Las Serenas Housing Complex

My internship is at the Las Serenas apartment complex, a housing development in Southeast San Diego. My recent interactions with clients and staff have illuminated the harsh reality of the current economy.

On multiple occasions I have worked with clients who have been laid off from their jobs and are struggling to provide for their families. Most of our clients are Hispanic, Spanish-only, and low-income; many have been in poverty for generations. This demographic is in stark contrast to the upper class whose wealth has expanded in the past few decades. On several occasions, clients come into the Learning Center to ask the program coordinator for frozen corn, which they steam and sell for $1.50 apiece to other residents to pay bills. Women bring their old clothes to exchange with other women at the monthly swap meet. And many clients must be directed to local resources including the food bank just to eat for the month.

A notable recent interaction occurred with a staff member rather than a client. She has agreed to have her situation posted. She is a single Hispanic mother with an MBA from Mexico who used to work full-time for $25 an hour. However, as a single mom, she had to switch careers so that she could take care of her son to lessen the chances that he would join a gang, get into drugs, or fall into one of the many other self-destructive tracks common among the immigrant community in San Diego. The job she found that offered her flexibility paid $15 an hour, and she was laid off after the recession hit. She could not find another job and spent one and a half years on unemployment. During this time, she removed her MBA from her resume because she was overqualified for the jobs for which she applied and which she really needed. She has since been hired at this organization. She is currently on Section 8 housing and makes the same amount that she received on unemployment.

Through conflict theory, Marx suggested that a capitalist society breeds inequality. The situations I’ve described clearly exemplify this idea. The staff member has worked so hard and been highly educated, but she has been unable to break into another class because of the economic crisis in our capitalist society. The resources available to the San Diego immigrants, an ethnic minority, allow the lowest class to simply get by rather than prosper. Even hard work, which individualism promises will enable success, cannot foster equality in the today’s collapsing capitalist economy. The upper and lower classes have never seemed more separate than they do today.

-Emily Decker