Being A Latino Family Affected By The Great Recession

I believe in the power of neighborhoods and barrios. I believe public institutions devoted to our leisure, education, and civic engagement are sacred spaces. The people make the place, but the place defines the people. And, I want to live in a place where I know my neighbors will alert me if they see my child acting a fool, or if they see strange people lugging my crap out the door — I am not talking about living on a street known for chisme, I am talking about people who work for a living helping out other people who work for a living do the difficult deed of raising young, impressionable people.

I am talking about a place where I see myself reflected, and where the shadows don’t need deciphering

My wife and I don’t have a lot of money, and we definitely have the smallest television on the block (a paltry 19 inches). But, what we do have is a public library branch that’s basically in our backyard, and we borrow heavily from this library: cookbooks, DVDs, comics, magazines. We even borrow children’s books for our one year-old son, and “Baby Einstein” DVDs that he can watch instead of the brash and ultra-violent programming my wife and I like to consume.

We believe in neighborhoods because the institutions in them deliver services which help us to relax, take stock, and replenish our minds (and fill them with books). However, even though we are both professionals, owning a home for us, and staking a claim in our neighborhood seems more like a dream or flight of fancy.

If you hadn’t heard, Latinos were the most affected by the Great Recession of 2009 ( and 2010, 2011, 2012?). According to the Pew Hispanic Center:

Median household wealth among Hispanics fell from $18,359 in 2005 to $6,325 in 2009. The percentage drop—66%—was the largest among all racial and ethnic groups, according to a new report by the Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends project.

Likewise, “median household wealth declined 53% among black households and 16% among white households.”

The largest reason for the decline in wealth among Latinos was plummeting home values; also, the states that were in the “vanguard” of the housing fubar also happen to be states with a majority Latino population.

They say hindsight is 20/20, but my parents were able to buy the lower floor of a duplex in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn a little more than 10 years after having first landed in New York City. And, because their legal residence status was determined after my birth, the sum they were able to scrimp was a figure they had earned on an undocumented person’s wage — typically half the federal minimum wage.

So, my fears of never being able to own a home are not necessarily unwarranted or overblown. Latinos, as a group, seem to be losing wealth at faster rates than African-Americans or whites. I understand that many of the more beautiful things in life are not material things, but why, as a Latino, should wealth be yanked away from me faster than any other race?

If you think I am crying wolf, then chew on this: “the median wealth of white households is 18 times that of Hispanic households and 20 times that of black households.” If that alone doesn’t scare you, then maybe the fact that these, “lopsided wealth ratios are the largest in the quarter century since the government first published such data.” Basically, it seems that our representatives still haven’t learned their lesson from the “yarn” of trickle-down Reaganomics and the ones who are going to suffer as a result are people like me and my family, and you and yours.

Yago Cura is a writer based in Los Angeles. He edits the online journal Hinchas de Poesia and moderates the blog Spicaresque. Follow him on Twitter @theshusher.