No Relief for the Poor : County Rejects Raise; $312 a Month in Aid Called Insufficient

The county of Los Angeles says $312 a month is sufficient for people down on their luck to feed and shelter themselves. But Houston Whitley thinks otherwise.

Whitley, a general relief recipient, uses $250 of her welfare check just to rent a shabby room in a Skid Row hotel. “I got holes in the walls,” she said. “I keep finding roaches crawling everywhere and rats are running through the hall.

“I can’t get a better place,” said Whitley, 25, who has been unemployed since arriving here from Louisiana in April. “I can’t buy the things I really need for myself like clothes, food and accessories.”

Whitley is among 50,000 general relief recipients, the only class of welfare recipients in the county who will not receive a cost-of-living increase this year.

In approving a new $9.6-billion county budget earlier this month, the Board of Supervisors voted down a recommended 3.2% increase for general relief recipients. Supervisors took the $2.6 million that would have paid for the increases and used it to temporarily keep open five mental health clinics threatened with closure.

“I wish one of them (the supervisors) would try to live off $312 a month and see how it works,” said 34-year-old Carl Price, another welfare recipient who gave up his job in a fast-food restaurant in South Carolina to come to Los Angeles, but has been unable to work.

Legal aid attorneys are considering filing suit, as they did three years ago, to force the county to provide the increase.

The attorneys said they hope the supervisors will use the money from a small windfall expected to be announced today to provide a cost-of-living increase for general relief recipients. The county assessor will announce higher-than-expected property tax revenues, but that money is not expected to go to general relief.

“That is saying to the needy of Los Angeles, ‘we’ll take care of your health needs, but we’re not going to give you enough money for food and shelter,’ ” said Lisa Foster, an attorney with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles.

Most of the county’s 900,000 welfare recipients--mainly women with children--received a 4.6% cost-of-living increase effective July 1 because they are on programs funded by the state and federal governments. But general relief, which assists mostly homeless people who do not qualify for other welfare programs, is funded by the county.

In canceling the increase, the board’s conservative majority pointed out that Los Angeles County ranks 26th among the state’s 58 counties in general relief payments.

“The county of Los Angeles doesn’t have to be No. 1 in providing welfare,” Supervisor Mike Antonovich said.

Napa County is top-ranked, providing $380 a month to its 60 recipients. Orange and Ventura counties each provide $326 a month, while San Diego County provides $283, Riverside County $253 and San Bernardino $222, according to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services.

The amount paid is entirely up to the Board of Supervisors, and there is no requirement for counties to follow a standard formula for establishing the payment, said Los Angeles County Welfare Director Eddy Tanaka.

“General relief is (intended to be) temporary,” said Antonovich. “It’s not meant to maintain a person for years. It’s meant to get a person back on their feet and back working.”

But Foster argued that general relief should be based on what it costs to live in Los Angeles.

“I find it hard to believe that it’s more expensive to live in Fresno than Los Angeles,” she said. Fresno provides $326 a month to general relief recipients.

Appearing before supervisors in budget hearings, Foster argued that Los Angeles County’s allowance is “wholly inadequate to provide even the basic necessities.” She urged supervisors to increase the monthly grant to $420.

“You present a real problem,” Supervisor Kenneth Hahn told her. “The only rentals are on Skid Row, and they’re $300 a month, and the (housing allowance) is only $200 a month.”

The general relief payment is based on monthly costs of $200 for housing, $90 for food and $22 for personal expenses. Many general relief recipients also receive $80 in food stamps every month. They also can receive free care at county health and mental health facilities.

Foster said that a 1987 county survey found that the average rent for general relief recipients then was $200 a month. A quick check of several Skid Row hotels found most rooms renting for an average of $240 a month.

Foster also contended that the $90 monthly food allowance “will not satisfy the basic nutritional needs” of general relief recipients. She cited another 1987 study, this one conducted by a doctoral student who found that it cost $142 a month for a general relief recipient with cooking facilities to buy food on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s low-cost food plan.

Price, who says that he has only $12 in cash and $79 in food stamps left each month after paying rent for a room in an aging downtown hotel, has been on general relief since February, 1988. He said he shares a $575-a-month room at the hotel with another welfare recipient. He said that there are cheaper rooms on Skid Row, but he refuses to move there because he fears they are not as clean or as safe.

“We barely make it through the month,” he said. “We have to just scrape and do without.” Price and Whitley, like many general relief recipients, do not have cooking facilities in their rooms and say they shop daily, looking for bargain fruits and vegetables at the Grand Central Market.

“It doesn’t even begin to be enough unless you go to Skid Row,” said a homeless man on the beach in Santa Monica. The man, who spoke on the condition that he not be named, said he moved away from Skid Row after being beaten up, and now sleeps on the beach.

Welfare Director Tanaka recommended a $10 cost-of-living increase this year. But he added in an interview, “I don’t necessarily think $312 would cause (anyone) to be homeless.”

He said that general relief recipients can share a room, although he acknowledged that his department does not assist recipients in finding housing or roommates.

The county does not regularly survey the rental market or food prices to determine whether the allowance is adequate, Tanaka acknowledged. But he pointed out that the $312 was the amount agreed upon as adequate for last year when legal aid attorneys settled their lawsuit with the county. He said that he simply applied the increase in the Consumer Price Index and came up with the recommended 3.2% increase.

Foster said she hopes the supervisors will reconsider their action.

“The prospects of more homeless people is one that should trouble the Board of Supervisors as much as it troubles us,” she said. “That is the net result of all of this.”