Several years ago, Anne Stuhldreher rolled through a stop sign in San Francisco and got a ticket. That kind of infraction costs $238 or more in California. The price shocked Stuhldreher, who knew that many families living in San Francisco\u2014rated one of the most economically unequal cities in the US\u2014don\u2019t have a few hundred dollars to spare.<\/p>\n
After Stuhldreher got her ticket, she thought about the way that the fee would impact different people in the community differently. \u201cIf someone who is a daycare worker in my neighborhood got that ticket, it would be very different than someone who works at a tech company.\u201d Stuhldreher, who has long worked on addressing the financial issues facing low-income residents, started digging into these questions.<\/p>\n
Around this time, new research was demonstrating the impact of fines and fees on low-income people across the country. The problem isn\u2019t isolated in San Francisco: a 2016 survey by the finance website Bankrate showed that 63 percent of Americans don\u2019t have enough money saved to cover a $500 emergency. That is nearly the cost of a ticket for running a red light in California.<\/p>\n
In its 2015 report on Ferguson, Missouri, in the aftermath of the police shooting of Michael Brown, the US Department of Justice showed that aggressive law enforcement in low-income communities of color was being used to generate revenue. People\u2019s inability to pay for minor offense tickets could have major ramifications on their live, forcing them to go into debt, lose a driver\u2019s license or a job, or even end up in jail.<\/p>\n
Stuhldreher calls it the \u201cspiral of despair.\u201d A person gets a traffic ticket for a few hundred dollars. Unable to pay the fine, she misses the deadline for payment, and the ticket starts accruing late fees and creates a debt that hangs over her head. The city sends the ticket to the collections department, and now her credit is damaged, so that the next time she tries to rent an apartment, her application is rejected.<\/p>\n