“I used to spend $160 every two weeks for food. Now it’s $50 every two weeks,” said Glenn Garrett, 36, a laid-off construction foreman with three children. “But I’m still a dad, and it’s still my responsibility to put food on the table.”
Here in southwest Riverside County, where foreclosures and unemployment have taken an enormous toll, one of the biggest casualties has been the middle class, which is rapidly becoming the new poor.
“This is more of a middle-class recession than any before because of the housing component and because the shutdown of the financial system has spread into the service and construction sector where you have a lot of the better jobs,” said John Husing of Economics & Politics Inc., a regional economic research firm. “Recessions usually fall on those at the bottom, but now all tiers of society are being hurt.”
Few places illustrate that better than Murrieta, a tidy city of about 100,000 with a median family income of $85,439, according to the 2007 census.
I was in Murrieta yesterday seeing clients and was shocked at the number of “For Sale” signs in front yards. One retired couple were expecting their son and his family to be moving in with them later this week as he lost his job and home.
I used to live in Southern California. This story is really sad. I must say that the part of the story describing a large house on a golf course documents what I would call unaffordable extravacance. Golf courses use water that is in short supply in California, partacularly Southern California and a six bedroom house with how many bathrooms? Who really needs either of these things? Obviously, as the story describes, food is more important. So sad.