Issues Facing Ventura County

The following is a partial list of some of the challenges we are facing in VC.

• Nearly 150,000 local residents, many of them children, lack health insurance of any kind. VCCA (Ventura County Civic Alliance) Report, 2007
• All of the County’s major watersheds have rivers containing contaminants like DDT, Chlordane, PCBs, coliform bacteria that exceed federal standards. VCCA Report, 2007
• There are 1,961 homeless adults and children in Ventura County on any given day; 1,679 or 85.7% are adults, and 282 or 14.3% are children. VC Homeless Count Report, 2007
• More than 30% (1 in 3) workers in Ventura County earn substantially less than is needed to provide their families with basic necessities – reasonable food, shelter, clothing, etc. A person making minimum wage earns about $14,000 per year -- $3,000 less than the official poverty rate.
• Drop out rate of Latino students is increasing (14% of Latino students did not complete high school of 2005). Dropout rate County-wide is 9%
• In Ventura County, 100,000 people are food insecure on a regular basis. Food Share cites 1 in 3 jobs paying less than $10/hour or less. WIB date from early in this decade
• Adjusted for inflation, salaries of farm workers declined from $21,447 in 1998 to $18,499 in 2005, with anticipated continued decline to $18,156 in 2006. VCCA Report 2007
• Obesity rate of school age children is 26.4% and higher in minority and low-income families. VCCA 2007
• Arrests of male juveniles began climbing in 2003 and have risen 50% in two years. VCCA 2007
• There is an unmet demand for licensed child-care slots of 64,511 slots. VCCA 2007