Huntington Beach Sets Welfare Example : City’s Project Self-Sufficiency Would Be a Worthy Model for Washington Lawmakers

For battle-weary government officials in Washington interested in going beyond the rhetoric to have a fresh look at what’s actually possible, we suggest a look at what has been going on in the area of welfare reform in Huntington Beach. Last year in Washington, the debate over welfare became so polarized that it was almost impossible to find any common ground of reality from which reform could spring.

In the aftermath of the Republican tide nationally in the recent election, there is renewed interest on both sides of the aisle in approaching the area of entitlements anew. But there is still no shortage of platitudes and hot air on the national stage in the welfare debate. What the country clearly needs are models that have been tried and tested as examples of how to do it right, and that show how to incorporate the best ideas of partisans who may have very different philosophies of government.

A program called Project Self-Sufficiency has been in place for about a decade in Huntington Beach with the simple and laudable goal of helping ease single parents off welfare. The objective is to find them housing, education and employment, and to achieve the larger result of disengaging them from the welfare system.

The program’s triumph seems to lie in its ability to incorporate something of all the best ideas that are out there: the participation of a compassionate government, the contributions of volunteers, the enlistment of donations and grants, and that intangible “family values” component of getting people to look out for themselves.

Isn’t this what everybody on the national scene is talking about achieving--breaking dependency and fostering self-reliance? Both sides in the polemical discussion of welfare have seized on the idea of individual responsibility. Here is a program that has results, not just talk.

One of its key components is the establishment of individual goals and the comprehensive one-on-one support it turns on. The staff works with participants to evaluate what they need in the way of housing, job training, education, child care, transportation and emergency services. And there is follow-up after written “action plans” are agreed to.

The program reports that of 280 families in the project since it began a decade ago, 210 no longer receive welfare subsidies. One participant says the program “is meant to help you get the life you want; it’s not meant to be your life.” What we ought to do is bottle this program for other places trying to get to the bottom of the welfare dilemma.