Poor Find Few Lifelines in a Sea of Affluence : Poverty: A four-month investigation shows that despite some heroic individual efforts, the county is not providing enough assistance to its neediest citizens.

Does Orange County, one of the wealthiest areas of California, turn a cold shoulder to the poor?

In many ways, those who deal with the poor say, the indigent here have a tougher time than in other areas that are not as affluent. For instance:

--The county has one of the most rigorous workfare programs in the state, despite questions about whether the program actually saves money. Some advocates for the poor also say the county scares away the truly needy with a unique program in which deputy district attorneys are stationed in welfare offices to do criminal background checks on welfare applicants who lack identification or who simply look suspicious.

--Providing new lower-cost housing has not been a priority for most local governments in Orange County. Despite state laws requiring that communities set aside 20% of redevelopment funds for affordable housing, some cities are just beginning to spend the money for that purpose. And few have supported the creation of community-based nonprofit housing, a tool that developers have used successfully in other areas to piece together funding to build affordable housing.

--In the face of a serious crisis in health care, the county is locked into state funding formulas for health services that were put in place 20 years ago--a time when the county was run by politicians who spurned money from outside as “governmental interference.” Current legislators have been powerless to change those formulas, putting the county further and further behind other areas of the state. And, despite a mounting health crisis, health advocates here say there appears to be little political will to bring to bear any major change.

--Facing diminished public assistance, Orange County’s increasingly visible poor are turning to what the Bush Administration calls the “thousand points of light”--volunteers from the private sector envisioned to fill the void. But in the past five years, despite heroic efforts by some groups and individuals, compassion and generosity in Orange County’s private sector have not kept pace with the galloping need, church and charity leaders said.

Times Orange County Edition reporters spent four months examining these issues. The picture that emerged is not one of a county that has looked out for its needy.

“A county like ours, blessed with resources, ought to have exemplary programs of support for the aged, the disabled, for those temporarily or otherwise poor,” said Larry Agran, the mayor of Irvine, which has led the way in the county on many programs to help low-income people. Agran blamed the County Board of Supervisors for failing to provide the leadership for a “full-fledged assault” on poverty, homelessness and hunger.

“We haven’t seen that, and I think it’s a terrible indictment of the Board of Supervisors, and, indeed, an indictment of us all here in Orange County,” Agran said.

Many officials think that’s a bad rap.

“I don’t think it’s an issue of sensitivity as much as it is of awareness,” Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez said, voicing a view that was echoed by others. Using himself as an example, he told about his experience last January when he and his family assisted homeless people who were being housed overnight at the Fullerton armory during a cold spell. He said he was shocked to hear a man admonishing his son to get showered and go to bed so he could be rested for school the next morning.

Including himself in this category, Vasquez said: “Sometimes people have a tendency to stereotype the homeless. Then you realize there are people who have hit a bad time in life but they have not abdicated their responsibilities of having their kids in school or being gainfully employed. They are simply trying to regain their footing.”

Former Garden Grove Democratic Assemblyman Richard Robinson, who for years tried to increase the county’s share of state funding for health care, said Orange County is “every bit as bighearted as any other community” but is understandably concerned about the high cost of government.

“No one likes higher taxes,” Robinson said.

Whatever Orange County’s commitment to its most needy, the community’s resolve has been tested in recent years by a variety of factors, only some of which it could control.

As have many other areas of the state, Orange County has been faced with a flow of immigrants in need of help while they get situated. These newcomers are competing for services with those who have fallen into the county’s underclass through age, disability, illness, joblessness or other misfortunes.

This has come as the county has experienced a rate of growth that has strained all public services, from schools and highways to law enforcement. At the same time, the county’s median income has climbed to $46,900--second highest of the state’s 10 major metropolitan areas--according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. And, as another indication of affluence, 58% of the county’s households are people who live in their own residences, although renters are increasing because of the high cost of housing.

One result is that the “hot” issues politically have been the quality-of-life concerns of the middle class: traffic congestion and growth management.

But even as the county has turned its attention to these problems, the numbers of poor have increased. There are 10,000 people homeless, more than twice as many as five years ago, according to the Orange County Homeless Issues Task Force. And the stereotype of the drunk or shiftless man no longer fits. About 5,000 children are without homes, and 80% of the homeless live in families, most headed by single women.

Nor are most of the homeless transient. About 60% have lived in the county 10 years or more, according to the Housing Element Report of the Orange County Environmental Management Agency Advance Planning Program.

Proportionately, the county has even more homeless than San Diego County, although it has fewer than Los Angeles County.

For many here, however, the homeless are out of sight and out of mind, officials say.

Because many of the county’s biggest medical and human services needs are confined to small geographical pockets, Supervisor Vasquez said, “there are areas where people have the perception there is no problem.”

Others dealing with the poor agreed.

“If you live in Irvine, you don’t see the Santa Ana bag ladies and bag men . . . you don’t see the homeless,” said Thomas E. Uram, director of the Orange County Health Care Agency.

Chauncey Alexander, chairman of the United Way of Orange County Health Care Task Force, pointed to the county’s many walled communities as an indication that people are not in touch with the hardships being borne by thousands of other residents.

“There is a fortress mentality,” Alexander said. “It’s the individualism without the other side of the coin, which is social responsibility.”

But, he added, “I don’t think there’s anybody here, or any great percentage of people, who wants to see people suffering.”

The homeless end up on the streets for a variety of reasons. About 40% are so-called “nouveau poor,” as the Homeless Task Force calls them, who were thrown out of their homes or apartments by a crisis such as work-related injury, domestic battering, divorce or pregnancy.

To get back into the rental market can be an overwhelming task to these newly poor people. It takes first and last months’ rent, security deposits and other expenses that seem well beyond the means of low-income families, especially in a county where the housing market is so overheated that even middle-income families have a hard time finding affordable housing.

Vicki Mayster of Share Our Selves, a Costa Mesa-based charity that provides food, clothing and financial assistance to the needy, said that many of those who seek treatment at public clinics are “working poor” who have a family income but who are not eligible for government programs until they spend their resources down to a certain level.

“You find a family that gets ahead a little bit. They’re just making $1,800 a month. They just got an apartment. Then someone gets sick. . . ,” Mayster said. “They would have to spend $750 on medical care before they could use Medi-Cal. So the closer they got to getting out of the hole the more their monthly cost.”

It would be simple to write off the plight of these homeless families as an inevitable fallout of a healthy--perhaps even too healthy--housing market in Orange County. But advocates for the poor say that they also detect something else. They say there is a lack of political will to deal with the problems.

Al Baldwin of the Orange County Community Development Corp., a nonprofit developer of affordable housing, said such groups have not produced much inexpensive housing because they often lack the support of local government.

“Political will is the most important ingredient to creating affordable housing because all land use is political,” Baldwin said. He added:

“Orange County is as affluent as any place in the world, and we take pride in being good Americans. Shouldn’t it be our goal that two people earning a minimum wage could afford a one-bedroom apartment someplace?

” . . . If you can’t do it here, you can’t do it anywhere.”

Critics also say politicians aren’t inclined to face up to the county’s health care problems.

Referring to the Board of Supervisors, SOS’ Mayster said, “If they thought they were not going to get reelected if they didn’t provide health care for the poor, they would.”

She added: “It’s that whole conservative philosophy that government should not be involved in human needs--I think that’s especially strong in Orange County. We’re one of the wealthiest counties in the nation, but when it comes to health care, we’re terribly stingy.”

As do medical facilities elsewhere, hospitals in Orange County that treat Medi-Cal and Medicare recipients complain that they are not reimbursed sufficiently for these patients, forcing them to close down certain high-cost services, such as emergency rooms and trauma centers. Charity clinics, while making heroic efforts to help the poor, are unable to keep up with the needs for indigent medical services.

As the crisis grows, some efforts are under way to solve it. Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder is helping to organize a health conference in Orange County on Friday that will include state lawmakers. And state Sen. Marian Bergeson is establishing the Orange County Coalition for Health Care Solutions, which will assess health care for the indigent.

Uram of the Orange County Health Care Agency said he talks to legislators about the county’s health problems. “But there’s got to be a reception,” he said. “And there’s got to be a perception on their part that a problem exists.”

He added: “I don’t think the majority of people in Orange County think of health (care services) as a problem. . . . It’s a very affluent county. I’m not saying they’re callous. I’m just saying, I don’t think they’re aware.

“Once they’re aware, they’re very supportive.”

Alexander said the Orange County Health Care Task Force studied health care delivery in Orange County for about a year and came to the conclusion that “the situation is as bad or worse than almost any place in the country.”

However, he said, health care has not had a strong set of advocates “so it hasn’t gotten the political attention it really deserves.” That, he said, “has caused a deterioration of health services.”

Dr. Howard Waitzkin, a UC Irvine professor of medicine and social sciences and chief of the division of general internal medicine and primary care, said the populace “ignores” the problems posed by poverty.

“People are used to driving through the county on freeways and not seeing the poverty that exists. . . . It’s choosing not to see it,” said Waitzkin, who is a founding member of the Orange County Task Force on Indigent Health Care, which predates the current Health Task Force. “The suffering in this county is just as great, if not more so, as in several other counties . . . but people just do not recognize it’s a major problem.”

COMPARING HOUSEHOLD INCOME FIGURES FOR FISCAL YEAR 1989*

ESTIMATED MEDIAN HOUSEHOLD COUNTY POPULATION INCOME Santa Clara 1,440,900 $45,022 Contra Costa 775,500 41,281 Orange 2,280,400 41,181 Alameda 1,252,400 32,873 Los Angeles 8,650,300 31,873 San Diego 2,328,300 29,546 Sacramento 988,300 29,037 San Bernardino 1,324,600 28,712 San Francisco 731,700 26,738 Riverside 1,014,800 26,541

*Comparison among 10 most populous counties. Source: California Department of Finance; National Planning Data Corp.

LIMITED RELIEF: reformed welfare program still has inequities. B1