Poor Feel Powerless to Protest Cuts : Welfare: Many AFDC recipients don’t know the state plans to reduce their checks 4.4% and deny cost-of-living increases. Those who do know realize they have no clout in Sacramento.

When state legislators take on politically potent groups such as gun owners or the elderly, the response is usually swift: Telephones ring, mail bags swell and lawmakers come under pressure to retreat.

That’s not the case when the aggrieved group is welfare recipients, the Californians who will be hardest hit by the $56.4-billion state budget being drafted in Sacramento. A recent visit to the Los Angeles County welfare office in Inglewood helps illustrate why.

Of the scores of welfare recipients seated in the office’s first-floor waiting room, few knew their monthly payments will shrink by 4.4% and could remain frozen for five years under a key piece of budget legislation signed into law June 30.

And of those who did, none felt they had the means to challenge the cuts, part of an effort by state leaders to bridge a $14.3-billion budget deficit.

“I’ve always thought about writing (Gov. Pete) Wilson, but it wouldn’t do anything,” said Kimberly Drivers, 22, a homeless mother of three, as she waited to see a welfare agent. “If I wrote him, though, I’d tell him I’d like to see him live one week on what I get in a month.”

State leaders say all Californians--including those on welfare--should share in efforts toward deficit reduction. The 4.4% cut, effective Sept. 1, targets Aid To Families with Dependent Children, a program that mainly assists poor mothers. The average AFDC recipient--a mother of two--will see her monthly payments dip to $663 from the current $694. The reduction will entitle the recipient to additional federal food stamp money, but only about $10 more a month.

Most worrisome for those who depend on AFDC income is that in addition to the 4.4% cut, the welfare legislation also calls for a five-year suspension of AFDC cost-of-living increases. In the budget year that began July 1, the increase would have amounted to 5.5%.

More than 20,000 South Bay families will be affected by the austerity steps, according to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services. As in other areas of the state, however, many AFDC recipients do not know about the measures, much less how to protest them.

The problem doesn’t surprise state Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles), who represents a large number of the South Bay’s poor. With state leaders divvying up a meager state budget pie, she says, welfare recipients lack the political muscle to protect their slice.

“When it comes to welfare issues, you’re dealing with the powerless, you’re dealing with nonvoters, and you’re dealing with the uninformed,” Watson said. “They don’t know. They don’t understand.”

That the beneficiaries do care, however, was clear during the recent visit to the Inglewood welfare office, a monolithic brown building that serves clients from the South Bay, Westside and parts of South Central Los Angeles.

Welfare applicants and recipients, nearly all of them women, waited patiently in rows of orange plastic chairs--some bottle-feeding infants, some contending with restless gaggles of children, some sitting alone.

Once informed about the cuts, women on AFDC showed no shortage of opinions about their possible effect.

Terry Moore of Inglewood, a 29-year-old mother of two, said the measures could mean the difference between living in an apartment and living on the street. Her family already is hard-pressed to meet essential living expenses, she said.

“You have to rob Peter to pay Paul,” Moore said. “You scrape enough to pay the phone bill and they turn your lights off. You pay for the lights and they cut off your phone.”

There was, to be sure, the occasional dissenting voice.

Reba Stevens of Los Angeles, a mother of three, pronounced the welfare cuts a blessing in disguise. Stevens recently found a job with the Brotherhood Crusade, a Los Angeles community service group. She said her entry-level salary still entitles her to receive some AFDC benefits, but adds that those benefits will be curtailed as her salary grows.

“Most of the recipients are depending on AFDC when they would be able to work or go to school,” Stevens said. “The only people (the cuts) hurt are the kind of person who wants to sit at home all day and not do something better for herself or her child.”

Other women, however, disputed that view, saying it is impossible to make ends meet with minimum-wage jobs--virtually the only employment available to them. They cited the high cost of housing in the Los Angeles area and consistently steep child-care costs--usually more than $75 a week for preschoolers and over $80 a week for infants.

“I’m mad,” said Cathy Jacobs of Inglewood, a single, 19-year-old mother of two. “Why would they take money out of our pockets? These are mothers trying to make it alone.”

Saying she receives $694 a month in AFDC payments and $159 a month in food stamps, Jacobs predicted that her loss of AFDC income will ultimately force her family to leave its $350-a-month apartment. “I bet I’ll be evicted,” she said.

Kimberly Drivers, the homeless mother, said the shelter where she is staying has given her 60 days to find an apartment and raise first and last month’s rent so she can move in.

If she fails, she said, she and her three children will be put back on the street--an outcome, she added bitterly, that state leaders have made more likely by enacting the welfare cuts.

“While I’m supposed to be saving toward an apartment, they’re taking my money away,” complained Drivers, saying she will be forced to skimp further on essentials such as clothing and food. “This shouldn’t come out of my babies’ mouths. They didn’t make the deficit.”

Advocates for the poor acknowledge that such arguments carry little political clout in Sacramento these days.

Said Casey McKeever, an attorney with the Western Center on Law and Poverty: “We can’t expect to compete with (lobbying) groups that have money to contribute to political campaigns or that can deliver votes.”

PUBLIC ASSISTANCE The number of South Bay families turning to welfare has jumped sharply during the recession, with an across-the-board increase of 28% in general relief alone. The county administers three primary welfare programs: Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), General Relief and Food Stamps. AFDC is paid to parents of minor children. General Relief is a $312 monthly payment that goes to single adults who do not qualify for other forms of government aid. Food stamps are usually issued in conjunction with other welfare programs.

AFDC General Relief Food Stamps City ’89 ’90 ’89 ’90 ’89 ’90 Avalon 4 0 0 0 0 1 Carson 4,124 4,446 248 284 518 458 El Segundo 55 91 5 6 12 16 Gardena 2,084 2,653 127 165 230 271 Hawthorne 3,624 5,536 198 289 382 537 Hermosa Beach 71 65 1 3 14 8 Inglewood 10,063 11,571 729 880 1,310 1,311 Lawndale 1,440 2,057 46 90 188 558 Lomita 599 878 33 49 130 134 Manhattan Beach 85 100 7 1 20 2 P.V. Estates 3 6 2 5 0 0 Rancho P.V. 58 66 2 2 2 8 Redondo Beach 695 788 20 23 100 67 Rolling Hills 0 0 0 0 0 0 R.H. Estates 9 7 0 0 0 0 Torrance 1,402 1,655 58 94 121 180 SOUTH BAY 24,316 29,919 1,476 1,891 3,027 3,551 COUNTY 555,341 638,987 48,898 56,378 78,707 91,520

Figures are estimates from September of 1989 and December of 1990 Source: Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services