Suit Attacks ‘Inadequacy’ of Grants to Homeless

Poverty law firms filed suit Wednesday charging that the $143 a month earmarked for shelter in Los Angeles County relief grants to homeless indigents is inadequate to meet minimum housing needs.

As a consequence, thousands of welfare recipients are forced to remain homeless, resulting in illness, injury and death, the Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit alleges.

“There is no housing available at the amount fixed,” the action contends, adding that the shelter allowance was “arbitrarily and capriciously fixed.”

The $228-a-month general relief grant available to qualified single, needy and unemployed county residents designates $143 for housing, $74 for food and $11 for personal care, household upkeep and clothing--sums also deemed inadequate in the suit.

Despite inflation, the sums fixed for shelter and food in the monthly grants have not been upgraded since 1981, according to the suit.

According to lawyers filing the suit, the county’s own figures show that the minimum required for shelter in Los Angeles County is $196 a month. The suit asks the court to order the county to immediately provide general relief recipients a monthly shelter and food allowance sufficient to meet their essential needs.

Legal Aid Foundation attorney Gary L. Blasi said the General Relief caseload as of last June was 33,081. He estimated that at least one-third of that number “falls in and out” of the category of homeless. Typically, he said, they get their check and spend about three weeks in a hotel then, when the money runs out, hit the streets and missions.

Wednesday’s lawsuit was the fifth brought on behalf of the homeless in Los Angeles County in less than two years.

Among court victories that the four earlier suits generated were rulings in 1984 that the county must work harder to house the homeless and that the city must stop harassing them when they are forced to sleep in the streets. And last April, the county agreed to rewrite a rule that cut off benefits to employable recipients who failed to meet the required 20 job searches a month, regardless of whether they willfully violated the rule or merely disregarded it.

The latest action was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and poverty law firms, including the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, Western Center on Law and Poverty and Mental Health Advocacy Services.

Named as plaintiffs are Jay Blair, 61, a construction worker who has been mostly unemployed since the company he worked for went out of business two years ago, and Henry Clark, 47, a former carpenter disabled since brain surgery in 1980.

A hearing on the motion for a preliminary injunction against the county is set for Oct. 18 in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Mary Wawro, assistant county counsel, said late Wednesday that she had not seen the complaint and could not comment on it.

Advised of the suit, Supervisor Kenneth Hahn called the $143 a month shelter allowances “woefully inadequate. With a $1 billion surplus in the state treasury there is no excuse for not raising this figure to a reasonable amount.”

Board Chairman Ed Edelman said: “I agree with the lawsuit. The General Relief payments are too low.”

During county budget deliberations last July Edelman spoke of various ways to improve the system and at one time discussed the possibility of a cost-of-living increase for beneficiaries, but the matter did not make it to a vote.