Lawsuit Seeks to Halt Cuts in S.D. Welfare Benefits : Support: Taking the able-bodied off the rolls would increase homelessness, the Legal Aid Society warns.

Seeking an immediate halt to the county’s effort to eliminate nearly 2,000 able-bodied adults from a last-resort welfare program, the Legal Aid Society of San Diego has filed a class-action suit on behalf of 10 recipients, claiming that most--if not all--will become homeless as a result of the aid cutoff.

The lawsuit, filed Monday, contends that the Board of Supervisors’ Jan. 14 decision to remove 1,940 “employable” adults from the General Relief welfare rolls after three months of payments violates state law and a 1971 California Supreme Court ruling on the issue.

The county’s action “couldn’t come at a worse time for these people, when even people who have been working and have skills are having problems finding a job or are getting laid off,” said Rosemary Bishop, a Legal Aid staff attorney.

“I’ll be up the creek. It’s a famous creek,” said plaintiff Bill Fain, a 49-year-old former software developer who has been receiving $291 a month in General Relief payments since November. “I would not have funds for payment of rent, because General Relief covers it.”

Hoping to fill a sizable gap in the current fiscal year budget and trim spending on an unfunded state mandate, the supervisors voted unanimously to take able-bodied people off the program beginning Feb. 1. The decision would end payments to about 30% of current recipients, saving $2.6 million this fiscal year and an estimated $6.2 million annually.

Supervisor Susan Golding, who is running for mayor of San Diego, and Supervisor Leon Williams, who represents some of the county’s poorest areas, led the drive for the new regulations, which Supervisor Brian Bilbray had long been advocating.

No one has yet been cut from the rolls, but 425 people have received notices that their benefits will end shortly, said Joan Zinser, deputy director of income maintenance for the county Department of Social Services.

Under the new rules, adult recipients without physical or mental defects can receive no more than three months of payments in any 12-month period. They can re-apply for aid each year.

The last-resort welfare payment supports adults without children who qualify for no other form of public assistance except the Food Stamp program, which provides as much as $111 monthly. About 20% of the recipients are homeless. Each month, recipients must work at assigned job sites for as many as 72 hours and apply for at least four jobs in order to receive aid.

The board’s decision added San Diego County to a growing list of cash-starved government agencies that are ending aid for employable adults. In recent months, the states of Michigan and Maryland and the District of Columbia have taken the same action.

Deputy County Counsel Ian Fan said Tuesday that the rules of government taxation have changed since the state Supreme Court’s 1971 ruling ordering counties to keep employables on the welfare program.

Since the passage of the 1978 property tax-cutting initiative Proposition 13, counties no longer have the ability to raise additional revenue, Fan said. Yet the state requires the county to operate the $28.5 million program, he said.

“To me, what it comes down to (is) almost a philosophical view of what government should be about in this post-Proposition 13 era,” Fan said.

“I think (the state Supreme Court ruling) is a little obsolete now,” he said. “Nobody’s paid attention to the fact that the rules have changed.”

Fan said that the three months of benefits offered to employables by San Diego differentiates the county policy from the one overruled by the state Supreme Court in 1971. In that case, employables were prevented from even applying for aid, he said.

But Bishop, the Legal Aid lawyer, said that the decision “is a terrible way to set . . . priorities, given the economy. These people are now facing the specter of homelessness, some for the first time.”

The group is asking the court for an immediate halt to the termination notices. A hearing will be held Thursday in Superior Court.

“I think it may be partly political,” Bishop said, in reference to Golding’s mayoral aspirations, “and partly desperation because of the budget (crisis).”

In addition to Fain, the plaintiffs include Virginia Johnson, a 43-year-old woman who has spent most of her life as a homemaker but now is having difficulty finding a job because of arthritis and inexperience; Randy Fawcette, a 20-year-old man whose benefits allow him to rent a room for three weeks each month; Robert Toothaker, a 46-year-old homeless Vietnam veteran who worked as a truck driver until he hurt his leg, and several others.

“Many ‘employable’ recipients simply cannot find other work for long periods of time, due to limitations such as marginal work skills or abilities, life crisis situations (such as homelessness), poor health and/or partial disabilities, and . . . the increasing shortage of jobs in the county,” Legal Aid attorneys contend in their lawsuit.

An aid cutoff will “cause immediate and irreparable harm in the form of homelessness, lack of food, transportation, utilities, clothing, health care and other essentials of life,” the lawsuit claims.