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California's unemployment rate was 8.4 percent in November 2008, the third-highest rate in the US. Most San Joaquin Valley counties had unemployment rates of about 12 percent. A web site, http://www.careersinthevalley.com, outlines job opportunities in five sectors of the San Joaquin Valley: logistics and distribution, manufacturing, agribusiness, renewable energy, and healthcare.

Education. The Great Valley Center released a report in October 2008 concluding that youth in the 19-county Central Valley are less prepared for education and job success than youth elsewhere in the state. About 45 percent of Central Valley children under 18 were Hispanic in 2008; 39 percent were white. A third of Central Valley children lived with only one parent, slightly higher than for the state, including 43 percent of children in Fresno county.

In 2006, the federal poverty level for two adults and two children was $20,444. About 18 percent of children statewide, and 26 percent of children in the San Joaquin Valley, lived in households with incomes below the poverty line in 2006— 19 percent of San Joaquin county children were poor, as were 32 percent of Madera county children.

Legal families can earn up to 130 percent of the federal poverty line and receive Food Stamps, or up to $2,100 a month for a family of four in 2006. About eight percent of Central Valley households, and four percent of California households, received Food Stamps in 2006 (13 percent in Tulare county). About 54 percent of California youth aged 5-17 in K-12 schools received free or reduced priced meals in 2006-07, including 62 percent of those in the San Joaquin Valley (70 percent in Tulare county).

A quarter of California K-12 students, and a quarter of San Joaquin Valley students, are classified as English learners; 32 percent of Merced county K-12 students are English learners. Statewide, 22 percent of students dropped out of high school in 2006-07. The highest drop-out rate, 34 percent, was in San Joaquin county.

About 13 percent of California high school graduates qualified for admission to UC in 2007, and a third took the courses needed for admission to the Cal State system. Among Asians, these rates were 29 and 51 percent; for whites, 15 and 37 percent; for Latinos, seven and 22 percent; and for Blacks, six and 24 percent.

Poverty can breed more poverty. Statewide, about nine percent of births in 2005 were to women age 15-19. However, in the San Joaquin Valley, a higher share of births were to teen mothers— over 14 percent in Kern, Kings and Madera counties.

Madera, the 55,000-resident county seat of Madera county, has been electing the school board at large, meaning that candidates compete with each other in all parts of the city. Suits alleging that at-large voting limits the opportunities for Hispanics to be elected have encouraged some cities to change from at-large to district voting.

Madera had 68 percent Hispanic residents in 2006, over 80 percent of K-12 pupils in the Madera Unified School District were Latino, but the school board had only one Latino member. California's 2002 Voting Rights Act bans at-large voting if it "impairs the ability" of a minority group "to elect candidates of its choice or its ability to influence the outcome of an election."

The San Francisco-based Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights sued the Madera school district, arguing that at-large voting was the reason there was only one Hispanic among the seven school trustees. A judge agreed, and ordered Madera to elect school trustees from seven districts rather than at large. A majority of voters in the Madera school district are Latinos.

About 92 percent of California's 1,000 school boards use at-large voting, as do many city councils and other local boards. The Madera suit encouraged all 32 school districts in neighboring Fresno county to switch to district elections.

Most large urban school districts use district voting to elect trustees, which helps to ensure minority representation but can also lead to territorial disputes and pork-barrel fights for resources. The Lawyers' Committee recently settled a case with the city of Modesto, which agreed to switch to district voting. The Latino Issues Forum said that many California school districts have Latino student majorities, use at-large voting, and have few or no Latino school board members.

Housing. The Desert Mobile Home Park (Duroville) in Thermal remained open throughout 2008 despite the efforts of the US government to close the 40-acre, 300-trailer park that houses a peak 3,000 to 5,000 farm workers in April and May. Most Duroville residents are Purepecha Indians from Michoacan who arrived in the Coachella Valley in the 1990s.

Riverside county cracked down on illegal mobile home parks that were home to many farm workers in 1998, citing safety concerns. Harvey Duro, a member of the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians tribe, opened Duroville to provide rental housing.

Los Banos, a city of 35,000 in Merced county, was profiled October 22, 2008 in the Wall Street Journal. Home prices fell two-thirds from their peak in 2006, and 20 percent of the homes in the city were in foreclosure in Fall 2008. Almost half of the mortgage loans in 2006 were subprime, with many borrowers assuming loans for 100 percent of the cost of their houses and builders paying closing costs. When house prices dropped, many buyers walked away.

Five of the 10 US housing markets in which home prices have declined the most between October 2007 and October 2008 are in agricultural areas of California. They are led by Salinas, where home prices are down 29 percent in the past year.

The housing meltdown makes it clear that many people who bought homes were unable to make payments on them. Henry G. Cisneros, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Clinton, unveiled the National Homeownership Strategy in 1993. It reduced the requirement that families had to have five years of stable income to qualify for a guaranteed mortgage to three years. It also allowed lenders to hire their own appraisers and permitted loans to be made to borrowers without personal interviews. The share of Americans who owned the homes in which they lived rose from 64 percent in 1994 to 67 percent in 2000.

Some 7.1 million US residents live in public housing, including an aunt of President-elect Obama in Boston whose application for asylum was rejected. Unauthorized foreigners can live in public housing if at least one family member is legally in the US, such as unauthorized parents with US-born children. The US Department of Housing and Urban Development estimated that 29,570 residents— less than one half of one percent— were "ineligible noncitizens" in public housing in 2008.

Los Angeles-philanthropist Peter Samuelson, an immigrant from Britain, began the Starlight and Starbright Foundations to help children with terminal diseases to obtain a last wish, such as visiting Disneyland. Samuelson had design students develop a mobile shelter for Los Angeles-area homeless called an EDAR (Everyone Deserves a Roof), a covered contraption resembling a shopping cart and pop-up camper that can be produced for $500 http://www.edar.org). Lawyers are trying to persuade cities to allow the units to be set up in specified public places.

Air. Bad air costs the California economy $28 billion a year because of 3,000 pre-mature deaths, according to a Cal State Fullerton study released in November 2008. The cost of not meeting federal clean air standards in the San Joaquin air basin was estimated to be about $1,600 per person a year, or $6 billion a year. The main culprit are high levels of PM 2.5, microscopic particles that lead to premature deaths whose cost is estimated at $6.7 million each.

Fresno had 75 days in 2007 for which PM 2.5 levels exceeded federal standards, followed by 68 days in Bakersfield.

The number of California households receiving cash assistance under CalWORKS fell sharply between 1997-98 and 2006-07, from 732,000 to 460,000. However, in 2007-08, average annual caseloads rose to almost 500,000, and they are expected to continue climbing in 2009 as unemployment rises. California in Fall 2008 was not satisfying federal requirements to have at least 50 percent of adults in CalWORKS work at least 30 hours a week.

Budget. An emergency session of the California Legislature in November 2008 failed to deal with the state's growing budget deficit, over $11 billion for the 2008-09 fiscal year and growing. The state projected a balanced budget in September 2008. Republicans want the state to reduce spending and not raise taxes; Democrats want to raise taxes and minimize spending cuts.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed raising the state's sales tax from the current 7.25 percent to 8.75 percent and extending the sales tax to some services (with local sales taxes, the average statewide tax rate would be 9.5 percent). Legislative Democrats offered an alternative that would raise fees rather than taxes to avoid the requirement for a two-thirds majority vote.

California collected $54 billion in personal income taxes in 2007-08, $27 billion in sales taxes, and $12 billion in corporation taxes. Tax collections are expected to rise more slowly than expenditures on K-12 schools, health care and prisons.

The Bush administration in October 2008 announced that all schools receiving federal support would have to measure drop out rates by using the percentage of ninth-graders who earn a diploma within four years. Low-performing schools must inform parents that their children have the right to government-funded tutoring and the opportunity to transfer to a higher-performing school.

Mitchell Landsberg, "Madera Unified case is changing elections throughout California," Los Angeles Times, January 4, 2009. Great Valley Center. 2008. Education and Youth Preparedness. October. http://www.greatvalley.org)