Waiting for Their Welfare

The door with the peephole window opened, and a middle-aged woman with pallid face and unkempt blond hair emerged. She blinked twice at the waiting room’s bright lights, then passed through the crowd of women and children with steps that suggested fatigue beyond her years.

Lowering herself into an orange plastic chair, she said, seemingly to no one in particular: “Even if I did something wrong, I don’t see why my kids should be punished . . .”

The voice trailed off, then returned with a volley of obscenities that, her gestures indicated, was directed at someone behind the door.

Another day at the District 82 office of the Bureau of Assistance Payments of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services--the West Valley welfare office.

For the 9,800 households west of Sepulveda Boulevard that are on welfare of one type or another, this is the place to sign up for assistance, to change benefits and to try to explain away newly discovered evidence--mostly generated by computer cross-checks--suggesting that maybe they shouldn’t be getting benefits after all.

In addition, it’s to this waiting room, with its government-issue decor, where they must go at least once a year for a face-to-face interview for each aid program they are signed up for.

These dreaded recertification interviews determine continued eligibility. Since most live close to the edge, even one missed welfare check can mean eviction and homelessness.

All in all, it’s not a cheery place, not a community center where a recipient would go merely to visit old comrades, like a volunteer fireman to his clubhouse.

Situated in an industrial area on Canoga Avenue in Canoga Park, the West Valley welfare office has an electric supply house and two auto body shops as neighbors. From early morning to evening, its parking lot is crowded with battered pickups and old sedans with unrepaired dents and scrapes.

These cars are distinctive by their absence of bumper or window stickers--no political, social or smart-aleck messages here.

Every parking spot is covered with oil and grease, evidence that many an ailing vehicle has rested here. Throughout the day, men sit in their cars listening to music while waiting for the women who are inside waiting for their names to be called.

The waiting room, a forest of plastic chairs in intense shades of yellow, blue, green and orange, is almost never uncrowded and often pushes its posted maximum occupancy limit of 99, welfare workers say.

Shortly after the 1st and 15th of each month--check-arrival days--the crowds surge as recipients flood in to complain about less-than-expected benefits or missing checks, said Ike August, the West Valley office director.

A television monitor in the waiting room continuously screens a video that explains the alphabet soup of welfare programs, including what workers call the big three--Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), Food Stamps and Medi-Cal.

“I’d say that 95% or more of our recipients are enrolled in at least one of those three,” said August.

AFDC, the biggest of the big three, pays up to $778 a month for a household of four, which would typically be a mother and three children. Most AFDC families also get food stamps and free medical care under Medi-Cal, the director said.

General Relief, the program in which most of the homeless are enrolled, is not distributed at the West Valley office. It pays $132 a month per person, an amount that advocates for the poor say is so low that it makes it difficult for homeless persons to obtain lodging, much less food and clothing.

Despite the deadening decor and dead-serious purpose of the welfare office, there’s a narrow camaraderie at work here.

Veteran recipients, stolidly waiting their turn to be called or recalled behind the door with the peephole window, freely offer advice, like jailhouse lawyers, to those storm-tossed by the system.

One such counselor, an overweight, pleasant-faced black woman, cheerfully advised others on a variety of subjects: “Don’t tell them you lived in Anaheim, baby, or you’ll lose, you’ll lose . . . . You got to appeal that, honey, and right away, and remember you got to cooperate.”

But her cheeriness disappeared abruptly when a reporter sought to interview her. “Honey, you must be crazy,” she said, then turned impassive.

“We would prefer they get their advice from the agency,” said August, “but we recognize that there is a lot of talk on the street.”

After she calmed down, the woman with unkempt blond hair who had uttered obscenities at the door also benefited from this mutual aid system.

Two women who at first had eyed her impassively eventually began to inquire about her predicament.

It turned out that welfare investigators had determined that she was still legally married, although the woman insisted to her new comrades she had “got rid of him years ago. I’m sure that divorce went through.” Then, “Well, I thought it did.”

In 10 minutes of chewing on the problem, the woman and her comrades devised a strategy of appealing on the basis that she had reason to believe she was divorced.

Then the woman notified a receptionist that she wanted to go back in. An hour later, she was summoned, and half an hour later, emerged to tell her advisers that the issue was undecided but “maybe it’ll work out.”

Then one of the advisers was summoned through the door with the peephole and the three comrades went in different directions.