Latino families have been hit hard on living expenses one year into the pandemic

Research

In Despite Pandemic Morton East Seniors Make Best of Graduation, the author does a great job in making the article easy to consume and read. I enjoy seeing photos and reading a short story about each on how the seniors tried to make the best of their graduation during the pandemic.

I also liked the LA Times article These students vowed to change immigration laws a decade ago. Where are they now? It has an interesting video to go along with the article that already has photos. In addition, we see each person tell their stories.

To my knowledge, I haven’t seen any local reporting on the community of Echo Park regarding the pandemic on the question I would like to ask.

But I did find these national stories: One from AARP and the New York Times.

The AARP article says that a poll found that “4 in 10 adults say the COVID-19 pandemic has led to someone in their household losing a job or income.” The New York Times article shared someone’s story. I enjoyed the AARP for its data, while I enjoyed the New York Times for its story. I think what I would do differently is include diversity and include audio.

Community Demographics and Information Needs

About 57% of the area’s population identifies as Latino. This is followed by 19% who identify as white, 17% who identify as Asian, and 5% who identify as Black.

What I discovered from applying Listening Post methods to asking questions is that the right open-ended question will inspire people to open up a lot more about their situation compared to a semi open-ended or closed-ended question. The questions outlined below are what I think are news gaps in my community that I will be answering based on my interviewees’ responses.

Main question: How has losing your job or a family member losing his or her job been affecting your family’s living expenses during the pandemic?

Additional question: Do you get any government assistance as a result of you or your family member losing the job? If so, what type of assistance have you needed to resort to?

Additional question #2: Does your family experience food insecurity as a result of a loss of income? If so, how is everyday life for everyone?

Additional question #3: How was keeping up with your living expenses like before the pandemic caused you to lose your job compared to how you have needed to deal with them now?

Proposal

The pandemic has caused millions of people across the United States to lose their jobs. But Echo Park has seen limited coverage on how the pandemic has affected families’ living expenses since March 2020.

There are not many stories that cover Echo Park as a community. So, what I would like to do is either go out to Echo Park or do video calls to interview Latino families whose living expenses have been exacerbated by the pandemic. Moreover, I will try to also see how undocumented Latino families have been affected if they are open to being interviewed. I want to tell the stories of Latino family members on how they have been dealing with living expenses ever since losing their job sometime between March 2020 to today. This issue isn’t talked about that much, and I would like to bring light to their stories through my reporting. To do this, the style of reporting I would like to do is similar to the one called “Graduating During Covid,” otherwise titled as Despite Pandemic Morton East Seniors Make Best of Graduation.

Echo Park is a predominantly Latino community at around 57% of its population, according to censusreporter.org on the East Central/Silver Lake, Echo Park & Westlake PUMA area. Yet, it appears that the Latino community in Echo Park isn’t covered enough when it comes to the pandemic, let alone how they have been doing financially. In telling the story, I would need to make sure that I include the racial and ethnic data of Echo Park. I would also need to make sure that I include the median household income. In addition, I would perhaps also include data on infection rates in Echo Park and somehow connect them to the story.

And like I said before, my main question would be: How has losing your job or a family member losing his or her job been affecting your family’s living expenses during the pandemic?

I will attempt to use each interviewee’s images and audio to tell their stories. But picture it this way: The way I’ll try to do this is by putting their photos as well as their audios below each of their photos. It’s like an audio graphic of each person. To get a better idea of how this will look like, see Despite Pandemic Morton East Seniors Make Best of Graduation, except that each photo will have audio attached to them.