County Use of Poorhouses in Welfare Cases Will Face Trial

The state Supreme Court on Monday strongly indicated that counties should not be able to force welfare recipients into poorhouses but ordered that the issue first go to trial in a lower court.

The case stemmed from a suit over Sacramento County’s establishment of the Bannon Street poorhouse in August, 1982. The county gave indigents a choice of living in the facility and collecting no welfare, or not living in the home and still collecting no money.

Almost immediately after the facility opened, legal aid groups led by the Western Center on Law and Poverty filed suit challenging the county’s stand.

On Monday, the court said that the suit should proceed in Sacramento County Superior Court. But in its 6-1 ruling, the court used unusually harsh language to indicate that it doubts Sacramento County’s claim that the use of poorhouses is a humane way to get indigents off the welfare roles and encourage self-reliance.

“The county does not humanely promote self-reliance or self-respect when it compels its impoverished residents to give up their living quarters and control over their daily lives in exchange for residence in a rigidly regulated facility,” Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird wrote for the majority.

Claim Questioned

Bird also took strong aim at the county’s claim that the poorhouse improved the standard of living for the indigents by ensuring they received three meals a day, slept in a sanitary shelter and were given bus passes and job and psychiatric counseling.

“The county could improve the quality of the daily lives of all its residents by requiring them to reside in camps, where a regimen of nutritious food, regular exercise and adequate rest could be imposed,” Bird wrote. “Yet such an invasion by the state of its citizens’ right to be left alone would clearly be unconstitutional. The denial of the fundamental right to privacy for impoverished citizens is no less intolerable simply because they are poor.”

The county operated the poorhouse from October, 1982, to June, 1983, when the high court ordered the facility shut pending its decision in the case (Robbins et al vs. Superior Court, S.F. 24599).

While it was open, the facility housed up to 67 employable adults. At the facility, there were shared bathrooms and no private rooms or partitions. The residents slept on bunk beds, had to comply with a 9 p.m. curfew, and were segregated by sex.

Sacramento County officials, noting that during the time the facility operated there still were 4,000 general assistance recipients in the county, each collecting $199 a month in welfare, defended the poorhouse. They said it helped them trim the welfare rolls and cut down on the county’s welfare expenses.

Counties make general assistance payments to people who have no other income, including federal assistance under such programs as Social Security disability payments, or Aid to Families with Dependant Children.

In filing their suit, the legal aid lawyers maintained that people should only be forced into institutions if they commit crimes or are mentally ill and are dangers to themselves or others. The indigents involved did not fit in those categories.

Limited Decision

The issue decided Monday was somewhat limited--whether the trial judge overstepped his authority by refusing to enjoin the use of the poorhouse. A court of appeal upheld the lower court but the high court reversed that ruling.

Dissenting Justice Malcolm Lucas, noting that no trial has taken place, chided the majority for a “premature conclusion” that the county overstepped its bounds. That makes a trial “pointless,” he wrote.

Lucas would have upheld the lower court judge’s decision, saying any harm to the indigents would be minimal.

He also said the county’s claim that the poorhouse encourages self-reliance was buttressed by records showing that the average stay at Bannon Street was less than a month, while indigents collecting general assistance stayed on the roles for an average of nine months.

While Sacramento County’s plan was decried by the ACLU, NAACP and several other civil rights groups, nine California counties, most of them rural, urged in a friend-of-the-court brief that the practice be allowed.

Maintaining that supervisors had a right to govern their own local affairs, the counties argued that operating poorhouses, in lieu of issuing welfare checks, is within their power.

Deputy Sacramento County Counsel J. Steven Burris said he was pleased that the court at least ordered a trial, adding: “If we can operate this without violating the Constitution, we want to do it.”

He said the Bannon Street home is sanitary and humane, adding: “It was as good as any college dorm. It certainly isn’t horrendous. It is real clean, a nice facility.”