Joel Kotkin on the Working Poor in Long Beach Press-Telegram

Communications — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 21:22:00 -0500

New America in the News:

LONG BEACH - Take a walk in Long Beach and what do you see?

Stray from the palm-lined streets by the ocean shore, the bustling hubs at Pine Avenue, the Pike or Belmont Shore; leave the manicured lawns of the Virginia Country Club area or the Bixby neighborhoods, and there's another Long Beach.

It is the Long Beach that struggles daily to make the rent, rather than the one that plops down a fortune for an ocean-view condo.

It is the Long Beach that relies on food stamps, free school breakfast and lunch programs and charity groups' grocery giveaways, not the one that dines on lower Pine Avenue...

This is the Long Beach where residents work - often more than one job - but still struggle to pay for the basics...

Researcher Joel Kotkin says the good news is Long Beach has "people who are working and looking to go up rather than seeing themselves as poor."

"The key thing is, will (the city) be able to generate an upwardly mobile blue collar economy?" says Kotkin, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation...

For the complete article, please visit The Long Beach Press-Telegram website.