Worried Welfare Recipients Bemoan Cuts in Benefits

Barely making ends meet, living temporarily in a North Hollywood homeless shelter and caring for a 9-month-old son, Yvonne Parris says she will feel the $26 cut this week in her welfare check like a body blow.

“The lowest you can get for rent is $450,” she said, cuddling her son Joseph inside the sparse confines of the Valley Shelter, where she recently moved after running out of rent money. “I [have been] receiving $493. With the Pampers you have to get, the clothes you have to get, you’re basically living on $20 a month.”

Like an ominous storm blown in from the East, the reality of welfare reform has descended with relentless and unsparing force on thousands of families like that of Parris who begin the new year today with less cash to live on and the prospect of a welter of new rules aimed at restricting their access to government aid.

The new laws and reductions are meant to free welfare recipients from the bonds of long-term dependency. But what many on the receiving end feel is immediate pressure to make do with less and heightened concerns about what the future holds. Many also feel anger at politicians and officials for what they believe is the abandonment of the nation’s poorest families.

The bill signed in August by President Clinton incorporated sweeping changes in public aid programs enacted more than 60 years ago, ending the federal Aid to Families With Dependent Children program and transferring most authority for running welfare programs to the states.

California officials have wasted little time in implementing several laws that had been passed in recent years by the state Legislature but had needed federal approval.

As of Tuesday, an estimated 785,389 welfare families began receiving checks that reflected a 4.9% across-the-board cutback. For an estimated 333,647 families in rural areas, where the cost of living is lower, a further 4.9% cutback was imposed in addition to the across-the-board reduction.

The benefit cuts are but the first volley of a series of tough new state and federal restrictions that will change the landscape of welfare in California:

* Beginning in March, teenage mothers on welfare will have to reside with their parents or in some other approved adult-supervised setting.

* Also in March, the state intends to begin giving newcomers to California the same amount of aid they received in their home state for the first year of their residence here.

* In April, county welfare officials will begin denying food stamps to legal immigrants who have not worked in the U.S. for at least 10 years or who are not otherwise exempted.

* In July, thousands of disabled children will lose eligibility for federal Supplemental Security Income under newly stringent criteria imposed by the welfare law.

* And beginning in August, a family’s benefit check will no longer increase if the mother has additional children while on welfare.

Later this month, Gov. Pete Wilson will unveil specifics of a new state plan intended to reconfigure the infrastructure of welfare on such crucial issues as how long families can remain on public aid, who will be exempted from time limits, the types of activities that can be counted as work, and the organization and funding of child care programs for poor families and those on welfare.

State officials say the changes will force recipients off the dole and into jobs. They argue that for many recipients, welfare has become a way of life that has beckoned its victims like an addictive drug.

“Multi-generations of kids on welfare have grown up thinking it’s normal, that it’s OK,” said Janice Ploeger Glaab, a spokeswoman for the California Health and Welfare Agency, which is coordinating implementation of much of the state’s welfare overhaul. “One of the governor’s key visions is that we have to make people be personally responsible for their lives. It is a much better role model to see parents going off to work every day than to see them going out to the mailbox for a check.”

Glaab said efforts will be made to ensure that children are not unduly penalized under the new rules. It is likely, for example, that safeguards will be installed in some programs to make sure children receive services directly, rather than having a check simply handed to a parent.

Glaab acknowledges that the cutbacks and restrictions will engender fear and in some cases resentment. “But with families who have an able-bodied adult who chooses not to work, it is very difficult to sit there for five or seven or 10 years and cut them slack,” she said.

But many welfare recipients say the changes are only likely to further reduce the standard of living for themselves and their children.

“We are the guinea pigs of ‘97,” said Parris, 26, whose monthly check has been reduced to $467. “They come out with these ideas to see if they’re going to work and they try it out on us people without knowing what the result is going to be.”

For Ventura resident Kimberly Ware, the grant reduction amounts to roughly $48, about the size of her electric bill, she said.

“I don’t see how they feel we can make do with less and less while we’re trying to get on our feet,” said Ware, who will use her $948 monthly check to house and feed her six children. “This kind of stumbling block--it holds you back.”

Although the changes will reduce government spending, those receiving government aid see the changes as another hardship, one that will strain household budgets already stretched thin.

“The cutbacks are ridiculous, especially for the people who really need it and the children who need it,” said Delores Kovach of Simi Valley.

With three children under 5, Kovach has to live with her parents to make ends meet. She recently took a waitressing job but still dreads watching her $675 monthly checks shrink.

“They don’t give you enough to live on,” she said. “I don’t really go out and spend money on anything.”

Many who are against the cuts argue that the welfare overhaul does little to address the fundamental causes of poverty, but is instead based on long-standing myths and prejudices.

Some social service analysts have predicted that more than 1 million additional children nationwide will be pushed into poverty by the new law, which places a five-year lifetime limit on cash benefits and requires most recipients to find work within two years. Most recipients will lose all benefits after five years, though 20% of the most unemployable recipients will be allowed to remain on welfare.

Welfare reform as currently packaged addresses “false problems conjured up for points to be made by political interests,” charged Casey McKeever, directing attorney for the Western Center on Law and Poverty in Sacramento.

McKeever said the reasoning behind some of California’s changes has already been called into question by the experience of other states. New Jersey, for example, has already implemented laws that bar mothers from receiving assistance for additional children born while they are on welfare, with no apparent reduction in the birthrate, said McKeever.

California’s attempt to restrict grants to new residents will almost surely be challenged in court, McKeever added. The state first passed such a law in 1992, but a U.S District Court judge ruled that the provision violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, unjustly discriminating against out-of-state residents and their right of interstate travel. The U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the case without deciding the constitutional question because the state had not received a federal waiver at the time.

“It’s too common in welfare that research and evidence are ignored in favor of mythology and prejudice,” McKeever said. “It proceeds from the idea that welfare is the problem. While it is certainly true that many rules could be made better, welfare is not the ultimate cause of poverty.”

Helen Donner, director of community programs for the Harbor Interfaith Shelter in San Pedro, said the cuts came at an especially bad time for poor families.

“They have higher bills at Christmas time and because of the weather,” she said. “It’s really difficult. They’re dealing with the pressure of Christmas, wanting to get their kids gifts and stuff. They get depressed, because they want to provide, but they can’t.”

Shane Garcia, 41, doesn’t blame anyone else for his family’s poverty. Standing in a welfare line Tuesday in Anaheim waiting for his check, Garcia said his marriage of 22 years fell apart because of drug use and he then lost his $40,000-a-year job as a cable installer.

As a single father with six boys between the ages of 5 and 15 to feed and care for, he said the 4.9% cut makes it even more difficult to scrape by.

“All this happened just this year to me, and it’s been real rough,” Garcia said. The $994 cash grant the family used to receive has been reduced to $946.

After going through drug rehabilitation, Garcia found himself a single parent and has been dazed by the sheer quantity of labor it takes to run his household.

Garcia and his sons live in a three-bedroom apartment in Anaheim, and the welfare money, he said, is used almost entirely to pay the rent.

“Can you imagine how much they eat?” Garcia said. “My 15-year-old is already 6-foot-1. This is gonna hurt us bad.”

Times staff writer Lisa Richardson in Orange County and correspondent David R. Baker in Ventura County contributed to this story.