Addressing Poverty’s Challenge : Panel: O.C. activists, officials and experts discuss ways of helping the poor and the communities in which they live.

Feelings run deep on all the issues that surround poverty. Does government help foster welfare dependency? Who should pay the heavy cost of social services as government retreats from the effort? What accounts for the anger toward the poor in Orange County and across the country?

From community activist Debbie McEwen, who sees drug dealing and prostitution outside her window in Santa Ana’s Historic French Park District, to Msgr. Jaime Soto, who seeks fairness for immigrants in the county that gave birth to Proposition 187, the issues spark impassioned debate whenever they arise.

To cap a five-day series on poverty in Orange County, The Times Orange County Edition invited eight people, including public officials, experts and community leaders, to debate these questions. The aim was a candid conversation exploring ways of working with the poor.

The panel consisted of Allen P. Baldwin, executive director of the Orange County Community Housing Corp. in Santa Ana; Dolores Barrett, director of social services for the Salvation Army; Dan McCoy, a captain in the Santa Ana Police Department; McEwen, president of the Historic French Park Homeowners Assn. in Santa Ana; Karen McGlinn, executive director of Share Our Selves, a nonprofit agency serving the poor in Costa Mesa; Star Parker, a former welfare recipient and founder of the Coalition on Urban Affairs, a research center on poverty; Sandra Smoley, secretary of California’s Health and Welfare Agency; and Soto, episcopal vicar for the Latino community of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange.

Baldwin moderated the discussion. The following is an edited transcript.

Baldwin: Are we ignoring the problem in Orange County when we have this long history of denying something as simple as an affordable housing opportunity?

McGlinn, Share Our Selves: We have defined people according to how we think they should be. If they don’t have an attitude of trying or an intention to improve themselves, or some educational level, then we put them into that class of the non-deserving.

When I say the poor are just like us, I really believe that, because there are a whole lot of “us’s” who don’t want to do anything either. We’re not even focusing on programs or caring for people because we’re so afraid [we’ll] bring in the wrong people in the process.

Parker, Coalition on Urban Affairs: Well, that might be the attitude of people in Orange County. I’m not saying not to help people. It’s [a matter of] approach. We all have an attitude of leisure. Most of us would rather sit out at the beach if we could still receive income. We need to concentrate on education, [because] if a child is educated, they will then be able to get along with other people. They will have what they need to mobilize themselves.

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Baldwin: If we’re training people for jobs that are nonexistent, or, once they have the jobs they don’t have medical care, or they can’t have day care or they can’t have housing, what happens to hope?

Parker: That’s why our incentives [need to take] a different approach. To build more slum houses is not a solution. If you want to set aside houses [for the poor], I don’t know if the people of Orange County are ever going to accept that solution.

Smoley, state Health and Welfare secretary: When I was on the [Sacramento County] Board of Supervisors, housing was the biggest issue. I represented the highest economic area in Sacramento, and I always said everyone has to take their fair share. We should not create ghettos. We should spread them out.

I wanted to talk about hope and the fact that the jobs aren’t there. The GAIN program [Greater Avenues for Independence, which helps welfare recipients find jobs] has been extremely successful. Show them how to dress, how to interview, give them videotapes, have them go out and actually interview for a specific job that does exist. And that is the greatest. They come back, they’re revved up, they’re thrilled, they’re happy. That’s hope.

THE HOMELESS IN O.C.

Baldwin: What’s been the effect of the homeless anti-camping ordinance in Santa Ana?

McCoy, Santa Ana Police Department: The camping ordinance has gotten a lot of attention on a state and a national basis, [but] cities have to be able to go and preserve order for the majority. I think the situation that drove the camping ordinance was that there were encampments built. We received numerous complaints. There were health issues.

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Baldwin: Where do the homeless go now?

McCoy: Obviously there’s displacement. I’d be naive to believe that there hasn’t been. I know some have left the city. I’m not going to say that they’re no longer there. I can say that the encampment is no longer there.

McGlinn: I know where a lot of those people are. You can come down and visit them; they’re at SOS certain days. And when we take those kinds of approaches to homelessness, we put a moat around our cities. We then begin to break down our regional approach to programs. We then begin to break down this whole attitude that the poor among us live everywhere. We talk about government, but we are the government. And if it’s not working, it’s not working because we’re not working.

Barrett, Salvation Army: We’ve run a shelter in Santa Ana, the Hospitality House emergency shelter, since 1964. It’s a 55-bed facility. We have been at our running capacity for years. Our significant impact, and I don’t know if it’s the anti-camping ordinance or the change in the economic environment, has been the growth in requests for services from families and women and children.

CHANGING NATURE OF POVERTY

Baldwin: So the face of poverty is changing?

Barrett: It’s changing significantly. We need to look at the continuum of care. Somewhere services have to start. Somewhere the door has to open and the opportunity has to be there.

You talk about them getting jobs. But they don’t start by going into job training. Some start by learning to read. Or they start by getting a stable place to live. They don’t always start at the end; they start at the beginning.

If they don’t walk through the door at my place, they don’t get to walk out the door at your place. There are only two emergency shelters that see women and children in this county. I think [both] transitional housing [and] permanent housing is very important. I think permanent solutions are very important, but people don’t get to those solutions without starting in the beginning with emergency care.

McGlinn: If we went back and drew a thread throughout society and throughout time, we would continue to have women and children being the people who suffer the most. That’s where we are today. The children are the ones suffering from poverty.

We are demanding as a society, as governmental agencies, that people move to self-sufficiency. But if you’re not educated, if you’re struggling with a multiplicity of problems--like no family structure, or a long history of abuse--you may not be able to reach self-sufficiency.

Soto, Roman Catholic Diocese: What I see happening, particularly in terms of social policy or the lack of it, is that unfortunately police officers become the social workers of last resort, and jails become the social services of last resort.

McEwen, French Park Homeowners Assn.: We’re the last vestige of the well-kept Victorian homes. We were known as the Nob Hill of Santa Ana at the time. That’s the reason for being in Santa Ana for many of us, the call of those homes. We see the worst of this poverty issue. We don’t see it from the service end like many of you do. Just sitting in my living room I watch this happen daily: [Drug dealing and use], prostitutes, all these seedy, negative, awful things occur on our street corners every single day. You ask yourself, “Is it worth it?”

POVERTY AND ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

Baldwin: Is the face of poverty an undocumented immigrant?

Soto: I think that there is a widespread perception that that’s the case. And there’s no doubt that the undocumented population, in any kind of economic hard times, bears the brunt of that.

Because of expediency, a lot of political leadership has latched on to the fear and the anxiety of many California residents, particularly in these economic hard times, and have scapegoated immigrants.

Smoley: Clearly we have a major illegal immigrant problem in the state of California. The governor feels it’s unfair because immigration is a national problem. What he basically is saying is if the federal government wants services given to illegal immigrants, then the federal government should pay the bill--or it at least should spread the problem nationwide.

You have a working-poor mom who is single, making too much money to be on Medi-Cal, not making enough to have private insurance, and yet she’s working and trying to raise a family, and she is not getting services. But someone who has broken the law is rewarded and is getting the services.

Soto: I think the immigrant would agree that the issue is fairness. No one knows and suffers the consequences more gravely for their status than the immigrant. And yet [there are also] issues related to employment, workplace safety, providing just compensation, trying to provide their children a future.

Parker: I think we do the children a disservice by not teaching them English. And I think that’s why the people of Orange County are frustrated. It’s because there’s no end. We now have another generation. Many are getting ready to graduate from high school and they still don’t learn the language. Because we let down our standards, so therefore they are going to then be the new poor because they can’t mobilize and move up the economic ladder in America.

Smoley: The governor has been very clear about diversity. That’s what’s made our country great. It’s not just Mexican illegal immigrants. It’s also many, many others.

WELFARE REFORM

McGlinn: [The governor] says we need welfare reform: “We’re going to arbitrarily cut 6%.” And then he says that won’t be so tough for the welfare mom. It just means she’ll have to give up a six-pack now and then. The people begin to say that welfare mother is somebody who sits there, takes handouts, doesn’t try to educate herself, doesn’t try to move up. Those subtle messages are heard more by the population than the other message. And what happens then is that in Orange County you begin to develop attitudes, a county that loses its moral conscience.

Smoley: Where you’re absolutely wrong is in two areas. We cut welfare, but for the first time we allowed the welfare recipient to work back the cut. Before, when you had a welfare grant, if you worked, for every dollar worked we took a dollar away. Now we give you the grant and allow you to keep most of what you make. So for the first time there’s hope to get out. Welfare should be a trampoline. You may be down but you should bounce out.

The second thing was day care. That was a huge negative and we now subsidize day care for all AFDC moms so that they have the ability to work.

Soto: When welfare benefits pay more than a minimum wage job, maybe the issue is to look at what are we paying for the minimum wage. Can somebody really survive on that? Is there a justice issue in terms of compensating people?

Parker: But you know people can survive off minimum wage. In fact, they’re supposed to be moving up the ladder. I love this new approach, because when I lived on welfare there was not an incentive to work. In fact, I quit my job because welfare paid more. And it was a lot easier living to hang out at the beach all day.

Soto: In one sense, the whole conversation on welfare reform ignores a really critical issue. And if you were to speak to the poor and speak to the immigrant population, they wouldn’t say “Give us better welfare.” They’d say, “Give us a job. Give us better schools. Make sure that we’re compensated properly in our work, that there’s a good health care system.” They’re really looking for those things, which are matters of fairness. Matters of justice. There are those larger social issues that need to be addressed.

Parker: Well, then understand what the people would say. Here you have an illegal immigrant . . .

Soto: Working.

Parker: . . . Working, but now demanding more services from me. The people are becoming very frustrated. Because they know that out of their check they’re paying already for services. There are two groups of poor people. There are poor people who know what services are and are going to utilize every single one of them that we continue to hand them. But there is a poor community that works, and they attempt to just make more and more, and then one day they land that job that offers them all the benefits that you’re talking about.

COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT

Barrett: I think it’s a mistake to say welfare creates poverty or that the issue of poverty is just welfare. It’s much more complex than just welfare reform. It’s a much broader economic issue. And when we focus on welfare, we’ve missed housing, we’ve missed education, we’ve missed job training, we’ve missed the disintegration of manufacturing and the decent livable wage possibility in Orange County.

The solution is community-based. You said, “Let’s go back to what made Orange County wonderful.” French Park is a wonderful example. We need to get back to the neighborhoods. We need to look at government, business, nonprofits, churches. We need to look at a whole strategy.

McEwen: I want to tell you what we have in our neighborhood right now, and we have, maximum, 500 residences--some single-family homes, some multiples. We have the Villa for [the treatment of] substance abuse. I don’t know who’s paying for it; these are poor people. Mercy House for battered women. Regina House, men’s substance abuse. We have the AIDS hospice coming along nicely. All of this is going in our little tiny neighborhood. I think that we’re carrying our share.

McGlinn: I compliment your community. You should become a model and really go into communities and talk about how you can have an acceptance level and bring these programs in, because my experience as the director of SOS for 25 years is that communities don’t accept that.

Smoley: Let me clearly say from the state’s perspective, there are always going to be people who need welfare. And that’s a responsibility for us, and we will take care of the truly needy and those who can’t work and those who are handicapped and those who are aged, feeble. That is government’s responsibility.

Barrett: Thirty percent of the people we see in our shelter are mentally ill. Are we taking care of them? Do we have a social policy that we’ll take care of them?

Parker: That is why [the] private [sector] has to work.

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Baldwin: Our giving rate is worse than anywhere else.

Parker: Because people feel they gave at the office, as long as government is there [dispensing welfare]. People in the middle class who are making the money are feeling the crunch in their own pocketbooks.

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Baldwin: So Orange Countians don’t give to charity because they think government is doing it?

Parker: No, because they believe they’ve already given. They gave at the office. Let’s be honest: Government has separated itself from the people. At least that’s what the people believe . . . and they’re not going to be involved anymore.

EDUCATION

Soto: The whole educational system needs to be looked at, not just bilingual ed. Immigrant parents want a good education for their kids. But very often their own kinds of expectations and wants are not looked at.

Barrett: It’s not them and us. This is our community. The rich, the poor, the ethnically diverse. This is our community. And we can’t dictate solutions for a group. We need to involve everyone in our solutions. There is no one answer. There needs to be a lot of strategies. Government certainly isn’t going to provide all the solutions.

McCoy: I agree there is no one single answer. But a key factor is education. We look at street gangs, our observations have been that about 90% of active gang members dropped out of high school in the ninth grade. We’re reaching out into the community. [But] government is not going to turn it around. It’s going to take a cooperative effort among everyone.

McGlinn: What concerns me the most about the County of Orange is that the message is being taught to our children [that the poor] are lazy bums [on] those stupid programs that give things away to people when they do not earn it.

These children are not going to grow up trying to develop a better society. We really need to look at our moral conscience, our social conscience. If you do, you give hope to the poor and you teach compassion to the children.

Soto: It also is a matter of trying to see a new way of providing that social contract where we both have responsibility and [are] not just trying to make the poor accountable.

It’s a matter of realizing that the poor and the immigrant are also a part of that community with us. As [Pope] John Paul II said in his recent visit, no one is too poor that they do not have something to give, and no one is too rich that they cannot receive.

* UPHILL BATTLE: Pam Morgan’s five-year climb from the bottom to the middle class makes her more exception than example. A16

* PASSING MUSTER: Jean Wegener, executive director of Serving People In Need, puts applicants seeking the Newport agency’s help through their paces. “This is money that is worked for very hard,” she explains. A16

* SOURCES LIST: A guide for those who need aid or want to volunteer. A18

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

By the Numbers

POVERTY IN ORANGE COUNTY

Proportion of Latinos in poverty: one-fifth

Of whites: one-twenty-fifth

Ratio of impoverished children to elderly*: six to one

Percentage of poor born outside U.S.: 47

Percentage born in Mexico/Central America: 23

Percentage born in Canada: 4

Proportion of those with less than high school degree who are poor: one-eighth

With college degree: one-fiftieth

Percentage of military personnel who are poor: 2

Of employed: 5

Of unemployed: 20

Married couple households in poverty: 4%

Other households: 9%

Largest increase in number of poor, 1980-90: Laguna Niguel, 259%, from 387 to 1,389

Smallest increase: Buena Park, 14%, from 4,799 to 5,468

Overall county increase: 45%, from 138,585 to 200,860

Largest decrease: El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, 65%, from 783 to 274

* 65 and older

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POLL RESULTS

County residents are suspicious of welfare recipients and ready to make some cuts:

Are most people who receive welfare payments genuinely in need or help or are they taking advantage of the system?

Taking advantage: 55%

Need help: 33%

Don’t know: 12%

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In your opinion, do many women on welfare have babies just so they can collect additional welfare benefits?

Yes: 57%

No: 34%

Don’t know: 9%

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Do you favor or oppose cutting off all welfare benefits to people who have not found a job or become self-sufficient after two years?

Favor: 68%

Oppose: 27%

Don’t know: 5%

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Do you favor or oppose cutting off all welfare aid to immigrants who have enteredthe United States legally until they have lived here for at least five years?

Favor: 57%

Oppose: 40%

Don’t know: 3%

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Do you feel the amount of tax money being spent for welfare programs to help low-income families should be increased, kept at the present level, reduced or ended altogether?

Increased: 13%

Present level: 35%

Reduced: 33%

Ended: 12%

Don’t know: 7%

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Answers to Wednesday’s questions

Q. How long does it take the average poor person to work his way above the poverty line?

A. Three years

Q. About what proportion of all the county’s households at or below the poverty line consist of married couples?

A. One-third

Q. What percentage of the county’s 1993 state tax returns were filed by those with adjusted gross incomes of less than $10,000?

A. 24%

Sources: Times Orange County Poll, U.S. Census