Rebuilding Areas--and Lives

For almost two years Garden Grove has been trying to clean up Buena Clinton, the neighborhood identified by county health officials as the county’s worst slum. The city has made some notable progress in improving the dangerous and run-down conditions of the buildings.

But even more important than rebuilding substandard apartments is rebuilding the lives of the people who live in them and others like them.

It’s heartening to see the attempt being made in Project Self-Sufficiency, a $2.2-million program that provides federal rent subsidies and local services like job training and child care.

The program is directed at low-income single parents so that they can trade dependence for independence.

It is getting off to a modest start, considering the number of people it could be helping. But it is starting--and that’s what counts. City officials are now evaluating the first 35 applicants--barely 1% of the 3,787 single parents in Garden Grove who they say might be eligible for the job-training project.

The city contacted 484 possible candidates, and came up with the 35 potential applicants after eliminating those who had moved, remarried, lacked interest or couldn’t speak English. We can understand the elimination of possible applicants because they lacked interest to start the program or motivation to complete it. But we do not think that people eager for an opportunity should be rejected from the program solely because they do not speak English--not when so many single, low-income parents have language problems that contribute to their inability to secure jobs or job training and doom them to the welfare roll.

There is talk of changing the project to include people who speak Spanish or Vietnamese. It should be done. A program that seeks to overcome employment problems is incomplete if it ignores one so basic as language.