Access to Basic Services within the Athens-Clarke County Latinx Community
With a growing population of Hispanic and Latinx families, Athens-Clarke County is experiencing a changing demographic profile, and academics have observed and recorded significant challenges to the access those families have to basic services, like healthcare, education, employment, and legal services.
Problem:
Several barriers stand in the way of what allows Hispanic and Latinx families to access services in the Athens-Clarke County area. This unique community brings with it much more than a unique set of cultural beliefs, values, and traditions; it brings a new set of challenges as well. The trend of increasing Hispanic and Latinx individuals in Athens-Clarke County is still a growing one, as seen by 2016 data that shows that the population has nearly doubled since 2000. As demographics in the region continue to change, adjustments must be made to accommodate this distinct group.

Stakeholders:
The most obvious stakeholder in this issue is the large group of Hispanic and Latinx individuals who are seeking or in need of basic services. They are the ones most affected by a gap in availability and access because they are the ones personally suffering a negative impact. When people cannot access the basic services they need, overall quality of life drops, and the effects on mental health and general wellbeing are detrimental. Although these stakeholders hold the most personal and direct stake in the issue, they do not have the strongest or most powerful voice, especially in the state of Georgia, where the Latinx community makes up 2.3% of 5.4 million Georgia voters. Due to this lack of political accountability, politicians in Georgia feel less inclined to address issues specific to the Latinx community.

Other stakeholders are those politicians who make policy decisions. In other states, members of Congress may face grave electoral consequences if they do not address the needs of minorities within their constituencies, but in Georgia, politicians are not always politically motivated to advocate for a community that is not strongly represented in their electorate. If politicians decide to address policy regarding this issue, they may either be confronted with disapproval or praise from their constituents, depending on what area they represent. Politicians are considered stakeholders in this issue because they have the most direct political power to address it, but they also stand to possibly gain or lose electoral stability depending on the actions they take, or do not take, and their electorates.
A third group of stakeholders worth considering are the practitioners, professionals, and specialists who actually treat, serve, and interact directly with the Hispanic and Latinx population. These healthcare officials, employers, and lawyers, among other types of professionals involved in the provision of services, seek to gain from their involvement in this issue. Greater business often correlates with greater profit, resulting in a financial benefit that could exist from expanding clientele into the Hispanic or Latinx community. This is a wide group of stakeholders and their cost-benefit analyses vary widely, depending on the additional training possibly required to be culturally competent and effective in their particular fields, the amount of productivity lost in additional time required to properly address individuals, and the duty or obligation felt to provide services to everyone, including those in the Latinx community. This is a greatly nuanced group of stakeholders because the situation may differ for each type; some may seek to expand provision of services because they would benefit, while others seek to exempt provision of services because it would be costly.
Feasibility:

While this issue may be difficult to address on a wider scale in Georgia, it might be more feasible in a liberal-leaning county like Athens-Clarke County. With its growing population of immigrants, and specifically individuals in the Hispanic and Latinx community, Athens is the perfect place to pursue an expansion in policy. An argument could be made that a test case of this type of policy in Athens could lead to further innovation throughout the state, meaning that the greater implications of implementing a related policy could be much larger than the obvious results. Athens-Clarke County is home to many politically-involved citizens who care about advocating for the Latinx community, as seen in annual events like LatinoFest during Latino Heritage Month, and more so than most counties in Georgia, the constituency in this county would be perceptive to this type of change.
Footnotes:
- UGAToday. (2017, January 19). Hispanic and Latino community has limited access to basic services in Athens-Clarke County. Retrieved September 5, 2018, from https://news.uga.edu/limited-access-to-basic-services-in-athens-clarke-county/
- Athens-Clarke County Unified Government. (2018). Services. Athens-Clarke County, Georgia. Retrieved September 5, 2018, from https://www.athensclarkecounty.com/1771/Services
- Calva, A., et al. (2016). The Hispanic/Latinx Community of Athens-Clarke County, Ga. in 2016. LACSIUGA. Retrieved September 5, 2018, from http://www.lacsiuga.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/ACC-Latinx-Needs-Assessment-Report-FINAL-FINAL.pdf
- Latin American and Caribbean Studies Institute. (2016). ACC Hispanic/Latinx Community Needs Assessment. LACSIUGA Web Portal. Retrieved September 5, 2018, from http://www.lacsiportaluga.org/en_US/what-we-do/needsassessment/
- López, G., & Stepler, R. (2016, January 19). Latinos in the 2016 Election: Georgia. Pew Research Center. Retrieved September 5, 2018, from http://www.pewhispanic.org/fact-sheet/latinos-in-the-2016-election-georgia/
