L.A. County Bid to Reduce Number on Streets, Save Money : Plan Calls for Homeless to Reapply for Social Security

In a new tactic to reduce Los Angeles County’s homeless population, the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved a plan to persuade street people to reapply for Social Security benefits that may have been improperly taken away from them by the Reagan Administration.

Under a plan drafted by Supervisor Ed Edelman, who represents the Skid Row area, county welfare workers will send mailers to general relief recipients and visit soup kitchens, missions and downtown hotels in an effort to steer those who may be eligible for payments to Social Security offices.

In recent rulings, federal courts have ordered payments reinstated for nearly 500,000 Americans who lost them between 1981 and 1984, including an estimated 35,000 in Western states. Those people, many of whom had physical or mental disabilities that prevented them from working, were cut off after the Social Security Administration reviewed 1.1 million cases and stopped payments without determining whether the condition of the recipients had improved enough for them to be employable.

Edelman and legal aid attorneys, who have fought to get the benefits restored, claimed that as many as 10%--2,000 to 3,000--of those now receiving county emergency relief may be immediately eligible for minimum benefits of about $500 per month--more than double what they can receive on county general relief. The savings to the county in welfare and health service costs could be $500,000 to $1 million a month, Edelman said.

“Many of these people who are wandering the streets were once entitled (to Social Security),” Edelman said, noting that an estimated 30% to 50% of the county’s homeless are believed to have major mental problems. “The burden has been placed on local government.”

A program like the one approved by the county board Tuesday has met with only limited success in New York City, which operates 17 shelters for the homeless. Only about 250 homeless people were placed on Social Security rolls in that city last year, and it has not put a significant dent in the city’s homeless population, according to Dan Londa, deputy director of the city’s largest shelter for men.

In another action, the supervisors approved the expenditure of $50,000 to establish a shelter for the homeless in San Fernando Valley and, on a motion by Supervisor Mike Antonovich, ordered that top priority be given to the homeless in the expenditure of about $13 million in additional mental health funds proposed in the new state budget.