Mother Sees Bleaker Days if Welfare Is Cut Further : State aid: Gov. Wilson’s proposed rollbacks draw criticism. Many think the plan will be hard to sell to a middle class hit hard by recession and the loss of jobs.

Lena Castro believes that she and her two children are easy marks, not for the thugs who plague her neighborhood but for the governor of California.

“I guess he thinks we don’t deserve anything,” Castro said in reaction to Gov. Pete Wilson’s proposal to cut aid for welfare recipients by nearly 30%. “But I don’t think the government should pick on the poorest people.

“We have nowhere else to go,” said Castro, who supports her family on $673 in monthly welfare payments since suffering a job-related disability.

Many welfare rights advocates agree that welfare programs are easy targets during hard times because their constituencies include mostly women, children, the less-educated and those less likely to vote.

Wilson last week proposed a November, 1992, ballot measure that would require a 10% cut to families receiving Aid to Families With Dependent Children, or AFDC. After six months, payments to families with an able-bodied adult would be cut another 15%.

His proposal would set a maximum grant that would not increase if a mother has additional children and would require unwed teen-age mothers to live at home in order to receive grants. The measure would also place restrictions on the amount of aid given to newcomers to the state.

Welfare benefits were reduced for the first time in California history in July, when AFDC grants were cut by 4.4%. The governor has proposed another immediate 4.4% reduction.

Welfare-rights advocates say Wilson may find it difficult to sell his proposals to a middle-class population hit hard by the recession and loss of jobs.

“I think there are a lot of people who have come close to losing their jobs or who have lost their jobs and realize that a lot of families are one paycheck away from welfare,” said Clare Pastore, an attorney with the Los Angeles-based Western Center for Law and Poverty.

“I don’t think anyone agrees with the governor that people are living well on welfare. They realize that people go on welfare because they have to and they do what they can to get off,” she added.

Wilson has argued that California’s welfare grants, among the highest in the country, are attracting the poor from other areas of the country, straining the state’s fiscal health and draining taxpayers.

County welfare officials say that description may be true to some extent. Dozens of former Michigan residents turned up seeking county assistance after that state attempted to eliminate its indigent adult program recently, said Angelo Doti, director of financial assistance programs for the Orange County Social Services Agency.

“But they still have to meet our eligibility criteria and have to make California their home,” he said. “It may be true that we provide the second highest level of aid (in the continental United States) but that is really very relative when you look at the cost of living here.”

Officials say they are receiving an increasing number of aid applications from families.

“A lot of people who are applying to us . . . do not qualify for aid,” said Social Services Agency Deputy Director Robert A. Griffith. “They don’t understand how badly off you have to be or realize they would have to sell off all of their assets.”

One of the most telling indications of the current recession’s impact on the working and middle classes is the rising number of two-parent households on aid. The number increased by 59% in the past year, said Griffith. Food stamp caseloads have grown by 151.7% over the last three years.

Welfare rights advocates say the July AFDC cut has already had the effect of increasing hunger and homelessness among the poor.

Orange County charity providers say demands for emergency food, clothing and medical assistance are at record levels.

What is worse, they say, is that the cuts have hurt children the most. According to the Social Services Agency, children comprise two-thirds of the welfare rolls, and roughly 60% of them are under 10 years of age.

Moreover, social welfare officials say that children are the fastest growing segment of the homeless population, comprising an estimated one-third of Orange County’s homeless.

Castro says her children, a 7-year-old girl and 10-year-old boy, have already seen their living conditions deteriorate. The family moved four times in the last year seeking cheaper rent, and now lives in a rented room.

Castro makes long bus journeys at least three times a week to obtain food baskets and clothing from charity providers.

She is not sure how the family could survive on less.

“I don’t know,” she says softly. “We do what we can to survive and hope people have pity.”