In line with what our speaker Angelera Siveira of  "Step Up Silicon Valley" talked about last week about poverty in Silicon Valley, Sara forwarded this article that followed in the Mercury News.....

The median price for a one-bedroom apartment is $3,590 in San Francisco, $2,290 in San Jose and $2,270 in Oakland, according to the report.

 

 
San Jose is now the nation's third costliest city for renters, according to a new report from Zumper. Oakland is the fifth most costly, tied with Washington, D.C.
 
Angelera talked about how her organization uses Community Action Poverty Simulation to educate everyone, about the day to day realities of living in poverty in the Valley. Participants role play the lives of low income families to maintain self sufficiency on Social Security and other government offered incentives to provide themselves with food, shelter and other basic necessities. This model sponsored by groups of volunteers helps come up with creative ways to measure poverty and ways to cut poverty. Silicon Valley has 18% of its population living below the level of self sufficiency compared to the country average of 10%, because of high costs of living here.