On Lowest Welfare Rung, $22 Buys a Bit More Hope

On the first of the month, Maria Boici receives her only income--a general relief check from the County of Orange for $289. It usually lasts until the 15th. On the 16th, she starts living on dry toast and whatever remains in her refrigerator.

And she starts waiting for the first again.

Martin Zoschak doesn’t go out much since he started living on his general relief check. When he leaves home, a room in Santa Ana with a Murphy bed, it is usually to walk 16 blocks to the Boys market, or over to Woolworth or Veebeck’s Bakery for a cup of coffee.

He is acutely aware that coffee there costs 40 cents. “Other places charge you 60 cents,” Zoschak said with a solemn nod.

Boici, a sickly Romanian widow, and Zoschak, a victim of neurological seizures, are among the estimated 1,800 Orange County recipients of general relief--a “last resort” county program to support poor, incompetent or indigent residents who cannot quality for other forms of welfare. Their stories of poverty and despair surfaced last month when the Legal Aid Society of Orange County sued the county to get more money for the poorest of the poor.

Legal Aid lawyers argued that general relief recipients were entitled to the same benefits as people who receive money under the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program.

As a result of an agreement between the Legal Aid lawyers and the county, a Superior Court judge now has ordered the Social Services Agency to add $600,000 to its general relief fund. That means $22 a month more for Boici, Zoschak and other recipients. The maximum is now $289.

Some general relief recipients are homeless and adrift. The typical long-term recipient is a Vietnamese refugee, about 50 years old, who for cultural or language reasons cannot find a job, said Deputy County Counsel David Epstein, who negotiated the increase on behalf of Orange County.

A lawyer who argued for the increase in benefits spoke of one recipient, a 27-year-old handicapped Vietnamese immigrant, who received only $179 a month under general relief. If he took a bus for medical care, he could not afford food, and was often forced to choose between “hunger and pain,” the lawyer said.

Nearly 70% of the recipients--including Boici and Zoschak--are too sick or disabled to find work.

Tidy and trim at 57, Zoschak handles his budget meticulously. Taking in $289 each month in welfare benefits, $60 in food stamps and $100 he borrows monthly from an aunt, he spends $300 on rent, $18 on utilities, $80 to $100 on food and $11.50 on bus transportation to UCI Medical Center in Orange.

Zoschak once owned a record store and later a used car lot before becoming a real estate salesman.

But no one will hire him now, said Zoschak, who once studied finance during a year of college and took Dale Carnegie courses in night school. “They’ll take your application, but it doesn’t do any good,” he said.

More than 28 employers turned him down after learning about the seizures, he said.

The seizures started when he was 12, and resulted from a head injury in a playground accident. They come only at night, at the time of deepest rest around 4 a.m., he said. They leave a hangover feeling, and the effects of medicine he takes to control them linger during the day, he said.

Zoschak did not reveal his condition to his last employers at the Santa Ana Hotel where he was a clerk. But a co-worker told them he was “taking dope on the job,” referring to his medication. He lost the job in 1984, he said.

Savings Run Out

He lived for a time on $5,000 he had saved. When it ran out 18 months ago, Zoschak couldn’t afford adequate food or medicine. One day, he felt himself becoming numb and weak. After he heard the radio “talking back” to him, he walked up the street to the nearest church. A priest called paramedics after Zoschak passed out.

After three days in the hospital, he said, “they wanted me to pay their bill.” It was $5,700. Since he never got insurance, he said, he signed up for the county’s indigent medical service (IMS) to pay the bill. And in order to eat, he obtained general relief when he was released.

Zoschak lives alone. He never married but came close twice, he said. “I have a complex about the illness. It’s hard to get the girl to accept it.”

Now, Zoschak has canceled the newspaper he used to scrutinize with a magnifying glass. Last week, he still hadn’t paid his May phone bill. His memory is not what it was, he said.

With $22 more a month, Zoschak said, he can pay the bills, buy a bus pass, have some dental work done and buy new eyeglasses. He can start repaying loans from his aunt and from the county’s general relief fund.

Promising to Repay

All general relief recipients are required to sign a statement promising to repay the money. Many do so with money they eventually receive from more generous federal subsidies, but most do not, Epstein said. The able-bodied are also required to take temporary jobs arranged by the county and look for permanent work.

As a child, Zoschak dreamed only of becoming a salesman. He was happiest when he owned his Santa Ana car lot.

“Now, I’d just like to get occupied and independent,” he said. “I just try to keep everything straight so I don’t get into debt.”

Boici, 52, had a modest life in Arad, an industrialized city in eastern Romania. She lived with her husband, a welder, and their five children. All the children suffered from a skin disease, and she had heard of a treatment in the United States.

Boici, wearing a thin, plain dress, spoke in a recent interview through an interpreter, Florina Angel, another Romanian immigrant. Boici’s eyes, shadowed by tinted glasses, mirrored the sadness and fatigue of her voice.

The family immigrated in 1981, moving first to Detroit and, unable to find work, then to Arizona.

They bought a car and a house there but could not keep up the payments. “It was hard to have money to go to the doctor,” she said. The children, who now range in age from 19 to 32, were being treated; she had diabetes, and her husband fell ill with stomach cancer. Hoping the Southern California climate would help him, they moved to Anaheim, where they lived awhile with friends in the Romanian community.

Family Needed Help

Boici said she had always felt ashamed even to know anyone who received welfare. She worked in a cigarette factory in Arad and cleaned houses in Arizona, she said. In Orange County, her youngest daughter once held two jobs at a doughnut shop and as a preschool teacher, to help make ends meet. But soon she realized that the family needed help, Boici said. With AFDC grants and, later, supplemental security income (SSI), they rented a house in Anaheim for $600 a month.

Her husband died last year.

“She was expecting help from the (Romanian) church, but nobody helped her,” the interpreter said. The funeral and burial cost $900, which she paid in $150-a-month installments.

Boici applied for general relief when the daughter turned 19 and took a job, disqualifying Boici from AFDC.

Boici lives in a $395-a-month, one-bedroom apartment in Anaheim with a son who works in a warehouse. She pays $210 as her share of the rent and utilities and sleeps on the couch.

Boici does not understand English and, since she cannot take the bus long distances and does not drive, must rely on children or friends to translate and to take her to medical appointments.

One day, she said, a friend drove her to UCI Medical Center in Orange, where she had two appointments. The friend translated during a morning appointment to check her diabetes but could not wait for the afternoon appointment for her failing eyesight, and she was forced to cancel it.

Because of miscommunication with doctors, she said, she has received improper medication. She complains of pains in her stomach and kidneys, and also says she suffers from insomnia. She does not understand what is wrong.

Her hopes now focus on finding a doctor who can help her.

Red Tape Delays Increase

The increase in general relief, ordered in a preliminary injunction, was to start July 1 but is late in arriving due to administrative technicalities, according to Deputy County Counsel Epstein.

Boici said it will make little difference in her life anyway. “Who can live with even $22 a month more?” she asked. Still there will not be enough for food. The refrigerator recently quit working, and she cannot afford to fix it, she said.

The extra money is being provided because there has been no general relief allocation for clothing and transportation, said Deborah Little, staff attorney of the Legal Aid Society, which filed the class-action suit along with the Western Center on Law and Poverty and the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation, both of Los Angeles. But in practice, recipients may be forced to use the money for food and housing, she said. “Welfare is not adequate to live on,” she declared.

The county contends that the new grant is adequate. “This is a subsistence program. . . . No one would say it’s a life of luxury,” Epstein said.

Additional Grants Sought

The Legal Aid Society and representatives of the county, which pays out $5 million a year in general relief, are negotiating for additional emergency grants for clothing and transportation, Little said.

But no general relief programs “come close” to the $500 monthly federal SSI payments (for blind and disabled recipients), she said.

Boici and Zoschak have applied for SSI, a process that can take years, according to Little.

If she had enough to live on, it would be “more than a bowl of gold,” Boici said.

Through it all, Boici is glad she came to the United States. “She has no regrets,” the interpreter said. “She hopes all she’s been through has not been a waste of time.”