Here Are 10 Ways Activists Are Mending California’s Income Gap

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As a “State of Equality” array has documented, mercantile inequality poses a grave hazard to California’s future. But conditions would be distant worse were it not for a swell finished by dynamic activists, village leaders and lawmakers. In a final several years, California has generated some of a nation’s many innovative and effective strategies to retreat inequality. Here Judith Lewis Mernit lists 10 landmark achievements value celebrating and emulating. — Editor

1. PAY FAIR San Francisco voters also voted to lift a city’s hourly smallest salary from $10.74 to $12.25 by May, and $15 by Jul 2018. Oakland residents82 percentWorking PartnershipsMountain View’s City Council

Since 1997, when Los Angeles became one of a nation’s initial citiesservice contractorsSanta Clara County“comprehensive” vital wage

“They’re unequivocally lifting a informal standard,” says Nikki Fortunato Bas, executive executive of a Partnership for Working Families

In addition, a bloc of village and labor groups assured Long Beach votersLos Angeles City Council

2. JUSTICE FOR TEMPS Assembly Bill 1897, that Governor Jerry Brown sealed in September. It creates a corner guilt between companies and their subcontractors, holding both sides obliged for wages, health caring and workman safety. Corporations that let their subcontractors take salary and put workers’ health in danger

3. RECLASSIFYING “CONTRACTORS” AS EMPLOYEESillegally misclassified eccentric contractorsSuperior Court decider ruledPacer Cartagethe initial came in Mar of 2013Uber driversrecently foundLyft

4. MONEY FOR SCHOOLS Local Control Funding Formula, sealed into law by Governor Brown in 2013, designates a special set of supports for low-income children, kids in a encourage system, and students whose initial denunciation isn’t English. As California has some-more low-income and newcomer families than any other statelong bum preparation systemProposition 30

5. A ROOF OF ONE’S OWN gutted California’s 400 redevelopment agenciesstalledcollect fees on real-estate transactionsOnizuka Crossing, an 58-unit unit formidable dedicated to residents who acquire reduction than a area’s median income ($50,000 for a four-person household).

San Jose, whose rents have left adult 39 percent in a final 5 years, has zoned a two-acre parcel nearby a sight and train stations for an unit building to residence low-income residents and seniors; village meetings on a plan have only gotten underway. These are only little dents though during slightest offer glimmers of hope.

6. LEARN AS YOU EARN Utility Pre-Craft TrainingRePower LA

Also, in early 2012 Los Angeles Metro, that provides all open travel within Los Angeles, adopted a Construction Careers Policy to yield on-the-job construction training for residents of a city’s economically stressed neighborhoods. This three-to-five-year “earn as we learn” module costs participants zero and is homogeneous to college, says LAANE’s Jackie Cornejo, who worked on a plan as an analyst. Cornejo adds that a module “is unequivocally about insuring that people that came from disadvantaged communities, and people with barriers to entry—such as a rapist record—have an event to entrance construction tutelage programs.”

7. BAN THE BOX study

With a thoroughfare of Assembly Bill 218 in Oct 2013, a state did what several California cities, including Oakland, Berkeley and San Francisco, had already done: criminialized a “Have we ever been convicted of a felony?” box on practice applications for supervision jobs. The law is a good start toward creation re-entry easier for a thousands of convicted felons who are expelled from jail each year in California.

The Nov 2014 voter-approved Proposition 47 also helps former felons entrance a pursuit market, by retroactively shortening some former transgression crimes, from drug possession to shoplifting, to misdemeanors.

8. SOLAR FOR ALL Assembly Bill 43“Shared Solar” law

California, where some-more rooftop solar was commissioned in 2013 than in the past 30 years combinedan appetite divideSingle-Family Affordable Homes Project, need to lift on as well.

9. GOOD FOOD Assembly Bill 191, that automatically qualifies Medi-Cal recipients for CalFresh, a state’s supplemental nourishment module that issues electronic vouchers that can be used to buy food during markets and grocery stores. This is another tiny though poignant blessing: A lot some-more needs to be finished to residence a emanate of food deserts

10. DON’T WASTE L.A.the fifth many dangerous job

“And that’s only a collection side,” says LAANE’s Jackie Cornejo, executive of a Don’t Waste L.A. debate to urge rubbish collection practices in a country’s second-largest rubbish market. In rubbish estimate facilities, where rubbish gets sorted, “facility workers might not have gloves, reserve glasses, protecting gear. People toss things into a rabble bin but meditative about who’s going to hoop it.”

In Apr of final year, Los Angeles’ City Council and a Mayor instituted a “Zero Waste LA Franchise System”11 authorization zonescertain standards

“In terms of rubbish and recycling,” Cornejo says, “it’s a many transformative process we’ve seen in a country.”

(Judith Lewis Mernit is a contributing editor during . Her essay has seemed in , a and a .)

Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/24/income-inequality-solutions-california_n_6745242.html?utm_hp_ref=los-angeles&ir=Los+Angeles