Welfare Cuts Put Squeeze on Families at the Edge : Social services: Single mothers with children echo predictions of increased evictions and longer lines at food banks and homeless shelters.

One of the thousands of state welfare checks mailed at the end of August arrived in Pacoima at a federally subsidized apartment furnished with old couches donated by a neighborhood charity and decorated with $1 color posters of kittens.

Last week, as three young children ran noisily in and out of the apartment and an infant slept next to her, Maria Hernandez pondered cutting her household budget because of a cutback in welfare payments.

Payments to about 800,000 families in California were adjusted to reflect the 4.4% reduction in Aid for Dependent Children funds in the state budget that went into effect Sept. 1. In addition, cost-of-living increases for AFDC were frozen.

Hernandez’s payments dropped from $694 to $663 a month. As the reality of the cut sank in last week, the 22-year-old single mother and other AFDC recipients talked about how they will adapt and whether they think that they will make it.

“The money doesn’t last,” said Hernandez, opening her refrigerator to display aging heads of lettuce and a pot of beans. “We will have to cut something, but right now it doesn’t last.”

Some of those interviewed, most of them single mothers with stories of abandonment and abuse in their pasts, were angry. They echoed predictions by social service workers that the coming months will bring increases in evictions and longer lines at food banks and homeless shelters.

“I think it’s real unfair,” said Hilda Butler, 41, of Sepulveda, who lives with her 6-year-old son and infirm mother. She was worrying about how to pay an old $300 utility debt, which has left her facing the shut-off of water and electricity in her apartment. (She blames her ex-husband for failing to pay.)

“I have seen a lot of hurting people. I think it’s just gonna add to their suffering. . . . I’m not seeing bums out there who are affected; I’m seeing families with young children that are affected.”

The criticism evoked the political debate earlier this year when Gov. Pete Wilson said low-income people would share in the pain of widespread budget rollbacks. Some legislators and welfare advocates attacked Wilson’s statement that welfare recipients could still afford rent but would have less “for a six-pack of beer.”

On the other hand, the governor and his allies said California would still have among the highest aid payments in the nation. They said government anti-poverty spending would do more good in preventive programs such as prenatal care and drug treatment.

And some recipients who were interviewed viewed the consequences as less drastic than did others. They appeared resigned to cutting corners more than they already do; they were intent on surviving rather than complaining.

“I know there are people who take advantage of the system,” Hernandez said. “There are people who trade food stamps for money and buy beer or drugs. So on the one hand, I understand. When you get cut back, you are more responsible. But on the other hand, I’m against it. Even before, the money wasn’t enough.”

Hernandez is fortunate in one respect, because she moved into the city’s San Fernando Gardens housing project in Pacoima in June. She pays $173 in monthly rent for a three-bedroom apartment.

She hopes that the project, where she lived as a child after her family emigrated from Mexico, is the last stop for a while in an odyssey that began more than a year ago when her husband left her. She lost her $130-a-week job packaging face cream at a cosmetics factory. She and the children wandered from relatives’ homes to squalid rented rooms to a homeless shelter.

Despite her recent move, money remains tight. The children are growing--the eldest is 5--and need clothes that they aren’t going to get for a while.

“When they get older, it gets harder,” she said. “They need new clothes and shoes. They want cookies and sweets; they eat more.”

Hernandez hasn’t bought herself clothes in years. When she and the children get sick, she said, she prepares natural herb remedies rather than buying medicine if it’s nothing serious. As a result of the aid cuts, she anticipates making more trips to MEND, a local food bank and charity. And she may simply stop using her phone as a way to save.

“I want to work again,” she said. “I like working. I’d like to take English classes and improve myself. When I was working before, I was studying electronics part time. . . . But I have to wait until the baby gets older. Otherwise, it’s not worth it; all the money would go to the baby-sitter.”

Meanwhile, several single mothers found themselves facing an imminent housing crisis.

Anna Orellana of North Hollywood was barely able to afford the $590 rent on a two-bedroom apartment she shares with a teen-age son and baby daughter with $159 in food stamps and a $694 monthly aid payment.

Now her aid income will go down to $663. The food stamps will only go up slightly in compensation. Orellana says she will have to find a roommate to share costs or move. She does not want to move because her building is on a quiet street next to the local police station, and her son is at an age when he is vulnerable to the allure and danger of street gangs.

Like Hernandez, Orellana believes that she is being hurt because of people who cheat or who become dependent on government aid.

“The government is cutting because there are people who take advantage,” said Orellana, 42, who said she worked cleaning offices in Simi Valley until she became pregnant. “They should cut the people who have been receiving money for years and years and have never worked. We shouldn’t all suffer because of some.”

Another woman, who was interviewed after visiting a Van Nuys food bank and identified herself only as Ms. Ortiz, may also have to move because she cannot afford her rent. She said she had finally found a clean, safe apartment for her and her four children.

“Where I lived before, it was a filthy building,” she said. “It was dangerous to go out. It was all drunks and drug addicts. It was no place for my kids.”

People across the state are facing these kinds of decisions, said Toni Reinis, spokeswoman for the California Housing and Homeless Coalition, one of the organizations that fought the budget cuts and is monitoring their impact.

“We are already hearing from people who say, ‘We weren’t ready,’ ‘We have no backup,’ ” she said. “They ask where they should cut. These are people who live on pennies as it is.”

Problems will worsen because winter will bring higher utility bills and because funding to emergency homeless assistance programs has also been reduced, Reinis said.

Hilda Butler sat last week at a table covered with papers: the shut-off notice from the utility company, the letter from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services announcing the aid rollback, a receipt for $100 worth of repairs on her 1982 Ford. Her aid income will drop from $560 to $535.

Butler has two grown sons. She was on welfare as a young woman, then married a systems engineer with whom she lived in a nice home in Northern California. But she said she ended up in a shelter for battered women and back on welfare.

“Families deteriorate,” she said. “It happens real easily.”

Even before the cuts, she said, things that other people see as necessities were luxuries. Car insurance, for example.

“It should be a priority,” she said. “I don’t have it. With all this other stuff going on, it’s not a priority.”

Butler said she will keep doing what she has been doing: shopping at the 99-cent store, visiting food pantries, earning extra money by selling barrettes and other knickknacks she makes. She predicted that the welfare cuts will produce anger as well as hardship.

“When people get depressed, they get violent,” she said. “They can’t care for their families. They are going to be angry at someone. They will have to blame someone.”