Homeless Must Show They Will Stay in Area : County to Ease Criteria for Welfare Benefits
Homeless people in San Diego County will get welfare benefits if they can show that they intend to remain in this region, the Board of Supervisors decided Tuesday.
The supervisors voted 5-0 to relax the restrictions on the payment of general relief, the lowest rung on the county’s welfare ladder.
Two of the supervisors who, at a February hearing, expressed worries that such a change would create a beacon for the homeless of the Southwest, said after Tuesday’s action that their apprehensions had since been allayed.
Although the new requirements have not yet been drawn, Randall Bacon, director of the Department of Social Services, said he expects the $120 payments to go to about 265 people each month who do not now qualify for welfare.
Those people will probably be made to show that they are not here temporarily, that they are not residents of another state or county, and that they intend to establish a legal residence in San Diego County. The homeless will also have to meet the other requirements for general relief, which allow payments for people who have less than $50 in cash and $500 in personal property.
The county’s “workfare” program also requires general relief recipients to work or to look for work if they are physically able to do so.
Under the current system, however, the poor must prove that they are county residents before they qualify for general relief. The homeless, even if they have lived in San Diego for years, cannot meet that requirement, Bacon told the board in February.
Supervisor Brian Bilbray, who at the last hearing said he believed the relaxed requirements would make San Diego County “an easy mark” and create a “catch-basin for all the homeless of the Southwest,” said Tuesday that Bacon’s more detailed report had persuaded him to change his mind.
Bilbray said he did not know in February that San Diego County’s $120 general relief stipend was the among the lowest in the state. And he said he was satisfied that the relaxed restrictions will still be strong enough to keep people who prefer to be homeless from living off welfare.
“I think there will be a degree of it, but it will be controlled,” Bilbray said. “There are enough checks in there to keep the abuses at a minimum.”
Supervisor George Bailey also said that he is now confident that general relief will not be going to people who choose to live on the streets. “There is some protection now,” Bailey said. “We’re not just handing everybody who comes through the door 20 bucks and saying ‘Go out and spend it.’ ”
Bacon said the increased aid will not “open the floodgates to anybody who wanted to take advantage of the system.”
“People who don’t want to work just cannot or will not fulfill these requirements,” he said.
Before making their decision, the board members heard poignant testimony from Charlotte Marsh, a registered nurse who said she has lived on the streets for two years.
“We have all heard of the so-called homeless experts,” Marsh told the supervisors. “I am a 53-year-old qualified, experienced homeless expert. How did I become thus? Two years ago I had an accident and was disabled. This, coupled with a divorce . . . put me on the street and made me homeless.
“What is it like to be a qualified experienced, homeless expert?” Marsh said. “Two words sum it up pretty well for me: fear and pain. Fear of being raped, of the authorities, of violence. The worst fear of all: never knowing when and if it might end. The pain from the cold, the hardness of the street and from sickness.”
