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The Census reported that Hispanics were 51 percent of the residents of the eight-county San Joaquin Valley on July 1, 2007. In Tulare, Merced and Madera counties, Hispanics were over 50 percent of residents. In Fresno county, the most populous in the San Joaquin Valley with 900,000 residents, 48 percent residents were Hispanic.

The growing number of Hispanics has not translated into votes, in part because many Hispanics are not eligible to register and some of those who register do not vote. Statewide, non-Hispanic whites are 48 percent of adults but 72 percent of likely voters.

Many of the Hispanics in the San Joaquin Valley are immigrants or the children of immigrants with low levels of education. Fresno county had 525,000 residents 25 and older in 2007, including 27 percent who did not have a high-school diploma and 19 percent with a college degree or more. About 60 percent of Fresno county residents speak English at home and 40 percent another language, usually Spanish.

About 22 percent of Fresno county residents were born abroad. Of the almost 200,000 foreign-born residents, a third were naturalized US citizens and 70 percent were born in Latin America.

Fresno county's labor force was 417,000, including 379,000 employed--30,000 workers, nine percent, were employed in agriculture. The Central California Regional Obesity Prevention Program estimates that two-thirds of adults in Fresno county and the San Joaquin Valley are obese or overweight.

The Sacramento Bee October 12, 2008 reviewed three SJV projects that aimed to attract high-income home buyers. All failed, in part because the SJV economy cannot support many high-priced homes.

Investors committed $120 million to create 33,000 acre Diablo Grande west of Patterson attracting Bay Area refugees to luxury homes built around golf and vineyards. Over 450 homes were built before the development went bankrupt in March 2008. Today, most of the houses in the development sell for less than their owners paid.

Running Horse in western Fresno was to include $800,000 homes around a golf course. Its developers sold what remained for $200,000 in March 2007, prompting developer Donald Trump to request subsidies from Fresno county to revive the development in May 2007; eventually, Trump walked away and the San Diego lenders took over the property. McAllister Ranch was launched when Bakersfield was experiencing the fastest home-price appreciation in the US in 2005, and aimed to build 6,000 homes. It went into bankruptcy.

The Colonel Allensworth State Historic Park has since 1974 preserved an all-black community begun in 1908 about 40 miles north of Bakersfield. In 2007, the state paid an adjoining landowner $3.5 million not to develop a 12,000-cow herd next to the park. Allensworth died soon after founding the community, and because of water problems and the closure of its railroad depot, the town closed a few years after it began.

Duroville. A federal judge in July 2008 threatened to close the 40-acre Desert Mobile Home Park known as Duroville if the mobile home park was not made habitable. The US Attorney in October 2007 sued to close Duroville, and a trial is scheduled for December 16, 2008.

Harvey Duro, a member of the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians tribe, opened Duroville after Riverside county cracked down on illegal mobile home parks that were home to many farm workers in 1998. Its 300 trailers house between 2,000 and 3,000 people, mostly Purepecha Indians from the mountains of Michoac n.

The judge cited the lack of alternative affordable housing in his decision to keep Duroville open and allow Duro to make repairs. A nonprofit entity, the Duroville Renaissance Corp, was created to obtain a $3 million loan from funds collected under the Community Reinvestment Act to make needed improvements. The government continues to seek to close Duroville.

The Purepecha began migrating to the Coachella Valley in the 1980s; most arrived in the 1990s. Some Purepecha speak neither Spanish nor English, and many marry very young. Residents interviewed in April 2008 reported earning less than the state's minimum wage of $8 an hour. Some anthropologists urged the judge to keep Duroville open so that the Purepecha can preserve their culture in the US.

Riverside county has nine reservations and 10 casinos. Disputes with the Soboba Band of Luise¤o Indians, which operates one of the casinos, prompted the sheriff to try to close the casino. There are about 1,000 Soboba, and five have died in shootouts with deputies.

Santa Paula. Santa Paula, with an estimated 35,000 residents in 2008, is a farm worker town in Ventura county. There were 28,000 residents according to the 2000 census, 71 percent were Hispanic, and per capita income of $16,000 was below the US average of $22,000.

In summer 2008, some of the non-Hispanic residents of Santa Paula petitioned the city council to stop the construction of government-subsidized housing, arguing that it brings more poor people into Santa Paula. The city council appears unlikely to approve a moratorium on government-subsidized housing, arguing that long waiting lists for apartments that charge tenants 30 percent of their income in rent show the need for affordable housing.

Santa Paula has about 9,000 housing units. Developers have proposed 4,000 more, mostly upscale homes in the hills above the city. The largest development proposal, known as Fagan Canyon, was rejected by voters, but many upscale homes are being built.

The National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals reported that delinquency rates for home loans made to borrowers with individual taxpayer identification numbers were about one percent in 2006, compared to over three percent for all loans. ITINs are used mostly by unauthorized foreigners who cannot get Social Security numbers, and professionals say that tighter lending requirements and 30-year fixed loans explain lower delinquency rates. Many of the ITIN-mortgages were arranged by Citibank and Acorn Housing.

Voting. Many of California's 450+ cities elect school board members at-large or on a city-wide basis. Civil rights groups have been suing some of the cities in the San Joaquin Valley, alleging that at-large voting makes it harder to elect Hispanics.

In September 2008, a Madera county judge agreed with the San Francisco-based Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights that at-large voting for the board of the Madera Unified School District put Latino candidates at an unlawful disadvantage; the judge ordered voting by district. The Committee noted that 82 percent of the 18,500 students in Madera are Latino, but there was only one Latino on the seven-member board. Whites are about 56 percent of voters in Madera.

The Lawyers Committee threatened to sue 20 jurisdictions throughout the state in 2008 that hold at-large elections in which Latino candidates appear to be at a disadvantage.

Section 8. Does the migration of poor residents to the suburbs increase crime? Police in Antioch, California believe the influx of Section 8 recipients from Oakland and other nearby cities increases crime (about eight percent of Antioch homes have Section 8 recipients, much higher than the average two percent). Many of the Section 8 residents of Antioch are Black, and they filed a class action suit against the Antioch police department in July 2008, claiming racial discrimination.

The Section 8 federal housing voucher program covers 60 percent of the rental cost of poor Americans who move to areas with middle-income families. Some 2.1 million families received Section 8 rental vouchers in 2007.

The New York Times on August 15, 2008 reviewed the ads developed by banks to "unlock the equity" in homes. The effect was to convert second-mortgages from a last- to a first-resort for additional cash, earning billions in fees and interest for banks, brokers and related industries. In 1982, there was about $1 billion in second-mortgage home equity loans outstanding; in 2006, the total was $1 trillion. Banks and advertising firms collaborated to find language such as "equity access" that made second-mortgages a more acceptable way to accumulate debt.

In the 1980s, the portion of the value of homes owned by Americans was 70 percent; in 2008, it is 50 percent, reflecting the rise of second mortgages and buyers putting less money down to buy homes. Those who made the ads that attracted Americans to second and no-money-down mortgages now say that their good intentions went awry, as subprime lenders adapted their slogans and encouraged excessive borrowing.

Day Labor. The Los Angeles City Council on August 13, 2008 approved an ordinance requiring home improvement stores to develop plans for dealing with day laborers who congregate in search of jobs. The Los Angeles-based National Day Laborer Organizing Network welcomed the ordinance, which would likely require stores with more than 100,000 square feet such as Lowe's or Home Depot to develop plans to deal with day laborers.

State. California and most other states begin their budget year July 1. California is routinely among the last of the states to approve a budget, largely because of a structural deficit and a requirement that a two-thirds majority approve a budget, allowing minority Republicans to block budgets that would increase taxes (47 states allow budgets to be enacted with simple majority votes). The state's spending rises faster than its revenue, and there is little flexibility to reduce spending because most of the state's spending is committed to K-12 education, health care for the poor, and corrections.

California has a $145 billion budget in 2008-09, up $41 billon or 40 percent since 2004 (up 20 percent in inflation-adjusted terms). The statewide sales tax of 7.25 percent is the highest in the US (many cities and counties add surcharges), and the state's top income tax rate of 10.3 percent is also among the highest. About 10 percent of the state's taxpayers pay 70 percent of the state's income tax, which makes the state budget vulnerable to stock market swings.

Each additional one percent of sales tax raises about $4 billion a year. The general fund budget of $104 billion for 2008-09 was approved 85 days late, and within weeks sprang an additional $1 billion hole due to slowing tax revenues.

Schools. The California Department of Education released standardized dropout data in June 2008. http://dq.cde.ca.gov/dataquest) In August 2008, the state released the results of STAR tests, which found that 46 percent of California students scored proficient in English and 43 percent were deemed proficient in math http://star.cde.ca.gov/star2008/Viewreport.asp).

The federal No Child Left Behind law, effective in 2002, requires schools to bring their students to math and reading proficiency by 2014. States were allowed to outline the path they would follow to proficiency. Half, including California, aimed to increase the share of students who are proficient by small amounts between 2002 and 2007, two percent a year, and by much larger amounts, 11 percent a year, between 2008 and 2014. In 2002, only 14 percent of California students were proficient in reading.

However, in the first year that 11 percent more students were to become proficient, half of the state?s 9,800 schools failed to achieve the goal. Researchers say that most of the state?s schools are unable to continue raising proficiency by 11 percent a year, especially because California has high standards and rigorous tests; they say that raising the share of students considered proficient by three or four percent a year is the most that is feasible over time. All states adopt their own curriculums and testing standards, and the rigor of the tests varies greatly.

Brad Branan, "Hispanics now a majority in the Valley," Fresno Bee, August 10, 2008. Scott Gold, "In Santa Paula, a white minority blames the poor for the town's problems," Los Angeles Times, August 22, 2008.