When people hear “human trafficking,” they imagine something distant, another country, another city, another community. That narrative allows us to feel safe. It is also dangerously wrong! Human trafficking is happening in Pomona. It is not rare. It is not accidental. And it is not simply a criminal issue, it is the predictable result of housing instability, economic inequality, labor exploitation, and gaps in community-based services. In California, trafficking remains a persistent emergency. According to the National Human Trafficking Hotline, more than 1,700 trafficking cases were identified statewide in 2023, involving over 3,600 victims. If we are serious about public safety and community well-being, we must stop treating trafficking as an isolated crime and recognize it as a structural crisis rooted in vulnerability.

As a Pomona resident, graduate social work student, and survivor of trafficking, I know exploitation does not begin with abduction. It begins with instability when rent consumes most of a paycheck, when youth age out of foster care without support, or when someone flees domestic violence with nowhere to go. Traffickers rarely present as strangers; they present as solutions! They offer housing, protection, employment, and stability. Over time, those promises become tools of control.

This crisis is visible in our community. Along corridors like Holt Avenue, prostitution unfolds in plain sight. Many residents see it daily. I do too. What some dismiss as “choice” is often survival shaped by trauma, poverty, and coercion! When exploitation becomes normalized on our streets, it signals deeper systemic failures in housing policy, mental health access, economic opportunity, and prevention.

Experts agree these figures likely represent only a fraction of actual cases due to underreporting, fear, immigration concerns, and distrust of institutions. Los Angeles County continues to rank among the largest hubs for labor and sex trafficking nationwide, according to the Polaris Project.

Pomona’s proximity to major transportation corridors, hotels, warehouses, and informal labor sectors increases vulnerability, especially in hospitality, domestic work, day labor, and logistics. Exploitation thrives where labor is hidden, unregulated, or dependent on silence. But statistics alone do not explain why trafficking persists. Structural conditions do.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services identifies housing instability, poverty, and prior trauma as major risk factors. Research from Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago found that nearly one in five youth experiencing homelessness report being trafficked in some form. That is not a coincidence; it is cause and effect. When stability disappears, leverage appears. When people lack options, traffickers gain power.

Pomona is already grappling with rising housing costs, visible homelessness, and economic insecurity. These challenges are not separate from trafficking; they are interconnected. When affordable housing is scarce, and wages stagnate, vulnerability grows. When trauma-informed mental health services are inaccessible, recovery becomes harder and re-exploitation more likely! When labor protections are weak, exploitation becomes normalized. Yet our response remains fragmented.

Survivors often encounter limited shelter beds, short-term services, and inconsistent case management. Legal processes can stretch for years. Funding is frequently reactive rather than preventative. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine emphasizes that effective anti-trafficking responses require coordinated, long-term, survivor-centered systems, not isolated efforts. We cannot arrest our way out of this crisis.

Law enforcement accountability is necessary, but prevention requires structural investment. Research consistently shows that access to stable housing, livable wages, healthcare, and coordinated social services reduces vulnerability to exploitation. When people have genuine stability, traffickers lose leverage.

If Pomona is serious about confronting human trafficking, city and county leaders must move beyond awareness campaigns and commit to concrete, sustained action. This means investing in long-term, trauma-informed housing so survivors have a safe place to rebuild their lives, while also implementing school-based prevention programs that educate young people about grooming and online recruitment. Educators, healthcare providers, and other frontline professionals should receive mandatory training to recognize the warning signs of trafficking and respond appropriately. At the same time, stronger labor protections and enforcement are needed to address exploitation in workplaces where trafficking often remains hidden. Finally, Pomona must support coordinated, survivor-centered service networks bringing together social services, legal aid, healthcare, and community organizations to ensure survivors receive the comprehensive support they need for long-term recovery.

These are not radical demands. They are evidence-based solutions! This is not only a moral issue. It is a public safety issue, an economic justice issue, and a community responsibility.
As someone who survived trafficking in a community where exploitation was normalized, I refuse to accept silence as the default response. Survival should not depend on luck. Prevention should not depend on chance. Pomona deserves a coordinated strategy grounded in evidence, compassion, and accountability. The time for passive concern has passed. The time for coordinated, community-wide action is now.

Sarai Martinez is a graduate student at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work and a Pomona resident.

How Neoliberalism Masquerades as Pragmatism, and Why It’s Failing Everyone Except the Donors

If you want to see neoliberalism in action, look no further than Pomona. From homelessness to land use to public-private partnerships, the city’s policies are a case study in how neoliberalism masquerades as pragmatic governance. As Part 1 explained, the real snake isn’t liberalism but neoliberalism, a corporate-friendly ideology embraced by both Democrats and Republicans for decades. But thanks to slick political branding, liberals are taking the heat for policies that were never meant to help regular people in the first place.

Homelessness isn’t a failure of the system. It’s a feature. Pomona’s entire governance model is a masterclass in shifting responsibility away from the state and onto nonprofits, private contractors, and ultimately, the residents themselves. And just a few blocks north, Claremont offers a quieter version of the same playbook—one that hides its exclusions behind college-town charm and progressive aesthetics.

The Neoliberal Blueprint: From Homelessness to Land Use

Homelessness: Managing Symptoms, Not Causes

Pomona’s approach to homelessness mirrors neoliberal strategies at the national level: decentralize responsibility, privatize services, and make sure the state doesn’t have to foot the bill. The city leans heavily on regional partnerships, outsourcing key services to nonprofits and faith-based organizations like the Tri City Mental Health Center and the Pomona Continuum of Care Coalition.

These partnerships might make services look efficient, but they’re really just a way to manage homelessness without addressing its root causes. In 2023, Pomona’s Point-in-Time Homeless Count showed a 14 percent increase in unsheltered individuals, exposing the limits of these stopgap solutions. Meanwhile, affordable housing construction continues to lag, with the city falling short of its Regional Housing Needs Assessment targets for very low-income units.

It’s a familiar move: rebrand cuts and outsourcing as innovation while ignoring the structural causes like rent hikes, wage stagnation, and the commodification of housing. And it’s not just Pomona. Claremont has consistently failed to meet its affordable housing goals as well, despite having more money, more land per resident, and far fewer excuses. Where Pomona outsources services to underfunded nonprofits, Claremont keeps poverty out of sight altogether through restrictive zoning, token planning efforts, and the quiet preservation of exclusivity.

Land Use: Privatization and Profit Over People

Neoliberalism isn’t just about outsourcing services. It’s about reshaping cities to serve private interests. Pomona’s land use policies are a textbook example. The city has prioritized commercial developments—parking lots, strip malls, and luxury housing—over public spaces or affordable housing. Community spaces that could serve the public good are instead converted into profit-driven developments, fueling gentrification and displacement.

This isn’t just bad planning. It’s a deliberate strategy to maximize profits for developers and private interests, often at the expense of the very residents who need housing the most. By treating land as a commodity rather than a shared resource, Pomona’s policies reflect the logic of deregulation and speculation.

Claremont’s version is subtler but just as damaging. Its charm is built on decades of exclusionary zoning and aesthetic preservation that keeps dense or affordable housing from entering the market. That’s not an accident—it’s policy. While Pomona gets blamed for visible poverty, Claremont’s affluence depends on limiting who gets to live there in the first place.

Public-Private Partnerships: Outsourcing Accountability

Pomona’s reliance on public-private partnerships extends beyond homelessness services. Essential public functions like fire protection and animal control are increasingly managed through private contracts rather than directly by the city. While this might look like efficiency on paper, it’s really about offloading responsibility and reducing public accountability.

The City Manager’s role now centers on contract oversight rather than public service. It’s a management style that treats residents as customers and government as a business. The result is a patchwork of services, each with different standards, limited oversight, and no one to blame when things go wrong.

And again, Claremont is not exempt. It outsources sanitation, contracts out landscaping, and delegates housing policy through technical consultants and planning workshops designed more to check boxes than build equity. Even when it has the power to lead, it prefers to manage from a distance. Both cities rely on the same operating system. They just wear different skins.

The Influence of Private Interests in Local Politics

If you want to know who really runs Pomona, follow the money. Campaign contributions from developers, contractors, and business associations shape local elections and drive the city’s priorities. Time and again, decisions favor commercial projects and privatized services over public goods.

This isn’t just a local trend. It reflects the national pattern of corporate influence in politics, where elected officials are forced to choose between their constituents and their donors, and the donors usually win. These policies are then rebranded as centrist compromises, when in reality, they are market-driven decisions that offload risk onto the public.

In Claremont, campaign donations are less obvious but just as decisive. Political caution, donor class preferences, and homeowner associations act as quiet enforcers of the same agenda. Protect property values. Avoid controversy. Keep things the way they are. Even progressive candidates learn quickly which fights they’re allowed to pick.

The Consequences: Fighting the Wrong Battles

Blaming leftists—or liberals—for Pomona’s policy failures is exactly what the real culprits want. It keeps the conversation focused on tone, rhetoric, and personalities while the underlying system continues to funnel resources upward. The same people who rail against government waste are often the first to privatize public services into oblivion. And the same voices who mock social programs are perfectly fine with taxpayers funding bloated contracts for private firms.

Meanwhile, the people advocating for real solutions—affordable housing, living wages, and public services that aren’t siphoned off by middlemen—are dismissed as naive or unrealistic. That’s the hustle. Any demand for systemic change is labeled radical, while business as usual gets to parade around as common sense.

Name the Real Enemy

Pomona’s policies are not mistakes. They are predictable outcomes of a political system designed to offload risk, shrink public responsibility, and transfer wealth into private hands. Claremont plays the same game with different aesthetics. Both cities are symptoms of a broader crisis.

The first step to fixing it is naming it. This is neoliberal governance, not liberal failure. And until we call it what it is, the same cycle will repeat: nonprofits stretched thin, contractors cashing in, and cities treating their residents like liabilities instead of people.

But it doesn’t have to stay this way. We already know what works. Cities that invest directly in housing, pay people living wages, and provide services without middlemen are not utopias—they’re just places where policy follows need instead of donors. It takes will. It takes organizing. And yes, it takes the guts to stop pretending that tinkering around the edges will fix what’s broken at the core.

Real solutions exist. We don’t need more blueprints. We need the courage to build.

Because if we don’t, the billionaires won’t just keep laughing. They’ll keep winning.

REFERENCES

Foundational Texts on Neoliberalism
Wendy Brown — Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution
David Harvey — A Brief History of Neoliberalism
Thomas Frank — Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?

A scathing look at how Democrats embraced meritocracy and markets while abandoning working-class politics.

Adolph Reed Jr. — “The Limits of Anti-Racism” (essay)

Argues that elite liberalism uses symbolic politics to dodge material redistribution.
Lester Spence — Knocking the Hustle: Against the Neoliberal Turn in Black Politics

Julian Lucas, is a photographer, a purveyor of books, and writer, but mostly a photographer. Don’t ever ask him to take photos of weddings or quinceaneras, or any other events because he will charge you a ton of money you couldn’t even make payments on.