Getting Beyond Welfare and Poverty

As Los Angeles recovers from the worse urban riots in modern American history, President Bush’s task force and Gov. Pete Wilson’s revitalization experts have teamed up to announce an ambitious and welcome job-training program. The $3.4-million program will target 500 poor residents of the Nickerson Gardens public housing project in Watts. They will be guaranteed vocational training and a chance to replace their welfare checks with paychecks.

Trainees who meet minimal educational standards will spend two to four months at selected vocational schools that specialize in computer skills, health services and security services. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Health and Human Services will pay for the training.

While they train, their children will attend day care paid for by Los Angeles County through GAIN, the state workfare program. Providing child care will lift a common barrier to employment for poor parents.

When they finish, the trainees will get help from the vocational schools in finding a job. The schools won’t guarantee jobs, but the training institutes claim a 90% placement record for other trainees. Fortunately, the success standard for the new jobs program has been set at 50%, a more realistic rate for inexperienced workers who may not have high school diplomas.

Some trainees will go to work for employers who have already signed on to provide jobs. That is a good approach. It should be multiplied. Every effort should be made to recruit more employers because finding jobs won’t be easy in this extremely competitive job market.

Residents of Nickerson Gardens, the largest housing project in the area, will get first crack at the slots in the new training program, scheduled to run from next month to June. Residents from other housing projects will also get an opportunity, but only on a space-available basis. If the new program proves successful, it could become a model for the nation--and be opened to other welfare recipients.

The new training program will try to do in two to four months what typical state workfare programs take 18 months or longer to do. Both kinds of programs belong in the mix of routes from welfare to work. Decent jobs are the best antidote to welfare and poverty.