The wave of home foreclosures that swept California in 2008 and 2009 has not gone away. In some ways, it may be getting worse.

Last year, says Brian O’Callahan, who directs the three-person Foreclosure Prevention program for Catholic Charities in Santa Rosa, his agency was contacted by roughly 3500 people seeking help with home loans gone bad. Out of that number, about 600 met the criteria for his HUD-funded program (first mortgages only, primary residence of the borrower). And only a quarter of those 600 were able to get significant assistance. For many of the rest, the best they could offer was sympathy and someone to listen.

California’s 1 million farmworkers are at increased risk for respiratory diseases and other health problems, according to a new report, in large part due to poor air quality where they are working.

Pesticides and other chemicals are part—but only part—of the air quality issues that affect farm workers, especially in California’s Central Valley. So even the most basic measures to shield workers from the worst of the dust and smog can make a significant contribution to protecting their respiratory health, says Marc Schenker (right),  Director of the Center for Agricultural Health and Safety at the University of California at Davis.

The study cited in this North Bay Report was published in the current issue of the quarterly journal, California Agriculture. You can access a summary or the full text of that article here.

More expensive gasoline and other rising costs have left some disabled people in rural Sonoma County without transportation to their jobs and other programs.

When it became clear that Pride Industries would not be continuing the bus service beyond the end of January, Executive Director Bob Hamilton says North Bay Regional Center still expected to be able to find another vendor to take over those routes. But they also tried to let the affected families know that the situation was up in the air, even though that effort fell short in quite a few cases.

Becoming Independent already provides transportation for many of their clients, and Executive Director Cami Weaver says they are now looking at ways to expand those services to meet the needs of at least some of their clients who have lost their buses from North Bay Regional Center.

The economic forecast for 2010 in California and Sonoma County suggests a sluggish recovery for at least the first three quarters, with hopes for a brighter forecast in the following year.

Housing, construction, retail and government are all sectors of the California economy that can be expected to continue struggling in 2010, says economist  Dr. Jerry Nickelsburg (left) with UCLA Anderson Forecast. But there is one key sector that has already begun to rebound.

 Large as it is, the California economy is still partially dependent on other players, including its trading partners around the Pacific Rim.