The Look of Poverty: Young and Minority : Census: One in 10 South Bay residents qualifies as being poor under federal standards. Children are the largest group, with black and Latino youngsters suffering the most.

Poverty crept up all too quickly on Juan Hernandez.

He had always had at least one job, and more often two or even three, during his 15 years in the South Bay. He and his wife, Margarita, and their 19-month-old daughter lived a good life on their $30,000 annual income and had even managed to save enough money to cover three months’ worth of expenses.

It was a nice cushion, more than most people have.

Then, last December, after five years as a data-entry clerk for a small company near Los Angeles International Airport, Hernandez was laid off.

Months of searching have not yielded a new job. Last week he and Margarita, now eight months pregnant, waited in a Lawndale emergency food line, homeless for the first time in their lives--and part of a painful South Bay statistic.

Newly released U.S. Census Bureau figures show that more than one in 10 of the South Bay’s 893,000 residents lives below the federal poverty level, defined as $12,674 a year for a family of four. Comparing age groups, the South Bay’s 219,000 children are the poorest residents; 16% of them lived in poverty in 1989, the most recent year for which the census income data is available.

Of those children, minorities are suffering the most. More than 18% of the South Bay’s black children are poor, and more than one-quarter--25.5%--of its Latino youngsters live in poverty.

By all accounts, the South Bay’s poverty problem this year is even worse--social service workers say the area’s poverty rate has increased since the census was taken, largely because of recession-related cutbacks in local aerospace and manufacturing industries.

“I would up everything at least 10%” from 1989 levels, said Sandy Cima, social services director at House of Yahweh in Lawndale. “There are more and more families on the streets and even more are near being there. So many of these families, they just never dreamed they’d be in this situation. . . . It’s heartbreaking.”

County welfare statistics show that 59,564 South Bay residents were receiving either general relief or Aid to Families with Dependent Children as of March. South Bay welfare data for previous years is not available. But countywide, the number of welfare recipients has jumped 38.8% since 1989.

Lt. Kenneth G. Hodder, commanding officer of the Salvation Army’s Torrance office, said his organization is struggling to keep up with the burgeoning demand.

“About two years ago, we started to see an absolute explosion in the number of people coming to us for assistance,” Hodder said. “These are folks coming from all walks of life. Many people coming to us now have in prior years been donors to the Salvation Army. . . . The scope of this is just enormous.”

Large families, especially those in which the only working parent leaves or suddenly becomes unemployed, are often hit hardest.

When Maria Soto’s husband abandoned her and their six children in a rented Gardena home three years ago, her first reaction was a deep depression, she said.

“My husband all the time told me I was stupid (and that) I would starve without him with all these kids, and I believed him,” she said. “I didn’t know what I was going to do.”

All her life, she had dreamed of being a nurse. But she did not know how she could possibly train for a career while supporting her large brood.

Caseworkers at Gardena’s Department of Human Services directed her to emergency grocery programs, placed her youngest children in the city’s free child-care program, and counseled her about school and training courses.

Two months ago, shortly before her 41st birthday, Soto graduated from a nursing program and began working at a hospital for $600 a week--hardly a princely sum for a family of seven, but far more than they once had.

The long years of cleaning houses during the day to pay the rent, collecting food stamps to feed her kids, going to night classes and then studying into the early morning hours have ended. But the family was changed by its brief plunge into poverty, she said.

“My children know now, the most important thing for a woman, for anyone, is education,” she said. “My children inspired me . . . and now I want to make sure I inspire them. They’re all going to go to college.”

Although Soto and her family are well along the climb out of poverty, too many others are not, a Children’s Defense Fund report released last month warned.

“The conservatives are blaming everything on the loss of family values, but they’re missing at least half the point, which is that economics is a central problem,” defense fund spokesman Jim Weill said. “The (national) median family income for those headed by someone under the age of 30 fell 32% in real dollars from 1973 to 1990.”

The long-term impact, he said, is huge.

“We know that poor children are more likely to die in childhood because of poor medical care or poor housing conditions. They’re less likely to have a car seat, so they’re more likely to die in traffic accidents, and they’re less likely to have good medical care and adequate food.”

Once children grow up in poverty, Weill said, they are more likely to remain trapped in it.

“Poor kids of all races generally are more likely to have babies as teens than non-poor kids,” he said. “And it’s the households headed up by the younger and less-educated parents that are having the hardest time making ends meet as our economy gets worse.”

An increase in single-parent families, particularly those headed by single mothers, has thrown a large number of children into poverty, he said.

More than 28% of the South Bay’s single-mother families lived in poverty in 1989, according to Census data, whereas 15.9% of families headed by single fathers and only 7.6% of married-couple families were poor. Single mothers bring home a mean income one-third that of married-couple families.

The reasons, experts say, are myriad, ranging from inadequate or nonexistent child support payments, less education and job training for mothers because of the demands of child-rearing, expensive child care that deters women from working, and the fact that working women simply earn less than men do.

“I’m barely surviving right now, so I know I’ve got to get a college degree and a career going,” said Dolores Camarena, 28, who separated from her husband three years ago and has since had sole responsibility for her 4-year-old and 5-year-old sons.

Panicked at first by the cost of day care, Camarena eventually found free child care through Gardena’s city program and found a clerical job at a local company. She plans to become an accountant but knows it could take years to complete school.

Although her $280 weekly income puts her slightly above the poverty level, it rarely feels like it, she said. She makes do by sharing a house with another family and peddling Tupperware on the side.

“I provide the basics for my sons, but that’s about it,” she said. “There were times before now when I didn’t even have milk for my little ones. They needed shoes, but there was no money. . . . Even now, they say, ‘How come you always work all the time and we still don’t have any money?’ ”

Camarena’s situation is typical of the working poor.

“People who are in poverty often are employed. That is a phenomenon that we’re seeing more and more,” said James Mathieu, a professor of sociology and urban studies at Loyola Marymount University. “There are people working 40 hours-plus each week who are still marginal or below the poverty level. They simply cannot make it, even if they are getting more than the minimum wage.”

The Solano family is scarcely earning that.

Living in a cramped one-bedroom apartment just south of Gardena High School, Maria and Miguel Solano and their 18-year-old daughter, Xochilt, find what work they can to pay the family’s $550 rent and take care of Xochilt’s brother, 5-year-old Noe.

The family’s only steady income is the $125 that Maria earns each week cleaning houses. A nephew living with them helps pay for a few other necessities, including a telephone and groceries.

But the family’s situation is not bleak, Maria Solano insists. On June 29, Xochilt became the first family member ever to graduate from high school--a blessing that makes the family’s struggles well worth it, her mother says.

“In Mexico, maybe my daughter could not be a student because she would have to stay home and take care of her little brother,” Solano said. “Here, there is an opportunity for her to go to school.”

Gardena High School officials found out two years ago that Xochilt was missing classes often to care for her younger brother. The school put the Solanos in touch with the city’s Human Services Department, which began providing free day care for the boy and, occasionally, emergency groceries for the family.

Thrilled to attend school full time, Xochilt became the school’s top biology student. She plans to start classes at El Camino College in the fall and eventually transfer to a biology program at a four-year university.

“We are poor, but I do have everything I need . . . to keep going in school,” Xochilt said. “We’re passing through a bad time right now . . . but my mother believes the situation will change. She says what’s important is that we are together. That’s really all we need.”

Dreams about a better future sustain many families through the hard times, those struggling through poverty agree.

After the Hernandez family was forced to give up their Lawndale apartment earlier this year, the parents tried to make ends meet by living apart briefly. Margarita and their daughter moved in with her mother in Mexico and Juan moved in with a brother in Wilmington while he continued looking for work throughout California.

Now, one month before their baby is due, the couple has reunited and has lived with a series of friends while hunting for a hospital that will accept Medi-Cal payments to deliver their baby.

Standing in line at Lawndale’s House of Yahweh last week, waiting for their first allotment of emergency groceries, they say they are worried but optimistic.

“We never thought this could happen to us,” Juan Hernandez said. “But I also know that we are not the only ones right now. Times are hard on everyone. . . . We’re scared, yes, but we’ll just get our baby born and we’ll find something. We’ll get settled back down again.”

Poverty in the South Bay

The 1990 Census revealed a broad range of economic prosperity in the South Bay, from a poverty rate of 24.6% in Lennox to just 1.6% in Rolling Hills Estates. In fact, all four Palos Verdes Peninsula cities have among the fewest poor people in Los Angeles County, where the overall poverty rate was 15.5%. Other South Bay areas with high poverty rates include the Wilmington / Harbor City area with 18.3%, Harbor Gateway with 16.8%, Inglewood with 16.5% and Avalon on Santa Catalina island with 15.5%. The poverty level is defined as $12,674 a year for a family of four. Avalon: 15.5% Inglewood: 16.5% Lennox: 24.6% El Segundo: 4.2% Hawthorne: 13.9% Gardena: 9.8% Lawndale: 13.1% Manhattan Beach: 3.8% Hermosa Beach: 5.5% Redondo Beach: 5.6% Torrance: 5.1% Harbor Gateway: 16.8% Carson: 6.9% Rolling Hills Estates: 1.6% Rolling Hills: 2.3% Palos Verdes Estates: 2.3% Lomita: 10.7% Rancho Palos Verdes: 2.3% San Pedro: 14.2% Harbor City / Wilmington: 18.3% Los Angeles City: 18.9% Los Angeles County: 15.1% Source: United States Census