How many poor people in the United States is too many poor people in the United States?
What is the acceptable number of men, women and children you feel personally comfortable with knowing they don’t have enough money to eat, pay rent or have a place to call home? One hundred thousand (double the size of National City)? One million, roughly a third of the size of San Diego county? How about almost 40 million? Is that OK?
In Chula Vista the estimated poverty rate is 8.4%, that’s 23,000 of your friends and neighbors who are barely surviving. In National City 7,000 of the 55,000 people who live there are impoverished.
In addition to those dismal numbers consider that in the richest country in the world, 47 million people miss at least one or meal a day. In Supervisor Nora Vargas’ District 1, 30% of the 637,000-plus people that live there don’t get enough to eat.
“The drivers of food insecurity are rooted in racial inequities, resulting in communities of color facing it at higher rates. As of 2022, over 10% of the overall population in San Diego County was considered food insecure. In the Latino community, that number is 18 percent. In the Black community, it jumps to 24 percent,” writes Feeding San Diego, a non-profit that works to alleviate hunger. Chances are high that hundreds of students in Chula Vista and National City are going to bed chronically hungry.
We good with that?
We know there is no Santa Claus. That’s a good thing to acknowledge because rather than wasting a Christmas wish on a holiday legend we can whisper our desires into the ears of people who exist. People that can do something to address the issue.
Undoubtedly local and state officials need to be held accountable, ensuring there are systems in place to keep our neighbors and children fed. But many of the programs we depend on are reliant on federal dollars. Money that D.C. legislators can allocate or cut, depending on whims and mood.
Next year, as the GOP-led Congress and presidency—along with the billionaire advisors President-elect Donald Trump has employed—I hope the number of hungry and poor in the “greatest nation in the world” falls to zero. That’s my Christmas wish.
