- Report: Bay Area cost of living up 18 percent since 2008, By Matt O’Brien, October 4, 2011, Contra Costa Times: “By one measure, the cost of living for Bay Area families soared 18 percent since the onset of the recession in 2008. As wages remained stagnant and more residents lost their jobs, the price of rental housing, transportation, child care and other basic needs kept rising, according to an Oakland-based national research group that wants California to overhaul how it measures the economic well-being of its residents…”
- Report: Basic cost of living soars in Bay Area, By Carolyn Said, October 5, 2011, San Francisco Chronicle: “Raju and Simmi Kumar were busy Tuesday afternoon arranging multihued shawls, skirts, handbags and tablecloths imported from their native India in their new Mission District store, Simmi Boutique. ‘We want to help the poor people back in India who work for us to make these beautiful things,’ Raju Kumar said. Here in the United States, their family of five – they have three children, ages 13, 14 and 19 – struggles to make ends meet also. ‘It’s very tight, let me tell you,’ he said. ‘We never, ever go out, we always cook all three meals at home. But expenses are going all the way up.’ A report released Tuesday underscored how the Kumar family reflects the realities of the working poor. According to a formula called the Self-Sufficiency Standard, a family of four (with two adults, one preschooler and one school-age child) in the nine-county Bay Area now needs $74,341 a year to get by, compared with $62,517 three years ago…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty