Low-Income Youths May Face Jobless Summer

As director of Santa Ana’s Private Industry Council, Patti Nunn would normally have more than 800 summer youth jobs filled by this time of year.

For the city’s idle youth, she said, summer jobs have been their “salvation.”

But not this year.

Federal budget cuts threaten to eliminate those jobs for low-income youths in Santa Ana. Countywide, $5 million is in jeopardy, and 1,300 youth jobs could be lost, county employment officials said.

Orange County’s Community Services Agency has $800,000 in carry-over funds, but that would be enough for only 400 summer jobs, said Margo West, an administrator of job training programs in Orange County.

“For many of these kids, it’s their first job ever,” West said.

The $870-million summer youth employment program--a national effort to hire low-income teens to work for nonprofit community groups--was scuttled by Congress during last year’s budget battles.

Although some lawmakers are fighting to restore a portion of the funding, officials in Orange County, like West, have begun notifying community groups to expect no money for the program this summer.

“What’s so vital about the program,” said Nunn, “is you have youths out there who are dropping out of school and others who are getting involved in gangs. Summer jobs have always been a salvation for them.”

Under the program, 14- to 21-year-olds are placed in a variety of summer jobs ranging from keeping sidewalks clean to teaching how to shoot a basketball at recreational centers.

In Westminster, the Boys and Girls Club, where more than 150 children spend their summer involved in daily activities, 20 jobs are at stake.

“It’s a shame,” said Monique Lawee-Hall, Boys and Girls Club executive director. “I think there might even be a rise in crime if their energies aren’t focused.”

The summer job program is also linked to educational opportunities for students. For example, students selected from the Santa Ana Unified School District would have to attend mandatory programs such as Camp Success on Saturdays, a school district spokesman said.

Camp Success and dropout-prevention programs help show students how to choose and enter rewarding careers while teaching them skills such as computer literacy.

In Santa Ana, last year’s near-record number of gang-related killings has served as a grim reminder of the need to help disadvantaged youths, officials said.

“If anything, we would like to see the [summer job program] enlarged, not decreased,” Police Chief Paul M. Walters said. “It’s been extremely beneficial because it’s important that young adults begin getting work experience.”

Gang-related deaths in 1995 totaled six more than in the previous year and one short of the record of 48 such deaths in 1993.

The problem, at least from the Police Department’s perspective, is how to reach young, impressionable teens who might be susceptible to the gang culture.

“When they get to about age 15, as studies have shown, they start to make big decisions in their lives,” Walters said. “It is an age when they are most susceptible to joining a gang, and our preference would be to have them spend time earning money and working and building character that would carry them throughout their lives.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Job Spending

Spending for Orange County summer youth employment declined slightly over the last two years. Amounts in millions:

1995: $3.2

Source: Orange County Community Services Agency; Researched by DAVID REYES / Los Angeles Times