HealthyCal.org

Demetrio Pruneda advocates for change at Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital, while his wife, Sally pushes for reform from within as a member of the hospital's newly formed Electoral Advisory Committee.

By Robin Urevich

In Salinas, a group of activists say the local hospital board, elected by the voters to run the public healthcare system, doesn’t represent the people it serves.

“There’s a problem with priorities,” said activist David Serena. The five member Salinas Valley memorial healthcare system board of directors, he noted, approved a nearly $5 million retirement package given to the former CEO when he stepped down last month. The approval came just before the hospital sent lay-off notices to hundreds of housekeepers, nursing assistants and dietary workers.

Serena said the current at large voting system, in which all candidates run district-wide, discriminates against lower income and minority candidates. The proof, he said, is in the board’s composition.

Four of five board members live in an affluent community in the hills south of Salinas. In their zip code, 81 percent of the residents are white, and average household income was more than double the national average, as of the 2000 census. Just one of the five board members is Latino.

The vast majority of California’s 73 hospital and health care districts still elect their directors at large, said Tom Peterson of the Association of California Healthcare Districts.

But that could begin changing with campaigns in Salinas and in Tulare County.

The heavily Latino Salinas Valley Memorial Healthcare district cuts a wide swath through Monterey County, taking in the coastal towns of Marina and Moss Landing in the north, the city of Salinas and surrounding communities and the agricultural communities of Chualar and Gonzales in the Salinas Valley south of town.

“You don’t have a person on the board who’s from East Salinas or Gonzalez,” Serena said.

Serena and other activists want the hospital district divided into geographical zones, with voters in each one selecting their own board representative, so that all parts of the far-flung district are better represented.

The SVMH voting rights controversy has simmered for more than two years, although it only recently bubbled to the surface. In 2009, Robert Rubin, an attorney with the San Francisco-based Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights, said he received complaints from Salinas residents who didn’t feel they were being represented and wrote to the district, demanding it change its at-large voting system.

“The voting rights act prohibits such an arrangement, but no one has ever gotten around to challenging it,” Rubin said.

In the 1970s, attorneys began using the federal Voting Rights Act, which prohibits voting practices that deny or limit the right to vote based on race or language minority status, to overturn a number of at large voting systems in California and across the country.

Voting rights activists sued the Tulare hospital district in 2008. Now, the board has agreed to bring the question of zoned elections – the same change that Salinas activists are advocating for – to the voters next year

“To be real honest with you, I think the board members really don’t understand the needs [of people in East Salinas],” said retired teacher and activist Demetrio Pruneda.

The low-income and mostly Latino community, Pruneda said, could use more help than it’s getting with unmet healthcare needs, like high rates of diabetes and poor nutrition.

But SVMH Board President Jim Gattis, a Salinas real estate developer, contended that those who want representation on the Board should run for office. “The fact that geographically some of us are concentrated in one part of the county, it wasn’t by plan,” he said.

Bay Area attorney Kim Manolius, who represents the hospital, said he wasn’t authorized to comment on the matter.

Hospital spokeswoman Adrienne Laurent said SVMH hasn’t taken a position on the controversy. “We’re going into this with an open mind,” Laurent said, “we’re going into this without an answer.”

Last month, the SVMH Board appointed a seven-person Electoral Advisory Committee, including two board members and five members of the public, to consider the question of zoned vs. district-wide elections. They will also make a recommendation on expanding the board from five to seven members.

Pruneda’s wife, Sally Pruneda, a retired teacher and real estate agent, is one of the new committee members.

“I just like to have everyone’s voice heard…Why not let the whole community be involved in making the decisions,” Pruneda said, adding that she is concerned about executive compensation at the top at SVMH while the hospital cuts staff at the bottom.

The committee also includes an executive of a large produce company, a businessman, an SVMH nurse, and Dr. Christine Ponzio, a physician who operates a health clinic in Gonzales.

“I said to the hospital that they didn’t have enough presence in Gonzales,” Ponzio said. “I think you need to get out in the community more.”

Mr. Pruneda said he’ll join fellow activists on an unofficial shadow committee that will look at drawing zones that would ensure representation for minorities within the district.

“I won’t give her a rubber stamp,” Pruneda said of his wife, adding that he thinks the hospital’s Electoral Advisory Committee isn’t so much a step toward change as a foot-dragging maneuver.

Both Serena and Rubin said they would go to court if the hospital doesn’t make a sincere effort to move toward a zoned voting system.

“We’re going to give [the committee] a couple of months to see if they’re really serious,” Serena said.

Housing lots in a subdivision in Livingston, prepared for development, but sitting dormant.

By Tim Moran

The decades-long public battle between real estate developers and farmland preservationists went on hiatus the past few years as the residential housing market collapsed in the recession.

Farm advocates have long fought to save some of the best farmland in the world, as cities in the San Joaquin Valley grow and houses spread over land once covered with almond orchards and vineyards.

The issue is complicated by the fact that most of the cities in the valley are already located on the best soils – making it hard to avoid more building on them.

The skirmish continues behind the scenes despite the housing slump, as Merced County planners work on a new general plan for the county’s land uses.

The agricultural chapter of the general plan, still in a preliminary version, contains several controversial strategies intended to protect farmland, including farmland mitigation, increased farm parcel sizes, a greater density target for residential property, and the creation of new towns.

Farmland trusts

Mitigation tries to balance new residential developments with the historically agricultural nature of the valley. It requires developers to preserve equivalent or better farmland in exchange for building on existing farmland. The Merced County proposal would require one acre of farmland preserved for every acre developed for new homes.

A similar general plan ordinance in Stanislaus County drew a lawsuit from the Building Industry Association of Central California. The ordinance was overturned by a superior court judge in 2009, but then upheld in appellate court last November. The state Supreme Court declined to hear the case in February, letting the appellate ruling stand.

The Stanislaus case has helped preservation efforts in other counties, said Amanda Carvajal, executive director of the Merced County Farm Bureau. “It’s helpful. It doesn’t save all the land, but with the Williamson Act dwindling, we need something to protect us.”

The Williamson Act, another tool in preserving farmland, gives farmers a property tax break in exchange for an agreement not to develop the land over a period of time. State money for the Williamson Act is threatened by the state budget crisis, and counties have little money to make up the difference.

The Farm Bureau lobbied for a four-to-one mitigation ratio, according to William Nicholson, assistant development services director in the Merced County Planning & Community Development Department. But county planners could find no other city or county in California doing a four-to-one mitigation, Nicholson said, and a compromise had to be struck.

Merced County has been requiring a one-to-one mitigation on development projects for several years, Nicholson said, and the general plan would formalize that policy.

While the one-to-one ratio does allow the loss of farmland, 50 years from now, residents will notice the difference, as large blocks of farmland will remain intact, Nicholson said.

The Building Industry Association of Central California is taking a wait and see stance on the mitigation issue, said president Toby Wells. In its current form, the general plan policy lacks enough detail to form an opinion, he said.

“The idea of preserving farm land, we’ve never had a problem with – it’s the details,” Wells said. “We build where government agencies say we can build.”

The BIA sued Stanislaus County because of the way the ordinance was drafted, Wells added. In that ordinance, any land zoned agricultural, even if it is a 40-year-old dairy that’s never been farmed, has to be mitigated, Wells said. Yet commercial development on ag land does not have to mitigate, unlike residential development.

Wells said the BIA has been involved in the discussions in Merced County, although he added, “We pretty much get drowned out anyway, it falls on deaf ears.”

White picket fences

Another issue that draws controversy in the draft general plan is increasing the smallest allowable farm size in the agricultural zone from 20 acres to 40, Nicholson said.

Some preservationists feel the 20-acre minimum is too small to support commercial agriculture, and encourages estate homes and hobby farms.

The Community Alliance for Family Farmers, which consists of more organic, family farms, says you can grow organic almonds on 10 to 20 acres, and sell them for two or three times what regular almonds sell for, Nicholson said. “They say we would lose a lot of family operations if the parcel size was a minimum of 40 acres.”

The other side of that argument is that the county already has a lot of small parcels in the agricultural zone, and may not need any more, Nicholson said.

Ranchettes – single houses on one to 20 acre lots – are another point of controversy. The Farmland Trust’s Martin sees ranchettes as one of the biggest threats to preserving farmland, because of the large amount of land they eat up.

“In Dos Palos you have large homes in the middle of a farm field. Big 20-acre plots with a million-dollar home,” Martin said. “They think they have a farm, but they put the home in the middle of the field.”

“We have this incredible resource called the San Joaquin Valley, and all the towns up and down the valley were founded based on agriculture,” Martin added. “Now with the demographics and migration from the coastal areas, you get commuters from Modesto to the Bay Area.”

The BIA’s Wells says ranchettes aren’t a big part of the housing market, but developers are in the business of providing what the consumer wants – and people with enough money like the idea of having some property around their house.

Which brings up the topic of housing density. Merced County is aiming for a housing density target of 7.1 units per acre on new developments, a dramatic hike from the 4 to 4.5 that currently exists in the county. That would mean a lot more apartments and townhouse-type developments, and fewer single family homes on quarter-acre lots.

The Blue Print process, a valley-wide growth planning initiative, pushed for a density standard of 8.3 units per acre, Nicholson noted. “That’s hard to meet,” he said. “Seven point one for a rural county is pretty high.”

Wells questions who would buy the townhouses in denser developments.

“If the consumer wanted that product, we’d be building it,” he said. “It’s a choice between the white picket fence or the 20-foot-wide, three-story townhouse. Ninety-eight percent of the people pick the white picket fence.”

The economics of the valley make changing that preference difficult, Wells said. High housing prices in the Bay Area make dense housing designs desirable, he said, but in the valley, it will take a long time for the mentality to shift from large lot, single-family homes.

“There has to be something to drive that, like a vibrant, active downtown. There has to be a draw,” he said.

Controversy is part of the process

Attempts to sidestep the conflict between farmland and residential development – such as the idea to create new towns in the foothills on either side of the valley – are contentious too.

The new towns, the reasoning goes, would push development off the best farmland on the valley floor.
But new towns create their own set of problems, including environmental concerns about endangered species like the San Joaquin Kit Fox and tiny shrimp that live in vernal pools.

Farm interests also point out that the foothill lands aren’t vacant: they are generally used for cattle grazing, and in some cases have been held by ranching families for many generations.

Merced County’s general plan is still in the draft stages, and must go through the Environmental Impact Review process. A vote on the finished plan would probably take place early next year, Nicholson said.

The Merced County Planning Commission was scheduled to discuss the draft plan on June 2, and the board of supervisors will consider it on July 12.

Will the plan end the debate? Not likely, said Wells.

“You will always have a debate. It’s a tradeoff, you give something to get something,” he said. “There’s a built in push-pull that you will never completely solve. We as a community have to decide what makes sense.

“If we want more industry, more things to do, you have to give something up. It’s a Catch 22, you need growth to spur economic development.”

El Concilio, a community-based non profit agency in Stockton, provides a variety of services to people throughout the city and beyond. See Tony Wilson’s video profile.

The kitchen of Dorothy's Place. Photo by Bob Fitch courtesy of Dorothy's Place.

By Michelle Santos

Living without addresses, disappearing into life on the streets, homeless people commonly go undocumented – making the magnitude of the problem difficult to assess. A huddle of blanket-covered shopping carts and stooped figures in Salinas’ Chinatown may not provide exact numbers, but it does evidence their painful existence.

There’s a new group in the homeless community, the economic homeless—people without a home because of the economic climate and resulting job shortages. As a result, the homeless population could continue to grow if prevention and intervention efforts are not steadfastly stepped up, said Glorietta Rowland, executive officer of the Coalition of Homeless Services Providers. Unemployment numbers aren’t just higher – people on unemployment are on it for longer because competition has made it more difficult to reenter the workforce.

“They go through a period of staying with friends and relatives,” said Jill Allen, development director at the Franciscan Workers of Junipero Serra, which runs Dorothy’s Place soup kitchen and provides other homeless services in Salinas. “If they aren’t able to get back on their feet after a period of time, they end up on the street, or living in their vehicles.”

The Coalition of Homeless Services Providers (CHSP) has been bringing together Monterey organizations to launch a united approach to ending homelessness since 1994. CHSP was focused, at its inception, on procuring housing for homeless people living in Monterey County through a McKinney-Vento Act opportunity, which gave nonprofits priority over private purchasers of government property.

Now, the organization is trying to build on its early accomplishments by enabling collaborations between service providers and other interested parties to tackle the issues facing homeless people. While expanding to involve agencies on the periphery in the process, CHSP is designing a new ten-year plan focused on efficiency.

The Coalition received $80,000 in funding from the Monterey Peninsula Foundation and the Community Foundation in 2010 to spend a year developing the plan.

The 10-year plan is in its early stages, but Rowland said clear goals and benchmarks will distinguish it from previous approaches. Action plans that include steps, timelines and responsible parties will be outlined. If a staff member at a collaborating organization leaves a position, their successor will be able to carry the plan through to a well-defined goal.

Involving new community organizations will lend Salinas a substantial advantage, Rowland said. “We are going about it in a different way, reaching out to include stakeholders that have not previously been involved.”

New stakeholders at the planning table include hospitals, businesses, employment providers, local elected officials and law enforcement. With the web of involved individuals and organizations growing more intricately connected, CHSP can facilitate efficiency.

“You can do more if everyone is talking with each other,” said Brady. “Collectively applying for funding and initiating efforts to serve the homeless community is the best use of limited resources.”

CHSP has organized agency leaders to form several groups. Each group will coordinate and plot one facet of homeless care, including prevention, services, housing, discharge planning, administration and implementation, and employment and income.

The organizations already collaborate every two years, as required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, to conduct a count of homeless individuals in Monterey County. Numbers from the 2011 Homeless Census will be reported in the next few weeks, but they are expected to exceed the 2009 count of 2,407 people.

Between 2007 and 2009, the number of homeless in Monterey County increased by 71 percent. The 2011 numbers are likely to reflect a continuing increase in the homeless population due to a stalled economy and soaring unemployment rates according to Monterey County’s 2009 Homeless Census Report. According to Rowland, the homeless population is changing because of the depressed economy.

The Coalition’s first goal is long-term prevention. While it is not a new approach, it is especially important in an economic situation that stands to drastically increase the number of people subject to homelessness.

“We want to do what we can to prevent families from becoming homeless, and if they do, get them immediately into housing,” said Rowland.

Because of reliance on agriculture jobs, Salinas’ unemployment rates shoot up in the coldest months, peaking this year at 17.2 percent in January, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In recent years, during growing season, unemployment rates hover around 10 percent, a pre-recession, winter high.

According to Allen, there are distinct types of people facing homelessness in the county. Understanding each group’s particular issues, Allen said, is paramount in addressing prevention.

Chronically homeless participants are often the product of multi-generational homelessness, according to Allen. They have never known a different life. After 29 years of serving the Salinas community, Allen has realized the scope of the cycle. She has started to see the grandchildren of people Dorothy’s Place served in its early days walking through the doors in need of food and shelter.

Mental illness is the number one problem facing the chronically homeless population, according to Allen.

“Ninety percent are challenged with mental health problems. Many or most of them are self-medicating, so it’s complicated with addiction behaviors as well,” Allen said.

People being released from institutions are also in need of intervention assistance. For those who have no place to go after being discharged from hospitals or jails, homelessness is a grim reality.

Addressing this issue while improving partnerships with the institutions will be integral in the discharge planning goals and objectives, one component of the ten-year plan, according to Rowland.

Success of the ten-year plan, however, also depends on all crucial elements coming together—prevention, housing, employment, supportive services, discharge planning and administration, Rowland added.

Barbara Gladden,a family life and sex education specialist, gives a talk on sexually transmitted diseases at a Wasco elementary school.

By Chris Richard

He was the first boy to hold Samantha Alvarez’ hand, the first, on the night of her eighth-grade graduation, to kiss her. They wouldn’t grow up to be like their heroin-addict fathers. She wouldn’t get pregnant and live off the government like her big sister, and he’d be the best husband ever. He promised.

In ninth grade, when she and her boyfriend started having intercourse, Alvarez didn’t worry about birth control. “We knew we weren’t ready, and we didn’t think it could happen,” Alvarez said. “We just didn’t think one of us could get pregnant.”

Today Alvarez, who turned 17 on Monday, has a 15-month-old son. She barely speaks to the father any more. And while she hopes to earn her high school diploma and move her baby away from the crime, poverty and emotional defeat of her own childhood neighborhood, she knows the odds are against her.

Activists say that for many teenage parents in Kern County, Alvarez’s experience is typical. Increasingly, it’s out of sync with the rest of California.

Twenty years ago, there were 70.9 births statewide for every 1,000 girls between 15 and 19 years of age. By 2009, the latest year for which figures are available, the statistic had shrunk by more than half, to 32.1 births.

But in Kern County, the ratio stands at 59.7 births.

The San Joaquin Valley counties of Kings, Tulare, Madera, Merced, Fresno and Kern have had the worst teen pregnancy rates in the state for 20 years. This is Kern County’s second straight year with California’s highest rate, state Department of Public Health statistics show.

Bill Phelps, who directs pregnancy-prevention efforts at the Bakersfield branch of Clinica Sierra Vista, said the explanation may lie partly in the region’s high poverty and unemployment rates. But there’s another way to look at the statistics, he said. In 1991, the first year the county tracked teen births, the rate stood at 104.3 per thousand girls.

So, while Kern County historically has trailed the rest of the state, the county’s teen birth rate is nearly 43 percent lower than it was 20 years ago.

Activists credit a variety of strategies including abstinence-only education and community programs aimed at teaching youth about sexually transmitted diseases and birth control options.

In a seventh-grade classroom at Pond Union Elementary School in Wasco recently, the children watched intently as Barbara Gladden, a family life and sex education specialist from Clinica Sierra Vista, presented a slide show on sexually transmitted diseases. As a projector flashed close-ups of oozing sores and bodily organs eaten away by syphilis, the children gasped.

Sitting at a picnic table outside the classroom afterward, 13-year-old Brianda Gonzalez said kids do talk about sex, speculating about what it might feel like. Staring down at her frail-looking fingers, she said she found the classroom slides disgusting.

“I didn’t know what kinds of diseases I could get and what could happen to me when I get older,” she said softly. “I have to protect my body.”

Her own cousin avoided disease. But at 16, she gave birth to a daughter, Brianda said.

Gladden said she almost always gets a respectful hearing in the classroom. But as year after year goes by with Kern County still at or near the top for teen pregnancies, “We’re just beating our heads against the wall when the stats come out,” she said. “We’re afraid of what would happen if we didn’t do this.”

Lucinda Wasson, director of public health nursing at the Kern County Department of Public Health, said children of underage parents are much more likely to become pregnant or cause a pregnancy themselves.

The county’s Nurse-Family Partnership, which pairs pregnant teens with nurses, has proven it can help break that and similar pathologies, Wasson said. For instance, almost half of the teens in the program have earned a high school or general education diploma. The percentage of girls who quit smoking, had their children immunized for disease or found employment also improved markedly, Wasson said.

Still, as the state’s fiscal crisis drags on, Wasson’s program faces a 10 percent funding cut.

Other efforts have fared far worse. In 2006, for example, state officials dropped $306,000 in funding for Kern County’s Adolescent Sibling Pregnancy Prevention Program, which provided educational and other support services to brothers and sisters of teens who were pregnant or who had fathered a child, an especially vulnerable population. In 2008, the Teen Smart Outreach Program lost all of its $100,000 in state support. That program had provided testing for pregnancy, counseling and family planning services as well as testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases. The same year, state officials stopped paying the $86,000 cost of a program aimed at boys deemed at risk of causing a pregnancy.

The budget-cutting is continuing. Based on research that shows the likelihood of unwanted pregnancy decreases with education, the Cal-Learn program furnishes teen parents who have not graduated from high school with child care, transportation and school supplies. It also provides cash incentives for earning good grades and sanctions for poor marks. That program, in place since 1994, will lose its funding when the new fiscal year begins July 1, Phelps said. State Community Challenge Grants also will be cut.

Currently, those grants subsidize panels of teen parents who visit Bakersfield high schools, explaining to the students how profoundly a pregnancy can change a teenager’s life.

Teen mother Samantha Alvarez, who serves on one such panel, says she wishes she’d had a chance to hear the kind of talk she delivers now.

“I want people to understand that they should be focusing on their career right now, their education,” she said. “A lot of girls think they know about babies because they babysit. But when you have a baby, you have that baby 24-7. It’s not as easy as it looks on ’16 and Pregnant.’ And I want them to understand that.”

“Have you seen ‘Charlie Bit My Finger?’” Trelena Thomas asked through a tempered laugh when HealthyCal.org met up with her to film the final piece in our three-part series on the family. Since carrying her San Diego Broadband Initiative computer through the door of her Mid-City apartment a week ago, family time has come to include YouTube favorites. But what’s more, Thomas has connected to services and groups that promise to improve her family’s quality of life–her middle daughter has already climbed half a reading level thanks to an online reading program.

Equalizers like this are what inform efforts aimed at closing the digital divide. According to the Pew Research Center, 40 percent of households with an income less than $30,000 have home access to information on the Web, compared to nearly 90 percent of those making $75,000 or more. The median household income in Thomas’s neighborhood is less that $24,000, according to a San Diego planning agency.

The Other Side from robertknauf on Vimeo.

By Megan Burks

Item No. 13 on his California State University admissions application was the first time it really hit him—Victor, who asked that his last name be withheld, didn’t have a social security number. It was a fact he had grown up with since the age of three when his mother brought him to City Heights from Coahuila, Mexico. When asked to produce the 10-digit number during his junior year of high school, he finally understood its significance. He was undocumented.

Like a seemingly growing number of students in City Heights, Victor, currently 19, was thrust into an academic and social limbo with the completion of high school. Unable to qualify for financial aid or find regular work because of his citizenship status, he went from being an honors student to “living in the shadows,” he said.

Victor and his former teachers have watched four versions of the California Dream Act, which would have extended college financial aid to undocumented students, pass through the state legislature and cease at the governor’s desk. Now, with state budget cuts squeezing community colleges—the only feasible route to a higher education for Victor and other undocumented students—they watch with new urgency as the act presses the Capitol once more in its fifth iteration, AB 130 and 131.

“We do have to talk reality with the kids who are undocumented,” said Cindy Page, who teaches AVID, a college readiness program, at the Crawford Educational Complex in City Heights. “It’s really hard because it usually takes a couple of years for them to come forward and, by that point, they’re already superstars and looking at colleges.”

While undocumented students can technically enroll in a university, many of them never do. Current state law extends in-state tuition to those who attended three years of high school in California, but the benefit is often little help in City Heights where the median income is about than $25,000, according to the U.S. Census. Private scholarships and loans that don’t require a social security number are hard to come by. The same goes for jobs and a path to citizenship.

“When I told my teacher that I didn’t have a social security number he looked at me differently, like I was no longer his student because I didn’t have a chance,” said Victor, who began acting out and neglecting his school work after learning about his citizenship status.

Victor, like others with undocumented status, enrolled a community college because the courses were affordable. He picks up freelance work on the side, trying to save up for a bachelor’s degree that he said he’ll earn piecemeal, one semester at a time as his wallet allows. But the community college system is a different kind of limbo for Victor—an in-between from which less than 30 percent of students matriculate, according to the Institute for Higher Education Leadership and Policy at CSU Sacramento. The risk of drop-out is even steeper for immigrants, who deal with unique stressors including legal stress and families in need of an extra paycheck, said Page.

Now, state budget cuts are pushing a university transfer farther from reach, further complicating options for undocumented students to obtain a degree. Victor had to postpone his transfer date, in part because the cash-strapped San Diego Community College District cancelled most of its course offerings in the coming months, essentially shutting its doors for the summer. The governor’s May budget revision offered a better outlook for the fall term, but the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office warns better-than-expected revenues could harm efforts to extend current tax rates in a special election, which it says would secure long-term funding for the system.

The funding opportunities afforded by AB 130 and 131 could grant undocumented students access to state universities and help those with competitive grades sidestep the deteriorating path laid by community colleges. While state universities are also experiencing a financial squeeze, budget cuts there typically manifest in more competitive admissions, not cancelled terms. It’s a competition in which Victor would have excelled, he said.

“I might be more intelligent and more creative, but I didn’t have the proper digits to obtain what other students could,” Victor said, referring to financial aid.

According to Page, undocumented students are typically higher achieving than their second- and third-generation counterparts because their parents carry with them a rhetoric of new opportunity. They’ve been student body presidents and, according to Victor, even valedictorians. But that drive often falters when students run into roadblocks at community colleges. Page said she’s watched some of her students give up, instead focusing on marrying for citizenship or finding work to help their families.

Just how many undocumented students pass through San Diego schools is uncertain. The San Diego Unified School District doesn’t keep count because federal law protects families from having to reveal citizenship status upon enrolling. Page said she works with about four undocumented students a year and expects the same of other AVID teachers on campus. According to Page, about 16 undocumented students graduate from Crawford annually, not counting those who choose not to enroll in the college preparatory course or volunteer their citizenship status.

With two other high schools in City Heights, it’s estimated that about 50 area students graduate without legal status each year. And this trend could be approaching its peak. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research group, the rate of illegal immigration increased steadily during the 90s until dropping off in 2004. During this time, white families began moving from City Heights due to an increase in crime, leaving vacancies and cheap rent for new immigrant families whose children would have begun graduating last decade. Page, who’s been at Crawford for 20 years, said she began consistently meeting undocumented students in 2000.

“The situation is the situation and how it started is irrelevant,” Page said of undocumented students who were brought to the United States as minors. “My focus is on the kids. I’m not interested in the legality of it.”

Opponents of AB 130 and 131, aren’t necessarily interested in the legal aspects of their immigration either. Rather, they cite the same financial situation that has stalled Victor’s progress toward a degree. Many opponents said residents of a cash-strapped state can’t afford to foot the bill for those who came here illegally. According to a report by the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office, undocumented immigrants cost the state $4.2 billion annually.

Such sentiment is likely why AB 131 was held on suspense before moving to the Senate last week. It would allow undocumented students to apply for state-funded fee waivers, Cal Grants and institutional grants funded with state money. Its sister bill, AB 130, only freed up private grants administered by universities.

Assemblyman Marty Block (D), who represents City Heights in the 78th District, and San Diego Assemblywoman Toni Atkins (D-AD76) approved both bills. San Diego Assemblymen Nathan Fletcher (R-AD75) and Brian Jones (R-AD77) voted against the bills.

San Diego state senators Christine Kehoe (D-SD39) and Mark Wyland (R-SD38) were split on the version of the dream act introduced in the State Senate last year; Kehoe had the aye.

Illinois democrat Dick Durbin introduced a federal dream act in the U.S. Senate last month. It would grant undocumented students conditional legal status and access to popular, comprehensive federal loans. Cal Grants, however, would likely fill this need for many low-income families in City Heights under AB 131. The income ceiling that determines eligibility for Cal Grants that cover tuition and fees is as high as $78,100 for a family of four.

Richmond kids get fitted for helmets given by the city as part of its Bicycle Master Plan.

By Julia Landau

Most outsiders, when they picture Richmond, do not imagine carousels, sound stages, and residents of the Iron Triangle and Coronado neighborhoods gathering with their kids by the hundreds around bicycles. In Richmond, biking is not the popular hobby that it is in nearby Berkeley, where a bike fair would seem almost banal. Richmond hasn’t shared in many of the privileges enjoyed by Berkeley—one of which is bike-safe streets.

But a couple of Saturdays ago, city and county health workers joined with community activists and organizers around just this theme: Richmond’s mission begins with something as simple as more bicycles. They’ve coordinated with the goal of improving the health and wellness of Richmond’s people, and they’re aiming at that goal from many different angles.

The scene at the bike fair reflected this atmosphere of transition in Richmond, as the city remakes itself as a leader in innovative urban planning.

Kids lined up as county health workers fitted them for new helmets, instructing them on bike safety basics like signaling and wearing bright colors. City cops loitered (also on bikes) as volunteer mechanics repaired bikes for all youngsters who came asking.

The city’s multi-level, coordinated design to improve community health has attracted participation from residents and kudos from city planning experts, who note that Richmond succeeds where many cities fail – in implementation of actual plans to change the health status of residents. With a higher chronic disease burden and lower life expectancy compared to nearby cities, the overall health of Richmond residents stands in stark contrast to people who live in nearby Berkeley, yet it leads the Bay Area with a cutting edge plan to improve public health.

The city’s General Plan includes a Bicycle Master Plan, to encourage use of public space, and Richmond’s new greenway, a path stretching from the east side of the city to the shoreline. But Richmond’s public health strategy is sophisticated, focusing more on environmental improvements than traditional public health programs aimed at changing bad behavior.

The city is embracing approaches to health that begin with changing the physical environment around people to confer more social opportunities. City leaders have sought advice from urban planning and health policy experts to cultivate better health outcomes for Richmond.

This notion—of opportunity and social capital as essential elements to good health—is gaining traction in California. Anthony Iton, former director of the Alameda County Health Department and a noted public health advocate, has been referenced in community planning meetings for his reframing of public health in urban settings.

Iton shares the emergent idea that behavior-based models, like pamphlets and seminars encouraging exercise and good nutrition, are ineffective in under-resourced communities. Iton’s position, which he outlined in a keynote speech to the nonprofit Urban Habitat, is that effective public health strategy is “not about changing behaviors, changing attitudes, or even increasing access to health care.” Rather, Iton argues, “Changing the identity of that physical environment may be the most direct way to improve health.”

“Where you live matters,” he has said, “more than anything else. In some instances, more than what you choose to do behaviorally.”

Richmond’s city council is aggressively promoting the Health and Wellness Element of the city’s General Plan, which has the explicit goal of “equitable distribution of park and recreational facilities.”

Richmond is translating Iton’s abstract ideas into action, said UC Berkeley Professor of City and Regional Planning Jason Corburn. Corburn presented research on health disparities and city geography to the city council last month, where he discussed the historic disconnect between urban planning and public health in low-income areas and communities of color. Richmond aims to bridge this gap by creating access paths to parks, the shoreline and other open spaces.

Corburn also works for the California Endowment as an evaluator of Richmond’s Health and Wellness Plan. The Endowment is funding major health initiatives in 14 cities, and Richmond is one of them. Richmond’s detailed public health blueprint, along with strong community engagement, sets it apart from other cities Corburn has analyzed. The city has also hired some people who understand the elements of community organizing, he said, and drive the city government’s proactive involvement with residents.

At the bike fair, Gabino Arredondo of the City Planning Department networked with residents, city officials and media.

“Everyone is working on health and wellness right now,” Arredondo said. “Not just access to health care, which is important, but access to safe streets and to your neighbors—and to healthy activities.”

Arredondo, who also directs the Health and Wellness branch of the city planning department, said the city is embarking on what urban planners call a road diet, a plan to convert four lane streets intended as thoroughfares into two- or three-lane streets with wide bike lanes and more sidewalk space.

“We need to deal with the fact that as policy makers, it’s our responsibility to develop policies around health needs,” said city council member Jovanka Beckles, who is also a mental health specialist in the Contra Costa’s youth psychological services program. Looking around as residents, mostly children, careened around on bikes, Beckles remarked that wellness demands safe streets for kids to play on.

“In communities like Richmond, health is affected by the level of crime,” Beckles said. “People have so many stresses: Am I safe in a neighborhood where there’s a beef going on?”

Three young men died in homicides in less than one week in North Richmond this April, a spate of violence that followed a quiet winter. Such crimes highlight law enforcement’s necessary role in the city’s public health program.

Events like the bike fair, Beckles said, work to curb the tension created by violence. “It’s about getting people out into the streets.”

This idea that lack of opportunity damages people’s health was emphasized in the marathon PBS documentary series “Unnatural Causes,” which featured Anthony Iton. What might have sounded radical or far-fetched twenty years ago is becoming conventional science, like the link between smoking and lung cancer. And the solutions, he said, are not medical.

“The only sustainable approach to eliminating health inequities,” said Iton in his keynote speech, “is through the design of intensive, multi-sectoral, place-based interventions.”

The bike fair effort, which owes much to the nonprofit coalition Building Blocks for Kids, seemed to be a successful example of such interventions. Between 300 and 400 people came out to Lincoln Elementary School’s sprawling blacktop.

While the larger purposes of environmental justice and social equity hovered in the background, bicycles dominated the day. Wheels spun across the blacktop and kids barked.

“The City of Richmond does not have a single bike shop,” said volunteer bike mechanic Brian Drayton, who founded the not-for-profit Richmond Spokes. He looked up from the bike he was working on.

“Look around,” he said, referring to all of the kids waiting to get their bikes fixed. “There’s tremendous need.”