CSA fills widening wage gap CSA fills widening wage gap (December 23, 2005)

Town charity provides emergency assistance, senior meals

By Jon Wiener

Tuesday is can and cereal day at Community Services Agency, and Norma Renteria is loading up on her groceries. Later on, she will pick out toys for her children and carry home a holiday turkey, two services CSA provides to all its clients.

For the last two years, she has been coming three days a week or more to the building on Stierlin Road, ever since she stumbled across it on her way to work. The food aid has meant there is more for her six children to eat, and with the money she saves from her grocery budget, she has been able to buy them new shoes.

CSA, said Renteria, "has changed my life. I'm so grateful for all the help."

Renteria, who has a job as a maid at the Westin in Palo Alto, is a member of a burgeoning class known as the working poor. For decades, the directors and staff of CSA, one of six non-profits featured as part of the Voice Holiday Fund drive this year, have made it their mission to offer people like Renteria the help they need to be productive members of society. Clients, who must meet federal guidelines to qualify, can get assistance for everything from their grocery shopping to their rent and electric bills.

But the agency known as "The Town Charity" is facing an ever-widening gap.

A new report by the non-partisan California Budget Project says that the economic boom of the late 1990's left behind the Bay Area's low-wage workers, who watched their wages remain flat while others got big raises. Over the last 25 years, adjusted for inflation, high-wage workers have seen their salaries grow by more than 30 percent, but the wages earned by those at the bottom fifth of the pay scale have fallen.

Meanwhile, at CSA, the impact has been seen at the Food and Nutrition Center, where the number of clients has nearly doubled since the official end of the national recession. Between July 2001 and July 2004, the number of clients using the center shot up from 2,224 to more than 4,000.

"Our numbers just skyrocketed," said associate director Maureen Wadiak.

Those numbers appear to have reached a plateau, and despite the challenge, CSA continues to adapt to serve the communities of Mountain View, Los Altos and Los Altos Hills. And it's not just the working poor or underemployed who are turning to CSA for help. As the population ages, the agency is finding new ways to modernize the services it provides for seniors.

Wadiak said the agency is using recent grants from the Valley Foundation and the Council on Aging to purchase laptops for case managers to take when they visit homebound seniors. The computers will simplify the process of applying for Medicare and other benefits while introducing many seniors to the Internet.

"That's really the goal," said Wadiak. "To keep seniors healthy, independent and valuable members of our community. They're really the people that built Mountain View and Los Altos."

E-mail Jon Wiener at jwiener@mv-voice.com

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