Even for the Motivated, Climbing Out of the Welfare Rut Is Difficult

Bruce Johnson, 38, woke up most mornings in a bedroll under the bushes in a Santa Ana park. Just out of jail after a yearlong sentence for failure to pay child support, Johnson was trying to get back on his feet.

He qualified for Orange County’s General Relief welfare program and was receiving the full aid payment of about $76 per week. It was something, he said, only because he had nothing,

To get it, he had to work three days a week picking up litter at a county park and along the highway. And even then, it was only enough money to pay for food and bus fare. “There are very few places for $5 a night,” he said.

Johnson, a former accountant from Irvine who didn’t want his real name used, was one of the people trying to use welfare as a steppingstone back to mainstream life. But as he and others have learned, the road back can be a difficult one.

The average stay on General Relief is only 19 days. Two-thirds of those who start the workfare program are cut off because they fail to keep up the schedule. Others just drop out and some leave when they find employment.

General Relief recipients must have less than $500 cash, less than $1,000 in personal property and they cannot own a car valued at more than $1,500. Once they are qualified, they can receive up to $341 per month or about $11 per day. They are also eligible for about $90 per month in food stamps.

Throughout county welfare offices--especially in the places where workers are face to face with utter poverty--there is empathy for the needy. Joyce Vang, who runs the workfare program, said she always tries to give the benefit of the doubt. If there is a good excuse, she will bend the strict requirements of the workfare schedule.

She also said the schedule can create difficult conflicts. To get a bed at the Orange County Rescue Mission, for example, Vang said, people must be in line by about 3 p.m. The welfare work assignments, though, usually last longer.

“I am sure that it’s not always easy for our homeless clients,” Vang said. “It is hard to get used to all of that structure, and it is a very structured program.”

Vang estimates that up to 90% of the workfare clients are homeless, although Social Services director Larry Leaman said he thinks the level is much lower. But recognizing that many are homeless, the welfare office includes a list of all the Orange County shelters in the information package it hands out to each client.

Many come into the system with drug or alcohol addictions and emotional or mental problems. Some of the most hopeless cases are seen by Dr. Robert Burger, who has been head of the county’s welfare medical team for 14 years. When a General Relief applicant claims to be unemployable due to a medical condition, Burger’s office examines the individual and decides whether the person can be assigned to the workfare program.

Those who are declared unemployable due to a medical condition--mostly elderly people--still receive the General Relief grant, but they are not required to participate in the workfare program.

Burger said he is frustrated by the enormity of the social problems, but his heart is still in his work.

“What we try to do is be humane; it’s pretty bad out there,” he said. “I can’t even estimate the number of alcoholics; it’s pretty heavy duty.”

Burger said he will declare some of the worst alcoholics to be unemployable and then try to refer them to other county medical services for help--but there is little available.

“The problem is that we don’t have the funding or the manpower to put somebody in a detox center and keep them there long enough,” he said. “So we try to help them with aid (payments), even if we know it is possible they are using the money for untoward means.

“You don’t have a way to monitor that sometimes,” he said. “If they’re not dead drunk, sometimes you can talk to them.”

Johnson said he needed the General Relief program to get by. But he was frustrated that for those who lived by its rules, it still didn’t provide the housing, food and transportation money that is legally required of the government.

“It’s the old story, the last thing a public servant wants to do is help the public,” he said recently, stepping out of the Santa Ana welfare office, freshly shaven, with a bloody nick on his cheek.

Most mornings, he said, he showered and shaved at the YMCA before heading to job interviews. And while the welfare program required that he show proof of applying for four jobs each week, he said he actually sought employment at more than a dozen openings on the days he wasn’t working.

But even with a clear vision and confidence, Johnson said he was discouraged by the strict requirements of the county’s General Relief program. So rigorous are the demands of the bureaucratic system, and so meager is the income, that the program is hardly worth the effort, he said.

“I don’t plan on doing this for weeks,” he said. “I can’t afford to look for a job just two days a week.”