PLATFORM : Poverty’s Edge

We’re seeing more people come for services, a different type. We operate a day center that’s almost a prevention program--people who have a place to live, but they’re at risk of crossing that thin line into homelessness. In past years, we’ve seen 5,000 or 6,000 people a year. This (fiscal) year, we saw 8,260 and half of those are families. They could be tomorrow’s homeless in a minute. I’d like to see an expansion of nonprofits: creating, owning and managing affordable housing so that not only could it be managed affordably, but it also would have a built-in support system that a normal landlord is not going to provide.

There has to be a change in the way we do business in California. Things like unemployment compensation and workers comp are killing employers. The entitlement system has to be structured in such a way that people are given an amount of money they can live on or they have to be provided an alternative of job retraining. The system is not reality oriented.