What About the Unemployable?

Los Angeles County supervisors, planning to cut general relief payments to the poor, are hoping the public will quietly accept a manipulative lie at the core of their plans.

Here’s what their scheme would do to three of their constituents.

Mary Anne is headed back into abusive relationships with men. Lois will bounce from one homeless shelter to another and Jimmy will go back to living on the streets. This clearly is not the future these friends of mine want for themselves. They’ve all been working hard with us at Pasadena’s Union Station Foundation, a nonprofit homeless shelter and social service agency.

Mary Anne, Lois and Jimmy want to find jobs and become self-sufficient. Their progress has been steady and they’re rightfully proud of their accomplishments. But now, everything threatens to come apart. And not because of loss of motivation, lack of will or even plain bad luck. Their lives are about to unravel because county supervisors want to save money and open a jail.

Mary Anne, Lois and Jimmy receive general relief benefits from the county, currently $212 per month. General relief is for the poorest of the poor who receive no other form of state or federal aid. Today, supervisors are likely to vote to reduce general relief to $172 per month. Not only that, but all general relief recipients deemed “employable” by the county will have their monthly benefits discontinued altogether after three months. The trouble is, many of those who will be tagged as employable are not. It’s this deception the supervisors are hoping the public won’t notice.

Despite intense effort, Mary Anne can’t keep a job. Her latest position as a cashier in a doughnut shop ended in tears and broken self-esteem when she couldn’t make correct change. A sweet-faced woman in her 30s with limited learning ability, Mary Anne has been through this pattern repeatedly since her teens: one confidence-shattering employment experience after another, followed and exacerbated by destructive relationships with “caretaker” males.

As a young woman, Lois worked as a licensed vocational nurse. Then, for more than 20 years, she was caught deep in the degradation of drugs and alcohol, unemployed and homeless. However, for the last year, Lois has been sober, goal-oriented and positive about life. She has a kind and upbeat personality and would love to get back into nursing. But at age 49, with a long gap in her employment history due to addiction, few opportunities are open to her. And if she weren’t able to afford her minimal rent and became homeless again, even those few opportunities would fade from view. Who would hire a homeless nurse?

No one would have given Jimmy one chance in a million of ever getting sober after many years on L.A.’s meanest streets. But somehow he summoned the strength to give up pills and booze four years ago. Today, still sober, he volunteers once a week at a sheltered workshop for disabled adults in exchange for his monthly general relief check and to “give something back.”

When Jimmy is not at the workshop, he’s either out looking for work or volunteering in the kitchen at Union Station, where he began his recovery. Like Lois and Mary Anne, Jimmy’s job prospects are razor thin. At 53, he is illiterate, unskilled, suffering from throat cancer, cataracts, severe dental problems, a bad back and buckling knees, and given to flashes of hostility that echo his rough and turbulent life.

Mary Anne, Lois and Jimmy have all been classified by the county as employable. In spite of their differences, they are typical of general relief recipients whom the supervisors want to limit to three months of benefits a year: $172 a month, or less than $6 a day, for food, shelter and clothing. A tough, no-nonsense approach. Either find work in three months or . . . or what? Starve, beg, rely on homeless shelters, become a prostitute, sleep on the street, check into a cardboard condo when it rains? By reducing the general relief subsidy and then cutting it off after 90 days, the supervisors will destroy all but the starkest options for the truly needy, effectively sabotaging their struggle to have some sort of productive life.

How many jobs are available right now in Los Angeles County for people with histories of drug or alcohol addiction, mental illness, limited education, little or no vocational training and related handicaps? All those who can work should certainly do so. But where in the supervisors’ plan are the stipulations for job training, job development and job placement for those without disabilities, let alone the hard to employ ?

All of these cutbacks are made possible by state legislation that, if fully implemented, would permit the county to reduce its general relief obligation by $38 million. And, of course, our supervisors know what to do with those millions if they don’t go to the poor. On Aug. 19, Supervisor Mike Antonovich moved to turn over $19 million of the projected savings to the Sheriff’s Department to fund the new but never-opened Twin Towers jail. In other words, take money from the poor and spend it to house criminals. True 21st century triage.

For some, welfare cutbacks and new jails will solve the county’s critical financial crisis and reduce crime. But to Mary Anne, Lois and Jimmy, the cuts in general relief would be a one-way ticket back to the misery, poverty and wasted lives they’ve worked so hard to escape.