Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

County agencies run programs that provide critical support for the poor, including utilities assistance, weatherization, savings programs, tax prep assistance, educational workshops and youth programs. To justify funding and support for these programs, counties are often required to conduct ‘needs assessments’ to have some evidence matching their programs to the needs of the communities. But, they often do not have staff dedicated to running these needs assessments effectively, efficiently, and with validity, or to complete detailed analysis of the results. To help address this concern, UCR masters students are partnering with Riverside County’s Community Action Partnership (CAP) to run a needs assessment. This assessment consists of a survey that is distributed to most clients that CAP serves over a few months (January - March) in both English and Spanish, and can reach over 2,000 people. This year’s survey design was completed by UCR master’s students Kathryn O’Neill and Suleyma Vergara in coordination with CAP and with guidance from our advisor. The aim of our survey is to examine the lived experience of poverty in Riverside county.

Riverside County is currently the tenth largest in the nation in terms of population, fourth most populous county in the state, and in 2018 experienced the largest population gains among California's 58 counties.This may be driven in part by higher housing costs elsewhere, as Riverside and the Inland Empire are considered an “affordability mecca for households willing to make a trade-off between commuting and housing.” Most migration to the area comes from coastal counties such as Los Angeles County, Orange County and San Diego County. Additionally, the county’s current poverty rate is higher than the state and national average, and Riverside county has a diverse population with about 50% who are Hispanic/Latino. The poverty, ethnic diversity, and inequality found in this county and the region offer an opportunity to examine poverty & inequality policy challenges in a substantial way.

The needs assessment survey covers topics that include employment, income, transportation, housing, food security, health, and documentation. We also ask about what households consider their most significant needs; last year, Dental Care, Heating & Utility Assistance, and Employment were most commonly reported as top needs. With such a broad variety of topics in the survey, we hope to compare the needs of various subgroups, such as results from the Spanish language survey versus the English language. We also hope to compare various regions of Riverside county and to complete more detailed analysis on topics such as documentation, housing cost burden, and food security. These results will form the basis for policy recommendations regarding the needs of the poor in Riverside County. With the large number of responses that we hope for and the broad topics of the study, we also will be able to make recommendations for specific and targeted policy interventions within the population of low income people in Riverside County.