♪ announcer: building a better bay area, moving forward, finding solutions, this is abc7 news. kristen: hi. you are watching getting answers on abc seven. every day we talk with experts and get answers for you in real-time. today, uc berkeley researcher and expert on job burnout is here to explain what burnout is, how to recognize it and fix it. also, more about para-educators and the vital role they play. it is an issue at san francisco schools. our media partner will join us to tell us why there may be

fewer if nothing changes. apartment rents in the bay area have become more affordable between 2010 and 2021, according to a nonprofit urban research group and another firm. joining us live is sarah belinsky, senior advisor at the public policy think tank thomas fire. thank you for your time. >> thank you for having me. let's start about the general idea of your study uncovered about rental prices. yeah, sure, hours study study losing ground is focused on middle income households in the bay area. we sought to understand who is middle income in the region and how affordable is housing to middle income households, and what we found was that there has been an incredible increase in what we referred to as the median income, which is

basically the midpoint between where half of households are below and half are above. it is a good way to understand incomes. what we found is that basically there has been a 50% increase in median incomes between 2010 and 2022, in the chart you are looking at now looks at a broader timeframe, 20 years, and we found the bay area has seen a decrease of roughly 300,000 households making less and an increase of six under 25 making more than $100,000, so income is shifting upwards. kristen: that does mask something, doesn't it? senator steven m. glazer: yeah, it does -- sarah: bay area rents have increased 36%, but because incomes have grown higher, housing is seen to

be affordable because there are higher income people able to pay those rents. kristen: for those whose salaries have gone up, they are in a worse situation. who would those be? sarah: that is a great question. we have three different studies of folks previously in middle income, and one is just a middle school teacher in west oakland who although she saw her income increase, she ended up being at a lower ami than she was 20 years ago, so for example, those who, i am sorry, teachers who saw their wages increased by 64% might now be at instead of 100% because so many

wealthy people around them had their incomes increase even more. kristen: ok, so i guess the question is where does that beavis as a region if we are doing some public policy planning right? whipped should we put our emphasis on when we look at these trends? sarah: great question. we have been thinking about that and will do more thinking about it but one of the key things we have to do is add more housing at all income levels. those regions with a healthy housing supply are able to reach middle income households then -- better than ours. we are dead last in terms of the housing we build on a per capita basis. so that is one thing. the second thing we need to do is think not just about those between 80% and one hunt 20% o ami, but those lower income than that, between 60% to 80% median income as well, and

another thing we need to think about our black and latin at households -- latin households in that range. the full thing we have to do is learn from other places that do a much better job of building middle income housing. kristen: what are those places? where they have done a better job? sarah: yea so, there are many places, i am thinking specifically of copenhagen and others where they built something call housing for low income all the way up through middle income and build way more housing that the government helps to subsidize and move forward, and they are able to do that because they have different tax structures. i'm sorry. go ahead. kristen: finish your thought. sarah: even in the u.s.,

houston, it builds way more housing than we do, and middle income households are able to afford more housing in that region because of that. kristen: i am no expert. i have heard all sides of this debate with regards to what housing to build. some would say build middle and high end housing, and that is what people pay for and how developers will make their money and be re-incentivized to build those, and the older homes become more affordable to the forces of economics. is that the case you think? -- the most poor and most low income in any region will need government subsidy. you will never build enough

housing to reach those people, and that is why affordable housing programs are so incredibly important. kristen: have there been pandemic-induced demographic changes that influence this picture? sarah: yeah, we did not study the pandemic period, but i will say that the distribution of people in the region has also changed, so instead of being concentrated so much in city centers, there has been more of a desire for single-family homes and suburban-type housing, and that has caused the for sale prices of homes to go up significant. kristen: all right. you have given us a lot to think about, sarah karlinsky with spur, thank you for being with us today. sarah: thank you. kristen: next, chances are at one point or another you felt her out in her job, but what is burnout? how can we treat it, prevent it?

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kristen: during the pandemic, many people left their jobs and for many, it was burnout, reason cited for one person who stepped on recently as prime minister. she tweeted and did interviews and said she did not have enough left in the tank to serve for another term. why are more people burning out? how prevalent is it? or importantly, how do we help those suffering? those are a few issues addressed in the burnout challenge, managing people's relationships with their jobs, a book, whose

author and renowned uc berkeley psychology professor mary tossed, nice to -- professor, nice to have you on the show. >> thank you for having me. i hope i can add some clarity to all of this. kristen: i am sure you can because i know how good you are. can i admit i took your class at uc berkeley? i think i took your class it was 1987 or 1988. now i am really dating myself. >> i know. kristen: was that intro to psychology? i remember loving it. >> i taught introduction, social psychology, and others. a lot of people. kristen: a lot of people. you did not know me, but i knew you. it is great to have you on and have a conversation. your book is fascinating and such is burnout is misunderstood, how so? it as though it is a disease or

a medical illness and it is something, or in incompetence, or something inside the individual, an individual problem and the person has to fix themselves. you hear about self-care, coping , getting more strong and more resilient, so it is always pointing the finger at individuals who may be saying that there is nothing left in the tank and i cannot function anymore and keep going, when in fact, burnout is a stress response to chronic job stressors that have not been well managed. the important part about that is chronic. chronic stressors are there all the time, most of the time, not occasional, and people do not recover as well from chronic stressors, as they do from ones that are occasional, what we call acute, and they can be better managed, you know, in

other words, ultimately, the job conditions are creating so much stress on people and they are trying to cope and after a it is too hard and they are not doing well and down the road they will get to the point of the tank is empty, i can't do it, i don't want to do it, i can't take it, or they will have health problems in we know that stress can lead to heart attacks and anxiety or depression. it is the normal response and that is what people get wrong. stress response is something we all have, and thank god we have it. kristen: absolutely. in this case, was it i can see being a prime minister or world leader that those stressors would be there all the time, but can you pinpoint which jobs or roles or interactions would be stressors or more you know conducive to that? sara>> > we

decades of research, and in other countries as well, that professions that are more helping, caregiving, first responder kind of jobs in health care, teaching, social work, please work -- police work, all of these things but they have been talking about burnout for a long time as a core problem that they have to deal with, in particular because they do not want to lose the empathy and concern for their patients, students, clients, the public, you know whatever, but one of the things that happens with burnout is not just that you are stressed. two things happen. one, you get negative, cynical, and hostile about the job. take this job and shove it was the title of a country-western song that captures that. kristen: a lot of people said

that during the pandemic, quiet quitting the right, or we saw a lot of people who just dial back their effort. that is another response. prof. christina maslach: yeah. yeah. when people do that, i don't call it quiet quitting so much, what people start to do is the bare minimum rather than doing the very best, that that means that the quality of the work is not top-notch. you are doing the bare minimum to still get the job done so to speak, but you have cut off a lot of time and effort, checking for errors, making sure you're doing it for right, and the other thing that can happen with burnout is it is not not only being negative, hostile, cynical about the job, but you start feeling better about yourself. what is wrong with me? why did i go into this job? maybe i made a mistake? i'm not proud of everything i have done. evening that there is something personally wrong that can

lead to depression anxiety etc.. kristen: there is a cost to the company, society, i'm sure, lost productivity, so how do we i guess prevent it? this is where i get to you know what are the signs, the predictors? prof. christina maslach: yeah, well we have to stop treating it it as an illness, even though the world wh health organizations that it's not an illness. what we need to identify is what those stressors are, and our research has shown that they tend to exist in six key areas in the workload, how much control you have over your job, how much positive feedback or reward or recognition you get for your work, the quality of the relationships between you and your colleagues in the bosses, clients -- colleagues, clients, bosses, etc. the organization is in the whole environment in terms of does it

practice what it preaches, values and policies? and finally there is another moral aspect having to do with values, is this something you believe in and you are proud of and do you think it is important that i am doing this, at her, and -- etc., and you are caught in ethical conflicts and you say i cannot do this anymore money is not the answer. i need to do something else. kristen: so if you recognize your own answers to those questions that indicate oh, this is not good, then what? prof. christina maslach: then what. there are two strategies. one is to find out if there are others like you on the job, your colleagues, having the same problems were responding the same way to the stressors, in which case you change it from amy to a we -- a me to a w solution so we can make changes

so there is a better match, fit, between us and the work we're doing. if you are the only one having a problem you might want to say there is a better place in here because everybody is fine, and i am not, but you need to be careful that when you go look for another position in the same field, that you're not just jumping from one frying pan to the next. is there a better place that actually is design in a way that people can thrive in the workplace and get better and do well rather than get beaten down by the stressors? kristen: all right, well, less question, our time is short, unlike the lectures, which were much longer, and i appreciate it, if you are an employer and what can you do to minimize stressors to your employees and i also wonder if employers have responded with new trend since the pandemic to relieve the burnout? prof. christina maslach: some have. i think it is still early to see

what all the possibilities are in terms of what a hybrid looks like, for example, with lots of possibilities, but it is a matter of collaborating with your employees and you know, the managers on this am and customizing -- this, and customizing this because there is no one size fits all solution. and actually improving things to reframe the question not what do we do about burnout, it is how do we make things better around here? quite frankly, that is what the book is all about, here are the six areas where there are mismatches, the pebbles in your shoe are likely to exist, here is how you change it the pivoting to making it -- change it, pivoting to make it more positive to an environment where we all do well and thrive, the company too. kristen: all great advice in

your book the burnout challenge managing people's relationships in their jobs, professor, thank you for your time. it was a true pleasure talking with you. prof. christina maslach: thank you. kristen: all right. they are not teachers but play a crucial role in the classroom. i had a look at the role of para educators in the classroom

kristen: we know that many teachers are not paid enough for the work and to live in the bay area, but now the san francisco standard has shined a light on a particular problem with one category of educators in san francisco, as the headline of a new article says, they need multiple jobs to survive, and schools may be more dangerous as their numbers dwindled. joining us now is the standard education reporter. nice to have you on the show. >> thank you for having me. kristen: your article focuses on

the low pay of para educators in san francisco unified. who are they and what do they do? >> they assist teachers, instructional aids, may be in special education classrooms, helping with individualized learning plans, intervening in attendance, behavioral issues, otherwise giving specialized attention to students when classroom teachers are not able to. kristen: the issue is how much they make. how much do they make and how does that compare to teachers, for example? >> the starting pay for para educators currently is $18.70, recently bumped up to a 6% wage increase across the board to address immediate wage issues last fall. that has made it really difficult for the district to attract and retain para educators. the problem is still

there for teachers, of course, but when the starting pay is not much above minimum wage, it is hard to bring people into the district. kristen: do they have a staffing shortage now in those positions? >> they do. there are 200 para educator vacancies, quite a lot. kristen: indeed. have you spoken with them and have they given you stories about how they have personally had to work to make things work out financially or make ends meet? >> one in particular has worked in the district for 14 years now, and over the years she has had to take on new gigs, doing odd jobs, taking on a second job in the district, in addition to managing her paycheck to to the payroll snafu ongoing in the district, so it is not uncommon for para educators to have two or three jobs to make it work

because they also do not forget the full 40 hours per week and they are hourly. kristen: oh, i see, and l many making minimum wage, they have a hard time putting food on the table and paying the rent. what is the impact on the school district? your headline says schools may be more dangerous as their numbers dwindle, meaning if they cannot afford it and they leave their job. how does it make it more dangerous for those people? ian: in certain settings work in special education classrooms, so there are behaviors that need to be monitored readily to prevent anything from escalating, so if this person says they have had rings thrown at them and they're not the only person injured because there are not adults in the room to make sure student needs are met and to catch it when it happens, so those are

specific instances for that situation. kristen: this is not a situation unique to san francisco in terms of pay and retention of para educators? ida: no, classroom teachers as well, that has been an issue in particular since the pandemic to attract more teachers but with para educators being paid less, they are trained professionals to help the system and be an instructional aids to these teachers, so as a result of being classified other than credentialed, they inherently make less, but the para educators i spoke too repeatedly said it's not the dollar amount, although that doesn't signal an issue of their value, but also the respect in being told that you are taking on extra tasks, helping students get on and off the bus that may not be within their hours with that type of stuff. kristen: i want to mention that contract talks are coming up

with the school district of the first real labor contract since 2017. what duper educators want? ida: they need to see a true living wage to see if they can continue making it in the district. a lot of them are holding their breath to see what comes out in this contract because they have been waiting for a long time and everyone in the district has because they have not negotiated insulin because of the pandemic but they need a significant raise, they say. kristen: thank you for that information. you can check out her story and more on their website, the standard.com, and abc 7 will bring you more segments featuring the standard city focus journalism. look for that twice a week on getting answers at 3:00. here to tell you about life insurance through the colonial penn program. if you're age 50 to 85, and looking to buy life insurance on a fixed budget, remember the three ps. the three what? the three ps? what are the three ps?

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kristen: thank you for joining us on getting answers today. we are here every day at tonight, two americans found dead, shot and killed after being kidnapped in mexico. two more americans surviving in that same home in mexico. we have late reporting. and the developing headline. two small planes colliding outside tampa, going down in a lake. first tonight, the haunting images. those four americans kidnapped at gunpoint, shortly after crossing over the border from texas. one of them seen being tossed into the back of the pickup. the two survivors found in that house. their conditions tonight. why it's believed they made that trip into mexico. and news here on their whereabouts. matt rivers in mexico tonight. also this evening, that scene playing out late today, a midair collision in florida outside tampa. those two small planessh