Study: Over a third of Sonoma County households struggle to survive

A new report from a Federal Reserve-affiliated institute shows over one-third (36%) of working households in Sonoma County are unable to afford basic household necessities.

The profile of these households has expanded to an unconventional group consisting of firefighters, teachers, paramedics and “people who wait on us today,” a Federal Reserve economist told a crowd of more than 300 advocates from about 100 local community service groups gathered for a meeting on economic inequity.

“How do we affect change?” William Rodgers III, Ph.D., vice president and director of the Institute for Economic Equity at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, asked the group assembled Oct. 19 at Sonoma State University.

The Sonoma County Economic Development Board hosted the fall event that also featured an awards presentation before the keynote speaker, Rodgers, spoke.

“This is not solely about race,” Rodgers said, while sharing statistics that show economic inequity tends to disproportionately impact minorities such as Blacks and Latinos. He referenced the late civil rights activist, Martin Luther King, Jr., to illustrate a false premise that jobs are easy to come by and an all encompassing solution to economic stability.

Rodgers has coined a term, “ALICE,” to describe the population considered the “have nots.” The term stands for “Asset Limited Income Constrained & Employed” — essentially workers who lack the means and salary to pay for the things that matter. In some cases, the household breadwinners work at multiple jobs and still live paycheck to paycheck. The community bears the brunt of this burden, when a segment of society fails, Rodgers pointed out.

“When ALICE hurts, we all hurt,” he said.

Sonoma County’s households failing to make ends meet came in 5% and 7% lower than the United States and California, respectively, according to the institute’s report. The data also showed Marin, Solano, and Mendocino counties have 45%, 40%, and 48% of their households, respectively, struggling within their boundaries. Over half of Lake County residents fit this category.

“One of the challenges for Sonoma County is there’s a host of jobs on average that have lower wages,” Rodgers said, following the presentation.

He admitted the task may seem “overwhelming,” but the solutions may lie with understanding how the region got where it is. The poverty level has always plagued a segment of the population — especially one marked by a lack of activism to change worker conditions. Rodgers blamed “the decline of unions” as a major reason for the breakdown of prosperity for more people.

It’s a subject Sonoma County Economic Development Board Executive Director Ethan Brown is quite familiar with.

“Definitely, work is being done on what the St. Louis Fed is studying,” Brown said, at the SSU campus. “These points are resonating with (the local community service organizations). We just need to figure out a way to make employment tenable here.”

Brown warned that these statistics and evidence may just represent “the tip of the iceberg” in terms of getting the complete view of poverty conditions in our region as the costs of goods continue to rise. He’s also concerned community service workers may be hearing only “from a select few,” since many people, including the homeless, often fall between the cracks of reporting agencies.

Busting the budget

Food, transportation, housing and health care costs make up primary budget items that prove difficult to pay as prices rise.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the poverty rate rose to 12.4% last year, compared to 7.8% the year prior. The U.S. poverty standard is set as $13,590 per year for individuals. For a family of three, the figure amounts to $23,030.

In June, the Real Cost Measure study conducted by the United Ways of California showed Sonoma County households with a family of four (two adults, a preschooler and one school-aged child) needs $97,028 annually to pay for basic household expenses. The cost equation is dominated by housing but also consists of food, health care, child care, transportation, miscellaneous expenses and taxes.

At the time this report came out, the Wine Country chapter of the United Way determined that a quarter of households in Sonoma County were unable to afford the basics.

In the county, the median home price is almost $800,000, lower than the average $1.4 million home in the San Francisco metropolis but double that of the U.S. average.

As a result, for many in the North Bay, the idea of homeownership remains elusive.

“As we think about economic development in our region, it’s important to recognize when to invest in skills building, education, well-being and wages,” United Way of the Wine Country President Lisa Carreno said after the conference. She was referring to the heightened responsibility of the community service agencies attending the conference.

Carreno said she’s noticed the profiles of those in need have expanded substantially, a trend not lost on Redwood Empire Food Bank.

One of our own

Sarah Sondergaard of Santa Rosa has used the food bank’s services for a year and a half to supplement what she grows in her 20-square-foot garden, and from her chickens’ egg production.

As an administrative assistant for a property management firm, she earns a minimum wage, and her pastor husband works a few jobs.

“We both work, want to work and have four jobs; and (living) in California, that’s still not enough,” she said. “We don’t want to live from paycheck to paycheck. If we don’t have the money, we don’t buy it.”

Sondergaard says she’s grateful she’s able to rent a house from family.

“If we paid market value right now, we’d be paying 100% of our income into that,” she said. “We want to live here because this is where our church is. It’s sad that’s how the economy has turned.”

On the front lines of a socio-economic war

With an increasing budget from $900,000 to $1.9 million, Redwood Empire Food Bank workers and its CEO David Goodman said they have noticed all walks of life seeking hunger relief. The hunger relief program serves about 124,000 people a year, a number that has more than doubled in the last five years.

“We never went down (in numbers) after the coronavirus,” he said referring to the pandemic period that started in March 2020. “We used to call it emergency food. Now it’s becoming more commonplace as supplemental groceries.”

Disasters, which can “happen every day,” have taken on new meaning for Goodman. Sure, there are the wildfires, pandemics and inflationary times. But changing household conditions impacting worker health or some other setback may evolve into the difference between going hungry or not.

“The myth in America is if we go to school, get a job and work hard, everything’s going to be OK, but everybody’s just trying to survive,” he said. “People are living on the margins, and life is tough, man. People need help.”

Susan Wood covers law, cannabis, production, tech, energy, transportation, agriculture as well as banking and finance. She can be reached at 530-545-8662 or susan.wood@busjrnl.com