Debate Grows Over Move From Welfare to Work

This is the face of the future of welfare:

Margarita Partida is a 25-year-old single parent of three children who lives in subsidized housing in North Hollywood and earns $7.50 an hour providing child care. Her income, without paying rent, is more than she made while on welfare.

Or this:

Maria Romo, 22, who also has three kids and lives a few miles away from Partida in North Hills, earns $6 an hour as a medical assistant. A single parent, her earnings after taxes and paying rent are less than what she made collecting welfare.

Backers of welfare reform say that Partida is the likely model for the hundreds of thousands of people across the country expected to move from welfare to work during the next five years.

They assert that, with a little hard work, former welfare recipients can easily move up from low-paying jobs to work with good salaries.

But advocates for the poor maintain that Romo’s situation will become all too common when as many as 200,000 welfare recipients in Los Angeles County alone--particularly women with children--are pushed off the public rolls and into jobs that barely pay minimum wage, offer no health benefits and leave workers on the edge of poverty.

“The problem with being a mom, having two children and making minimum wage is that you fall below the poverty line,” said Nancy Berlin, coordinator of the Los Angeles-based California Homeless and Housing Coalition. “We’re concerned that as families find jobs they are going to be out on the street.”

While President Clinton signed legislation last month to end traditional welfare, the debate over how best to accomplish that result continues in the San Fernando Valley and across the state.

The new federal welfare law requires adult recipients to find jobs within two years, and prohibits them from receiving benefits for more than five years in a lifetime.

The state of California, which under the federal law was granted the authority to design its own welfare program using federal block grant money, is unlikely to work out the specifics of the new system until after the November general election.

Advocates for the poor say that the only way to prevent a post-welfare disaster in Los Angeles--which, in addition to having 1.8 million people receiving some kind of government aid, has an 8.9% unemployment rate--is to continue aid for people who are placed in jobs that offer subsistence-level salaries.

Under the current program, for instance, welfare recipients in low-paying jobs usually continue to receive cash grants from the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program, as well as food stamps and up to one year of health benefits. Some also receive subsidized housing and child care.

Local welfare officials report that this “carrot” approach--to continue reduced welfare payments after someone lands a low-paying job--has been more successful than the “stick,” reducing people’s benefits or taking aid away altogether if the recipient refuses to look for a job or go to school.

Job-training experts agree that, if welfare reform is going to work, the state must include provisions for child care, transportation, health benefits and job training.

“Generally, entry-level jobs alone are not enough to move someone off welfare,” said Pam Collins, the San Fernando Valley regional administrator of GAIN, the state’s welfare-to-work program. GAIN, which stands for Greater Avenues for Independence,is a state- and county-funded program that cajoles, nudges and sometimes pushes welfare recipients into seeking work.

“There’s a lot of people who feel that entry-level jobs are demeaning,” said Bob Scott, chairman of the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn., a group that strongly supported the welfare reform legislation. “But they have to remember that everyone has started out at an entry-level job at one time or another.”

While GAIN officials and advocates for the poor say that the vast majority of welfare recipients want to work, the groups disagree over whether there are enough jobs--at any salary--for everyone who wants one.

GAIN officials, whose mantra is “any job is better than welfare,” say they expect there will be sufficient numbers of jobs to absorb the county’s welfare recipients as well as its 396,000 unemployed residents into the labor force.

“There are plenty of jobs,” Collins said, adding that GAIN has more requests for jobs than people to fill them. “The main problem with welfare reform is going to be motivating individuals.”

According to the Economic Development Corp. of Los Angeles County, the local economy is expected to create 90,000 additional jobs in the 1996-97 fiscal year.

Though many of the jobs will be high-wage and highly skilled positions in accounting and business management for which welfare recipients are unlikely to qualify, there will also be an estimated 14,000 more retail jobs, as well as medium-skilled jobs in the warehouse and apparel industries.

But Berlin, advocate for the homeless, asks: “If there are so many low-skilled jobs out there, why do we have 8.9% unemployment?”

The answer is that the jobs available pay so little that no one wants them, said Robert Lerman, an economist at the Urban Institute, a think tank in Washington.

But Shirley Svorny, an economist at Cal State Northridge who has studied the local economy, said those who move from welfare to work have little to worry about because most people rise relatively quickly out of minimum-wage jobs.

“The evidence is that most people do not stay on minimum wage for long,” she said “That’s one of the reasons I don’t think so catastrophically about welfare reform.”

Indeed, the county’s GAIN chief, John Martinelli, said the program’s graduates, who usually start in minimum-wage jobs, watch their earnings increase an average of 150% after one year of employment.

For Valerie Contreras, a 33-year-old Sylmar resident and former welfare recipient who earns $5.50 an hour sorting mail for a religious organization, the statistics provide little comfort.

She said she has been looking for a better-paying job almost since the day she started her current job in May, but has had no luck.

“My goal is to make at least $7 an hour,” she said. “But I can’t worry about it right now because I’ll probably stress out and have a heart attack.”

Both Partida and Romo got their jobs within the past three months and say they’re happy working. Both also believe that they can get by without going back on welfare.

Partida, who is divorced and has 6-year-old twins and a 7-year-old, said she is confident she will make it, in part because she lives in government-subsidized housing and pays only $129 a month in rent. The effect of the new welfare program on her subsidy is unclear.

Romo, who has never been married and whose children are ages 5, 4, and 14 months, also believes she will make it, even though after only a month without AFDC she has already had to borrow $120 from her brother.

“We don’t know what will happen next, and I don’t know how I will make it,” she said. “But I’m not worried.”

Ed Zayas, GAIN coordinator at Mission College in Sylmar, said he has concentrated on three areas with high rates of growth while conducting job training for welfare recipients: food management, elderly care and office administration.

Zayas also says he is upfront with his students about the starting pay for such jobs.

For example, cooks--after three months of training--earn anywhere from minimum wage to a maximum of $12 an hour. But if they take Zayas’ course for two years, their advanced training enables them to earn much more.

Elderly care, secretarial work and restaurant jobs other than cooks typically earn less than $7 an hour.

“Even if they get work, they should continue going to school so they can keep getting better jobs,” said Zayas. “Because the time will come when they say, ‘I am very good’ at what they do, but they will still be in a minimum-wage job.”