County to Cut General Relief

* It’s astounding that the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors would decimate the only full workfare program that exists (“County to Slash Relief Payments to $212 a Month,” Feb. 14). For their meager check, general relief recipients must work for the county at minimum wage--mowing lawns, trimming hedges, cleaning bathrooms.

Even if a general relief recipient cannot work for the county because of a disability, when the individual receives federal disability aid the county is reimbursed by the feds for every dollar expended on that recipient. The program pays for itself, yet the county’s supervisors chose to decimate it.

When it comes down to choosing between true workfare or scrapping tax breaks and sweetheart deals for the fat cat developers and tycoons who fund their reelection campaigns, the pols always deliver up their valentine to the sugar daddies of their campaign chests.

JAMIE COURT

Los Angeles

* How appropriate the adjoining stories on Page 1, Feb. 14: A 25% cut in welfare payments, and also “the thinnest pay and benefit increases since before World War II.” As one who works for a living (making only about half what I did five years ago), I appreciate the irony. It’s about time that tax receivers find out a basic fact of life: You can only get so much out of taxpayers, no matter how much you squeeze.

CRAIG W. DURING

Downey

* Bob Erlenbusch, executive director of the Los Angeles Coalition to End Homelessness, produced no one to oppose the supervisors’ decision to cut welfare because “we didn’t want to waste [homeless] people’s time.” It would be gratifying to think that their time and their energies were being used attempting to get jobs and learning to survive on their own, but this seems unlikely to be the case.

Erlenbusch also stated that one of the things his group will be “tracking” among homeless people after the cuts go into effect is “every time somebody falls into substance abuse.” I had always thought that in order to abuse “substances,” one had to have the money to buy them--money which could no doubt better be used to obtain food and shelter.

MARK KERNES

Hollywood

* While cuts in general relief will increase county coffers in the short term, it seems highly likely that homelessness and health problems will persist and continue to grow worse. How shortsighted can our supervisors be? It is inhumane to deprive the poor of basic human needs--food and shelter--in order to avoid alienating middle-class voters whose priorities are given higher value.

LENORE NAVARRO DOWLING

Los Angeles