apartment, so it went to things like gas, lights, water … I think they should have kept the credit, because it was helping a lot of families. For people who live paycheck-to-paycheck, that just provided a little extra to get through the rest of the month.”

Poverty rebounds

Carmen Ruiz Valdez, a program coordinator for Dreams for Change agrees. The San Diego-based nonprofit which helps stabilize homeless or very low-income families also assists people trying to collect tax refunds and relief benefits.

Valdez said she recently assisted a father who earned $27,000 a year but was living on the streets with his two children. He was unaware that stimulus funds were available because he had not filed tax returns, Valdez said.

With her help, he found out his family qualified for a $14,553 tax refund. “He had tears in his eyes,” she said.

Most of these COVID-era anti-poverty programs ended in mid-2021. Sarah Bohn, the vice president of research and senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, predicts that new economic data will show a different poverty picture in 2022.

“We’re expecting that when we look at 2022 poverty and income inequality, that it will increase,” she said. “It won’t look as favorable as it does right now.”

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This article is part of the California Divide project, examining income inequality and economic survival in California.

CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

Hundreds of thousands of Californians previously shut out of Covered California — the state program that offers discounted health insurance — soon can participate because the eligibility requirements are changing.

Prior to the new rules, individuals who had access to an employer-based health insurance plan through a family member were not eligible for Covered California. Employer plans are often expensive for spouses or children, driving up the cost of coverage for those family members. Those caught in this unaffordable “family glitch” have few choices: buy the expensive plan, try to buy a bare-bones plan separately or go without health insurance.

In April, the Biden administration issued guidelines to fix the near-decade-long problem and last month the federal government adopted the regulation. Starting in January 2023, if a family’s premium costs more than 9.12% of the household income the family could be eligible for federal susidies, or discounts, through Covered California.

According to the UC Berkeley Labor Center, the “glitch” impacts an estimated 615,000 people in California, mostly women and children from low and middle-income families. The center estimates that about 400,000 of those people would be eligible for financial assistance through Covered California based on their income.

“For the people impacted, it could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars,” said Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access California, a consumer rights group. “It really does have an impact on the health and well-being of the family and their finances.”

A state analysis by Third Way, a national think tank, found that a California family of four with $53,000 in annual earnings would likely save about $4,340 a year in health insurance premium costs. The report shows that lower-income households would see the most significant savings.

The federal government is footing the bill for the expansion and pays subsidies directly to the health plans based on Covered California’s marketplace prices. The Congressional Budget Office reported that it would cost $44 billion over the next 10 years to cover family members previously impacted by the family glitch.

Covered California pays for outreach to families, including those who have been caught in the glitch, said Jessica Altman, executive director of Covered California. Covered California has a $109 million annual budget for marketing and the bulk is spent during open enrollment to outreach to Californians to sign up or renew coverage.

Open enrollment started this week and runs through Jan. 31, 2023. Coverage can begin as early as Jan. 1.

In San Jose, this is the change Patricia Moran has been waiting for. Moran doesn’t know yet how much she will save when she’s finally able to enroll in a Covered California plan. She is confident it will be less than what she pays now for health insurance.

Moran, 63, has been on her husband’s employer-provided plan for nearly eight years because she got sick and could no longer work. The plan is expensive but she needs it to pay for monthly injections for her aggressive rheumatoid arthritis.

“I’m stuck. I can’t have Medicare or any other help,” she said.

For Moran’s husband, the plan is free. For her, it’s $1,200 a month — almost half of her husband’s paycheck. That’s $14,400 a year, or about 21% percent of the couple’s total income from his job as a maintenance worker at a school and from the child care program Moran runs at her home.

Even with insurance, the injections cost $250 a month, said Moran, who said they give her mobility and the ability to care for the kids in her child care program.

“This is a big relief,” Moran said about the new policy. “It’s going to help a lot. We can have some savings for our retirement. It’s been so hard because we have to pay the mortgage, we have our bills and all of this stuff.”

California health advocates have been trying to solve the glitch at the state level for years but it was too expensive for the state to pay the cost. The federal government had to decide to fix it and fund it.

This change should help reduce the number of uninsured people in California. The state has experienced the steepest decline in the number of uninsured since the federal Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, launched in 2013. Since then, some 35 million people have enrolled in health plans nationwide, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The state’s rate of uninsured residents dropped from 17% in 2013 to 7% in 2021. More than half of the 3 million still uninsured in California are eligible for some sort of coverage, according to UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and UC Berkeley Labor Center. The remainder, about 1.2 million, are undocumented immigrants who are ineligible for coverage through the exchange, although some may now qualify for public programs..

Any change that increases coverage for Californians, especially children, is a boon, Wright said.

“This is a big deal toward the goal of a government guarantee that everybody has access to affordable health coverage,” Wright said of the policy change. “The more we get rid of asterisks and exclusions the better.”

The change comes as employers continue to shift insurance costs to families. According to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey, premiums for family coverage increased 22% between 2016 and 2021.

Nationally, about 5 million individuals are eligible only for unaffordable employer-provided insurance. More than half of those are children. Among adults, more women than men are caught in the glitch.

“It created an unaffordable situation for a small but meaningful group of people,” said Christine Eibner, a senior economist focused on health care at RAND, a nonprofit research organization that published a report about the issue in 2015. “Most of them were enrolling anyhow and paying the higher premium. They could be paying 15% to 20% of their income.”

In California, of the estimated 615,000 who are stuck with high-priced employer insurance plans as their only option, researchers estimated that about 87,000 are uninsured, Altman said. About 35,000 are in the individual market paying full rates and the majority are paying for that expensive employer-sponsored coverage, Altman said.

“There are families that can save thousands of dollars — middle-income families, lower-income families — that it’s going to make a significant change for,” Altman said. “There is value in helping people who have coverage to connect with lower-cost coverage.”

If people are uninsured or have expensive coverage they are less likely to get the care they need.

“This is a big deal toward the goal of a government guarantee that everybody has access to affordable health coverage.”
— Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access California

Those who stretch their budgets to sign up for employer-based plans may take the least expensive plan with higher deductibles or catastrophic coverage, Wright said. That could result in people going to the doctor less or not using the plans they have because they would still have to pay out of pocket.

“We believe it’s important to have the whole family covered,” Wright said. “There is a real result of not having coverage. The uninsured live sicker, die younger and are one emergency away from financial ruin.”

The Affordable Care Act requires employers with at least 50 employees to offer health insurance to them and their dependents. Spouses are usually included but not required under the law. In California, 47% of people are enrolled in an employer-provided plan. A national study published in the Health Affairs Journal found that families spend an average of 16%of household income paying employer-based premiums.

Before the latest change, the Affordable Care Act allowed employees to obtain insurance through discounted state programs if their employer health plan cost more than 9.1% of their income, which is considered unaffordable. Employers face penalties if their workers are obtaining insurance through those state programs.

Also, prior to the latest change, the law did not define affordability for family members and employers faced no penalties related to the cost of premiums for family members.

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CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

“Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside a dog it’s too dark to read.”

— Either Groucho Marx or Jim Brewer

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Books are an intrinsic part of my life: I read them, I write them, I trade them, I steward them (in the Little Free Library in Old Town Coffee & Chocolates), I borrow them (from the library), I refer to them (in the Humboldt Room of the library), I edit them, I get them printed and published, I’m never without one. Or 10.

Books, in some form, have been around for at least four thousand years. For instance, we have an alabaster disc naming Enheduanna as the author of poems written, in cuneiform, on the disc. She was priestess of the moon god Nanna and daughter of Sargon the Great (2340-2285 B.C., founder of the Akkadian Empire. Enheduanna wrote more than poetry: her Ninmeshara, copied on at least 100 clay tablets, is a lengthy account of a revolt against her nephew, for instance.

For the world’s first long book, that is, epic, the earliest of these that’s survived the millennia is that of Gilgamesh, which chronicles the fantastic adventures of the king of Uruk and his pal Endiku, including the Flood Story, plagiarized by the writers of Genesis over a thousand years later. The oldest surviving clay tablets of the Epic of Gilgamesh date to around 1800 B.C., although the most complete versions are more recent copies from Ninevah. Soon to follow were Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.

All of these were hand-copied until about a thousand years ago, with the first attempts at mechanical copying in China and India. Then came the breakthrough year, 1455, with Johannes Gutenberg’s (1398-1468) mechanically-printed 1,200-page Bible. Once the dam was broken, the flood poured out. Within 50 years of Gutenberg’s Bible, over 250 printers were furiously at work all across Europe using his technology. Historians estimate that 15 million books were printed mechanically between 1455 and 1500, more than the sum total of all books copied manually before then.

Today, the business of books — real, paper, dead-tree books — is booming. Each year, almost a billion physical books are sold, bringing in revenues of nearly $10 billion. And no wonder! The magic of it all! To carry around, perhaps as a paperback in one’s pocket, the story of a life, drama, conflict, instructions on how to succeed in life & love, the history of a town or the world or the universe, the wisdom of those who lived long ago, a Bible or Book of Miracles or the Tao, the imaginations of futurists and fantasists … and all for free, from a library; or for peanuts, from a secondhand store; or for the price of a decent meal out if you want the latest hardbound best-seller.

Somewhere in every book there’s a gem to be uncovered, often a tiara’s worth of precious stones. Here’s what I found in the last one I read, Elizabeth McCracken’s The Hero of this Book, a tribute to her late mother, buried in an otherwise unassuming paragraph: “Her memory for unhappiness and misery was terrible.” To have that inscribed on one’s gravestone! Or this speaks to me, a wannabe “good writer”: “I don’t think writing is that hard, as long as you’re comfortable with failure on every single level.” (See Hemingway: “It is easy to write. Just sit in front of your typewriter and bleed.”)

A few years ago, I discovered graphic novels — what I’d previously spurned as “comics” — starting out with arguably the best of the best, Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series. What fun! Great storytelling in words and pictures! Now I never travel without at least one new graphic novel to savor after dark, before sleep, to kickstart my dreams.

So many books, so little time, so my two bits of advice to readers. One: read everything and anything, put nothing off limits. Two: Don’t keep reading a book if you’re not enjoying it. Life’s short. Move on to the next one.

Tomorrow will be the first Sunday in November and in case you forgot, that means that at 2 a.m. daylight saving time will end and clocks and other time-telling devices will need to be turned back one hour, so that we may return to standard time. 

For some of us, this comes as good news because we get an extra hour of sleep. But others do not care for the act of “falling back,” because it means that the sun sets at an earlier time. However you feel about it, it is happening and you will just have to accept the fact that your schedule will feel a little off until you adjust to the change. 

But wait a minute, you might be thinking, didn’t California vote to end this silly practice of changing our clocks twice a year? And it did! In 2018 California voters passed Proposition 7, which proposed to permanently switch the state to daylight saving time. However, all the proposition really did was grant the State Legislature the ability to change the time through a two-thirds vote, which still hasn’t been successful. And even if the the change is approved at the state level, it will still need Congressional approval before it can go into effect. 

So, at least for the time being, Californian’s must continue to “spring forward” to daylight saving time in March and “fall back” to standard time in November. Luckily, most of our devices make the time change automatically these days. But if you have an old-school clock or a wristwatch, then you’ll have to suffer through manually setting it back one hour.

Or, you can just leave them alone for four months, when the time changes again! 

On this week’s EcoNews Report, host Tom Wheeler talks to friends from across California about “rewilding.” What the heck is rewilding? It is a global movement to restore lands and ecosystems to a more complex and “wild” state, often with the reintroduction of keystone species — think large mammals like elk or ecosystem engineers like beavers — that may be absent.

This episode is a crossover collaboration with John Davis of the Rewilding Institute (and host of the Rewildling Earth Podcast) and the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center.

AUDIO:

“The EcoNews Report,” Nov. 5, 2022.

(Sorry, no transcript this week.)

Ignaz Semmelweis, everyone!

It’s time for your monthly COVID column, and Ignaz Semmelweis isn’t a strange Lewis-Lusso holiday greeting (yet), but a true hero of healthcare.

Semmelweis! Photo: Public domain, via Wikimedia.

Whether you are still worried about COVID, over it for myriad reasons, or develop a blank, thousand-yard stare when you have to think about it, I hope you’ll still find value in this quick trip through history.

Ignaz Semmelweis was a Hungarian doctor in the mid-1800s, and he noticed a problem in the two maternity wards at his teaching hospital. Between 1840 and 1846, the maternal mortality rate for the midwives’ ward was 36 per 1000 births, while the mortality rate for the doctors’ ward was 98 per 1000 births.

I’ll resist making the easy doctor joke to continue the tale: Semmelweis found that the doctors sometimes delivered babies after performing autopsies. After instituting a handwashing policy (not in general mind you, just after autopsies) the mortality rate for the doctors dropped to the same level as the midwives.

Medical professionals kicked this idea back and forth for a while before finally deciding that regular hand washing was a good idea, and instituting it as a standard … over a hundred years later, in the 1980s!

This is why I get people who don’t fully embrace COVID protocols like masking, vaccination and ventilation. In fact, if you promise to wash your hands regularly, you will be taking the most important step to not getting sick in most circumstances. Unfortunately, most of us are TERRIBLE about hand hygiene.

A lot of groups have looked at hand hygiene compliance, through surveys and observation. The areas that SHOULD have the highest compliance levels for hand hygiene are “hands down” healthcare and food service. It’s not offensive to ask your healthcare provider if they have washed their hands. How about the dude making your sandwich? If you’d ask that guy, ask your doctor as well.

A wise infection preventionist once told me: “Imagine everything you touch has ketchup on it, and that will keep you washing your hands regularly.”

“But Michelle, WHY do I need to wash my hands???”    Welp, how do you think we get germs?

Why do some people always get a sore throat or a cold in the winter? Is it the cold weather? Going out for a minute without a coat? How about wet hair? Forgot to take your vitamin C?

Nope — colds are caused by viruses, not by being underdressed or “exposed” to the elements with wet hair. The common cold (along with some other unsavory viruses) is transmitted through the business that flies out of the noses and mouths of people who have the frequent and sudden urge to sneeze — like when they have a cold.

Some viruses stay viable (living) for hours to days on surfaces. It has been recommended that we regularly clean or disinfect “high-touch” surfaces. High-touch surfaces are just that — we touch them all of the time — doorknobs, toilet handles, phones, keyboards, refrigerator doors, light switches, countertops, etc.

Viruses land on these surfaces or hang out on the hands of those carrying them. If you wipe your nose, shake the hand of a colleague you haven’t seen in a while, then grab a cup of coffee from the break room, you’re both totally normal and spreading germs.

I challenged some people during Infection Prevention Week (SO much fun!) to “follow the germ” or count how many surfaces they had touched for the first hour of work. Then I asked them to try to count how many times they touched their faces. There were some surprises. Some studies have shown 23 face-touches per hour! Yikes — I’m glad I wear glasses and my mask a lot, because I probably go for the areas of my face I’m likely to deposit a germ in — my eyes, nose or mouth.

You probably won’t be able to train yourself not to touch your face — believe me, I have tried. So, the next best thing you can do is regularly wash your hands. This will not only keep your hands clean, but also keep germs off that quality mask you are breathing through.

So, what are some things that can keep us from getting sick?

• Number 1: HAND HYGIENE! Wash your hands at least 20 seconds with soap and water — or use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer — before and after eating, after using the toilet, after caring for or cleaning up after an animal, child or other dependent being or someone who is sick, before, during and after preparing food, before touching your face, after blowing your nose, coughing or sneezing, after being in public places, after touching garbage — SO many opportunities!
• Clean and disinfect high-touch surfaces (always read the manufacturer instructions for use on those cleaning products!)
• Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth
• Avoid close contact with people who are sick

If it’s taken you a while to get on board with preventative health measures, don’t feel bad — it took doctors over a hundred years to finally wash their hands. But now that you know, fall is a great time to start. Stay safe and healthy!

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Michelle Lewis-Lusso (she/her) is an Infection Prevention and Control nurse at United Indian Health Services, serving the 11,000+ clients and staff at their seven area clinics. Michelle hopes you wash your hands AND don’t go out with wet hair.

Edward Hackett Fitzgerald
May 12, 1950 — October 18, 2022

Ed is survived by his wife of 42 years, Lori; his two sisters, Catherine Galligan and Ann Fitzgerald; his nephew, Eugene Galligan; his two cousins, Markie (Margaret) Hartling and Eileen Sweeney; and cousin Michael Hartling (Jill).

Ed grew up in Parkchester, a large housing development owned by Metropolitan Life in the East Bronx. Parkchester consisted of over 100 apartment buildings, each seven or 12-stories high; and, when Ed was growing up, had a population of close to 50,000. Unlike public housing projects, Parkchester had a lot of open space, with plenty of grassy areas, playgrounds, basketball courts, shuffleboard courts, and a large softball field. It was a self-contained community, with numerous supermarkets, restaurants, stationary stores, doctors and dentist offices, delicatessens, drug stores, laundromats, dry cleaners, a bowling alley, a public library, and the first Macy’s after its flagship Herald Square store. The majority of Parkchester residents were Catholic and two parishes served them: St. Helena’s and St. Raymond’s. Ed’s family went to St. Helena’s, so he attended St. Helena’s Grammar School, where he made friends he would keep for the rest of his life. Although they did not realize it at the time, those who grew up with Ed in Parkchester look back with incredible fondness on Parkchester, recognizing how lucky they were to have lived there.

Ed wasn’t one to let grass grow under his feet for very long. He had a few careers before he retired. He made many friends during his careers in real estate, working as an appraiser at the Humboldt County Assessor’s office and finally at the California Department of Transportation as a right-of-way agent. Up to his last day, he was making friends as a volunteer working on trails in what is known as the McKay Tract.

Ed was a true and loyal friend to all he met and a loving husband. He lived life his way, and he passed the same way: at home.

The family thanks Ayres Family Cremation for preparing Ed for his final journey. A Celebration of Life is planned for the spring of 2023.