President Clinton signed legislation "to end welfare as we know it" on August 22, 1996. Implementing welfare reform in California has created a major cottage industry that has spawned dozens of research studies, hundreds of bills, thousands of meetings, and uncounted words on news and editorial pages.

Many Leave Welfare But Stay in Poverty

What, after more than 1,000 days, are the results of these efforts? There's no question that welfare rolls are down; the numbers had dropped by 43% nationwide by the end of 1998. Depending on whom you talk to, this decline is attributed to a booming economy, tighter welfare regulations, or the chilling effect of change on potential applicants. With reference to this last, evidently many prefer to eke out a hand-to-mouth existence with the help of friends, family, private agencies, and underground employment in lieu of subjecting themselves to the welfare department's regimen of maximum paperwork in return for a marginal existence.

According to a study of several states released in May by the General Accounting Office and the Urban Institute, somewhere between 63 to 85% of former welfare recipients have found jobs, but their earnings do not lift them out of poverty. A three-month sample of earnings of former recipients found them earning between $2,738 and $3,786 for the quarter, a figure that falls below the federal poverty level for most families. Many former recipients, ranging from 19% in Maryland to 30% in Wisconsin, boomeranged back to the rolls within three to 15 months. A larger percentage (between 44% to 83%) continued to rely on Medicaid ("Medi Cal" in California) and food stamps (between 31% and 60%).

Although California does not systematically track those who leave its welfare rolls, there is little reason to believe that ex-welfare recipients who find jobs in the Golden State fare better than those elsewhere. As reported by The Public Policy Institute of California, real wages for workers in the bottom quarter of income fell 40% between 1969 and 1997. Immigrants and people with no more than high school education were most likely to earn very low wages.

Load on Relatives Grows

For those unwilling or unable to find work within the strict time lines imposed by welfare reform policies, the alternative is often to increase their dependence on family members. In Wisconsin, which has drawn international attention for cutting its cash aid rolls by as much as 91%, "many of the state's most troubled mothers," according to The New York Times, "have lost their benefits, often en route to drug clinics, jail cells, shelters, or the streets." And grandmothers... "angry, worried, or plain exhausted, are being left to care for abandoned children along the way." About 1.4 million children across the nation live in households with their grandparents alone -- no parent present. Almost half find themselves in households headed by the grandmother and 57% of these grandmothers are poor, with an average annual income of $13,400.

Other single parents with pre-school age children, perhaps less troubled but equally frustrated, choose to depend on relatives to house and feed them while they stay home and raise their offspring instead of struggling to find and keep the 20 hours per week of work or job training required to qualify for benefits.

SB 1249 (Martha Escutia, D., Montebello) helps to rectify this problem by giving counties the option of waiving the work requirement for single parents with children under six years of age. This bill has passed the Senate and is awaiting hearing in the Assembly.

Coping With The System

While people who have obtained jobs or dropped out of the welfare system struggle with their altered circumstances, those who remain on welfare are not enjoying a day in the park. The Welfare Reform Coalition, a mix of social service providers, religious organizations, labor unions, and welfare rights advocates collected surveys from more than 1500 CalWORKS recipients in Los Angeles County earlier this year. According to a report by Shannon Lewis that appeared in Children's Advocate Newsletter:

Two out of five respondents knew nothing about the life-time cash aid and food stamp limits and almost one out of three knew nothing about the new support services developed to help them cope with welfare changes;

Most did not seek information from the special videos and printed materials intended to help them understand welfare reform -- instead they relied on staff from the County Department of Family and Social Services;

Most did not feel comfortable sharing personal difficulties with staff;

A quarter of those whose aid was cut said they didn't know why they were bumped or said they had violated a rule that they had not known about;

Participants with the least amount of education had a much greater chance of aid cuts;

Recipients made numerous trips to the welfare offices and experienced long waits;

Many homeless and immigrant clients had problems understanding eligibility requirements.

In Los Angeles, which has more people on various forms of public assistance than most states do, welfare reform so far has done little or nothing to improve the effectiveness, fairness or accessibility of welfare services. Anyone who can collect welfare at the same time as they seek employment has to be adroit at juggling child care, public transit and health care services, not to mention being good at record-keeping and a soothsayer when it comes to understanding bureaucratic rules and language.

One simple step toward improving the efficiency of the new welfare system is embodied in AB 510 (Rod Wright, D., Los Angeles). Wright's measure would cut down on paper work and treks to welfare offices by reducing welfare recertification from a monthly to a quarterly process. AB 510 has passed the Assembly and is awaiting a hearing in the Senate Health and Human Services Committee.

Immigrants Suffer Biggest Losses

The biggest losers in welfare reform are immigrants. Those who were legally in the US prior to August 22, 1996 were treated shabbily; those arriving after that date or in the country illegally were treated even worse. In the intervening months, both federal and state officials have scrambled to undo some of the damage they have inflicted, and not always for the most humanitarian of reasons. For example, it is widely believed that the Republican Party's hard line on immigrant welfare eligibility contributed to an image of mean-spiritedness that alienated a sufficient number of voters to account for the party's massive beating in the 1998 elections. After that debacle, many Republican officials softened their rhetoric and/or their votes on immigrant-friendly legislation.

California, home to almost 40% of the nation's legal immigrants, has been kinder to newcomers than most other states. A recent analysis by the Washington-based Urban Institute found that California has done more to provide food, money, and health care to affected legal immigrants than New York, Florida, and Texas, the three states with largest number of immigrants after California. But no state entirely replaced the benefits that immigrants lost under the welfare overhaul set down in the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act.

After lengthy debate in the state legislature and obdurate resistance from former Governor Pete Wilson, California established the California Food Assistance Program (CFAP) to buy food stamps from the federal government for immigrant families and children and to offer a cash aid program for elderly and disabled individuals made ineligible for federal benefits. Both of these programs were approved only after "sunset" provisions were tacked on, forcing them out of business in July, 2000 unless reauthorized by the legislature and the governor.

Worse perhaps than the actual restrictions on aid to noncitizens was the chilling effect of the combination of immigrant welfare cutbacks, new and confusing eligibility requirements, and Governor Pete Wilson's Executive Order #135-96 requiring state agencies to put immigration screens on over 200 state programs. Added to that were immigrants' fears that they would be ineligible for legal permanent residency or temporary visas because the INS or State Department would declare them "public charges" due to their receipt of public assistance.

Consequently, many immigrants apparently have simply decided not to seek the assistance for which they are eligible. One telling indicator is the fact that California has the second-lowest Food Stamp participation rate of any state in the nation, 51% compared to a national average of 71%. Approximately 2.2 million eligible Californians are not participating in the Food Stamp program. Another is the under-enrollment in the new Healthy Families medical assistance program (see FCL Newsletter, March 1999).

As we go to press, fledgling governor Gray Davis is being pressured by immigrant advocacy groups to rescind his predecessor's Executive Order. Davis, however, has given no indication that he will act. Immigrants' fears may diminish little under the new "guidance" by the Clinton administration that the public charge test will be used only in the case of current cash benefits. Understandably, many immigrants are still leery, given the decades-long inconsistency of INS policies.

AB 873 (Antonio Villaraigosa, D., Los Angeles) eliminates the sunset provisions of immigrant Food Stamp and SSI/SSP programs, thereby giving immigrants some assurance that they will be eligible for food assistance when their funds run short, and for cash assistance when they are old and disabled. This legislation awaits a vote on the Assembly floor.

Felons Receive Possible Reprieve From Life Sentences

Another major group of welfare reform losers are convicted drug felons. At the option of state government, with California exercising that option, this group was banned for life from receiving benefits or Food Stamps, no matter how exemplary their conduct after their release. Contrary to widespread stereotypes, many affected by this law are impoverished young women with children, not high-rollers with fancy cars, Armani suits, and pricey lawyers.

Legislation introduced this year by Senator Cathie Wright (R., Simi Valley) chips away at these restrictions. Her SB 659, which has passed the Senate and is awaiting a hearing in the Assembly Human Services Committee, allows a waiver for individuals convicted of use or possession of illegal drugs, as opposed to those who sell, transport, or manufacture, provided they meet one or more of the following conditions: 1) they complete or enroll in a state licensed drug treatment program or court-mandated treatment or diversion program; 2) they fulfilled at least five years ago all requirements of their incarceration, parole, and probation; 3) they demonstrate via a drug test that they are not currently using a controlled substance.

Under SB 659, sellers, transporters, and makers of drugs would not be eligible for cash assistance, but could receive Food Stamps and CalWORKS services, such as job training. All those affected by SB 659 would be required to submit to periodic drug tests or face the possibility of losing eligibility. Services would be coordinated by "a county-level interagency team."

Supporters of these reforms include juvenile court judges, alcohol and drug treatment counselors, the Los Angeles County District Attorney, and the California Welfare Rights Organization. According to a legislative report , advocates for SB 659 argue that the drug felon welfare ban prevents women from reuniting with their children "and gives them little hope.... Current law excludes these women from the very programs which could lead to their self-sufficiency....; these women should at least have a chance to turn their lives around."

Faith-based Coalition and Leading Official React

On June 8, the Northern California Interreligious Conference, whose executive committee includes Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Sufis, Buddhists, and Quakers issued a broad-ranging set of recommendations to improve welfare reform. Their basic premise is very much in keeping with FCL's long-held position on public assistance: "The religious community's fundamental priority...is more than simply providing a safety net for people in need; it is empowering those who have not shared in California's economic prosperity to leave poverty permanently. We don't think CalWORKS, as it is currently structured, will do that."

Then, on the very next day, Grantland Johnson, California's Secretary of Health and Welfare, told a community meeting in Los Angeles, that "there are serious flaws and deficiencies in the way some (welfare reform) programs were designed and the way they are administered...."

California's poor performance is of special concern in two key areas:

The state has failed in the past two years, and is expected to fail this year, to meet federal requirements that 75% of adults in two-parent families get jobs. As a result, the state faces paying out as much as $35 million in fines.

According to the California Budget Project, up to $612 million of the state's current $1.5 billion federal welfare grant will go unspent, due to delays in planning and implementation at the state and local level.

Much needs to be done to create both a just and effective safety net as well as a "welfare-to-work system" that provides jobs at a living wage and the support services needed to keep families together in decent living conditions. Many of the best ideas for improving public assistance programs and for moving toward a just economy have come, not from politicians and bureaucrats, but from people like you, the readers of the FCL Newsletter. Please contact me with your ideas. -Ken Larsen

Publications

"Is It Reform? The 1998 Report of the Welfare and Human Rights Monitoring Project in California," Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, 130 Prospect Street, Cambridge, MA 02139-1845. (617) 868-6600.

"Welfare Reform: Public Policy and Theological Reflections,"The Northern California Interreligious Conference, 965 Mission Street, Suite 711, San Francisco, CA 94103. (415) 512-7110; H4>Web Sites

California Budget Project Welfare Reform Page (www.cbp.org/welfare)

Center for What Works (www.whatworks.org). National Association of Welfare Research and Statistics (www.nawrs.org)

Welfare Information Network (www.welfareinfo.org).

Urban Institute (www.newfederalism.urban.org).

Organizations

California Food Policy Advocates, 116 New Montgomery Street, Suite 530, San Francisco, CA 94105. (415) 777-4422.

California Immigrant Welfare Collaborative, 926 J Street, Suite 408, Sacramento, CA 95814. (916) 448-6762.

Western Center on Law and Poverty, 2424 K Street, First Floor, Sacramento, CA 95816. (916) 442-0753.

Peter Crysdale has joined the FCL staff as our Development and Outreach Coordinator. An attender at Strawberry Creek Friends Meeting in Berkeley, Peter brings a wide array of relevant experience to his new position. He served on the staff of American Friends Service Committee in California, where he was director of Austin McCormick Criminal Justice Center, and in New England, where he was a fund raiser for almost a decade. He served from 1985-94 as director of conference and retreat programs for Pendle Hill. More recently, Peter has provided fund rasing assistance to religious and community-based programs in the East Bay.

He will be working with FCL on a part-time basis for the rest of 1999 to broaden and increase support and awareness regarding our newsletter and advocacy and the educational and research activities of the FCL Education Fund. FCL is fortunate to have the benefit of Peter's professional skills and personal commitment. Welcome, Peter!