Santa Paula: Home of Essential Workers
Growing up in Santa Paula and being accustomed to the atmosphere of the small city, it’s easy to have a rough estimate of who makes up most of the population in town, Latinos. However, for someone visiting or unfamiliar with the town, it can be easy to overlook the actual statistics of who makes up the population in Santa Paula.
According to the Census Reporter, the ethnic and racial breakdown for Santa Paula shows that 81% of the population is Hispanic. Meanwhile only 16% are White.
Specifically, when it comes down to the foreign born population category, 95% have Latin America as their place of birth. I think this plays a huge role when it comes to the languages spoken at home.
In the language category, it’s stated that 62% of the population who are adults, speak Spanish in their households. However, the statistic for children is only 60%. I know a few adults who have more than one child and the youngest typically ends up speaking less or sometimes no Spanish at all because they’ll speak to their siblings only in English and some of the parents have become fluent English listeners.
Taking into account that most of the population is Hispanic, and the city is also well known for being an agriculture town, many people work in nearby fields or factories. This shows an overall impact on the city’s median income category where roughly each household makes $56,875 per year. The per capita breakdown rate is roughly $22,516.
Considering the majority of Santa Paula’s population is between the lower and middle class, I found it intriguing that of all the housing units in Santa Paula, 55% are owner occupied. Meanwhile 45% are renter occupied.
Knowing these statistics and acknowledging that many of the people who reside in Santa Paula are essential workers, a very simple aid to the cities finance is to participate in the 2020 Census. Despite the ongoing pandemic there are still people going out door to door to ensure people have done the census.
It roughly takes 10 minutes to complete while more than $1.5 trillion dollars per year is at stake for public services for the next 10 years. That’s a lot of money that is even hard for me to visualize how much that actually is! This would really impact Santa Paula because the city can really benefit from public services.
