By Liu Mei
LOS ANGELES, August 12 (Xinhua) -- It's a great honour for Los Angeles, the second largest city of the United State, to step forward on track to the 2028 Summer Olympics, but the chronic poverty and homelessness cast a shadow over the city.
At least dozen Angelenos, who expressed opinions against the Olympics bid in the special meeting of City Council Friday, warned that the city is struggling with unemployment and housing crisis, both key factors experts said caused the city of angle to be ranked almost top in the country for population of poor.
Host City Contract signed with Los Angeles and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) was approved by the City Council on Friday.
A study published by the scholars of UCLA in April showed that the poverty rate in the whole LA area had increased from 15 percent to 17 percent between the year of 2011 and 2015, while the unemployment rate had risen from 7 percent to 10 percent.
The poverty rate in South LA even jumped from 37 percent to nearly 43 percent, one of the authors, Paul Ong pointed out in the article that it is the influx of immigrants, many of whom work for less pay than the U.S. natives, drove up the poverty rate.
"I believe the first main reason is the education level difference, people with higher education, such as Master Degree or P.H.D usually live in the good areas with better housing condition, because this part of people have the relatively high and steady income. While for some Latino immigrants, who have lower education level and pay, might struggle more with their housing cost," William Yu, the economist of UCLA Anderson Forecast told Xinhua.
A research report released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in April supported his words. It showed that the median weekly income for people with Doctoral Degree is 1,664 U.S. dollars, and rate of unemployment is only 1.6 percent.
However, for those with a high school diploma or lower education levels, the median weekly earning is 504 U.S. dollars, and the unemployment rate is 7.4 percent.
Not only lacking of work opportunity, the poverty but also always links to the housing problem in U.S., LA is not an exception.
A new report released by U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) threes days ago showed that the percentage of the residents, who live in substandard housing or struggle to cover their rent in great LA area, ranked second highest in the country.
LA had 10.1 million population in 2015, about 1.04 million households were low-income renters and 560,000 were categorized as the worst-case households, with a 55 percent of worst case housing needs.
The term "Worst Case Housing Needs" are defined by HUD as either the renters with very low income - even lower than half of the median income of the area, who don't receive the housing assistance from the government, or people who pay more than half of their income for the housing, or both.
Some contributed the poor condition to the house price which has skyrocketed in last decade.
"The rental price in L.A. was all the way up since I started my career in 2011, the one bed room from about 1,000 U.S. dollars to now is almost 2,000 U.S. dollars, which is astonishing." Miguel Gonzales, a real estate agent of L.A. told Xinhua.
"According to my understanding, immigrants are the major cause for growing housing costs. The weather, the location and the good opportunities attract more and more immigrants, LA is usually the first choice for new immigrants, especially the Asian and Latino immigrants," he said.
The HUD report also points out that 47 percent of the "worst case housing needs" were Hispanic in 2015 across the nation. Although the incomes rose between 2013 to 2015, the rental costs increased even faster. Overall, the growth in rental costs outpaced income gains.
"With a great advantage geographical location and the rich sunshine and beaches, LA always attract the investors from all over the world, which surge up the housing price here. As a result, some local residents have to face the high living costs, especially for those immigrants with low income. This is another reason why the percentage of the poverty in L.A. is so high," Yu agreed.
