Food Stamp Cuts to Take Toll on Unemployed

Some stand in employment lines. Some beg on street corners. Some harvest fruits and vegetables in the torrid summers of the Central Valley.

All have one thing in common: They are so poor that they need government food stamps to stave off hunger.

As a group, they are nameless and not easily identified, but in the next few months they will be among the hardest hit by the massive welfare changes recently enacted by Congress.

Their role was written into the welfare script through an obscure provision adopted with scant debate. Childless, able-bodied adults age 18 to 50 will be cut off from food stamps after three months unless they get part-time jobs.

“Where are you going to get a job in three months?” asked John Brandon, 43, a former forklift operator living in South-Central Los Angeles. “I mean, I’ve been looking now for longer than three months and I haven’t found one. I guess it’s possible if you be at the right place at the right time, but where is that?”

The able-bodied unemployed will be the first American citizens to experience the effects of a congressional decision to end a decades-long government policy that attempted to guarantee that no one in this country would go hungry.

“If this happens, I wouldn’t have money for food,” said Teresa Adams, 25, an unemployed secretarial worker in Norwalk who has been job-hunting for nine months. “How are people going to eat on nothing?”

Although the provision has been overshadowed by other welfare cuts affecting families and legal immigrants, some research and advocacy groups contend it will reap severe hardship, particularly in Los Angeles County.

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Those most likely to lose their food stamps, experts say, will be low-wage earners who have lost their jobs, women who are attempting to return to the work force and seasonal agricultural employees.

The unemployed can qualify for stamps if they participate in workfare, but the law allocates no money for these local programs.

So the new law is expected to drive many people to soup kitchens and food pantries, which operators say are already overwhelmed.

This “is probably the single harshest provision written into a major safety net program in at least 30 years,” said a recent analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington-based research group that studies public policy issues affecting the poor.

But Rep. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio), one of the authors of the provision, called the criticism a politically motivated attempt to scare people before it goes into effect.

Ney, whose district includes some portions of Appalachia, said the measure forces local communities and governments to confront the problems of the poor and devise creative ways to “fit them into the working population of this country.”

“I think we need to make some changes and face the fact what we are doing now is not working,” he said. “This is not a cold proposal. There’s some safety net in this thing.”

For example, Ney said, there is no excuse for states not to establish workfare programs that would allow jobless people to continue receiving food stamps.

Unlike some welfare cuts, this provision gives states a strict timetable. For childless adults on food stamps, the three-month countdown starts Nov. 22. Those who have not found part-time jobs by the February deadline can expect to be denied government assistance in buying food the next month. And they will remain ineligible to receive stamps for three years unless they find work.

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Neither state nor local officials know how many people would be affected. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that “in an average month, 1 million jobless individuals . . . would be denied food stamps under the provision,” at a savings for the federal budget of $5.1 billion over six years.

The state Department of Social Services estimates that about 200,000 people will be affected. Although that is a small percentage of the 3.2 million people receiving food stamps in California, the biggest concentration--an estimated 80,000 to 90,000, or enough to fill a small city--are in Los Angeles County.

A high percentage are on general relief, the county-financed welfare program that each month provides cash assistance of up to $212 to about 93,000 needy adults.

Many stamp recipients are the short-term unemployed, blue-collar workers who lost jobs as a result of plant closings, layoffs or downsizing. Others are street people, the homeless who bed down on the sidewalks by night and beg by day. Many are women, some middle-aged, who have spent years raising children and now have empty nests and few job skills.

“The stereotype of these people is the 25-year-old guy hanging around a street corner, yet 40% are women,” said David A. Super, an author of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ analysis, citing government figures.

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For four years, Teresa Adams held a steady job as an office worker, then her employer suddenly went out of business and she plunged into poverty.

Today, after nine months of seeking work, she subsists on a $212 monthly aid check from the county and $95 in food stamps.

“It’s really hard to live on that,” said Adams, who rents a room for $150 a month.

She, like many in her circumstances, had heard nothing about the new law that could eliminate her food stamps.

“What are people going to do?” she asked angrily. “And they wonder why people are robbing. I think that the prisons are going to get more full. Because people will do anything to get food, even if they have to steal.”

Months of searching, she said, has taught her the hard realities of job hunting. She cited three factors working against her: There are no jobs in her immediate neighborhood, she has to rely on the bus system and she lacks references because her former employer dropped from sight.

Most available jobs, she said, are in Downey and Santa Fe Springs, which can cost her a few dollars in bus fare for each round trip. And this, she said, limits the number of job-hunting trips she can make.

Adams works six days a month at an animal shelter to fulfill work requirements for general relief but said she believes that prospective employers are turned off when they learn she is on welfare.

“They probably think ‘Oh my gosh, a lazy person who can’t do nothing,’ so they don’t want to hire you,” she said.

“Maybe some people like being on GR and food stamps, but I hate it. I feel like I’m 10 inches tall every time I go down there [to the welfare office]. . . .

“I would work my butt off if I had a job,” said Adams, a high school graduate. “Shoot, I’ll do anything. I’d clean out toilets.”

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In 1994, the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank distributed 33.8 million pounds of food. In 1995, donations dropped dramatically and it distributed only 22.6 million pounds. This year donations have fallen off even more, and officials are projecting that the 750 local agencies they serve will get only 21 million pounds.

And now the bank is bracing for food stamp cuts that could send thousands of childless adults, plus many more legal immigrants, to their door.

“What we’re all looking at with our knees shaking and teeth chattering is three months down the line and six months down the line when the implications of this legislation turn into reality,” said Doris Bloch, the executive director.

Throughout the county, nonprofit organizations warn that their food pantries and soup kitchens probably cannot feed all the food stamp recipients who will be removed from the program.

“We have already been so overwhelmed it’s very hard to think we could step up to the plate and take this on,” said Carolyn Olney, associate director of the Southern California Interfaith Hunger Coalition. “In California, to replace the amount of food lost to families from the cutoff of food stamps, you would have to have 200 truckloads a day of food coming into this state. You would have to have hundreds of events to raise money.”

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Food banks in recent years have been hard hit, Bloch said, by reductions in government funding and cutbacks in donations from grocery stores and manufacturers. Massive reorganizations, consolidations and downsizing in the food business have resulted, she said, in more efficient operations and less food for giveaways. And food businesses are increasingly selling more of their surplus to discounters to improve profits.

U.S. Department of Agriculture commodities once provided 30% to 50% of the food for hunger programs, but now, Bloch said, it is down to 10% or 20%. Conversely, food from reclamation--salvage food that supermarkets cannot sell--once accounted for 35% of the supplies, she said, but now it is more like 65%.

As much as urban food banks fear an onslaught of hungry people, Marion Standish, co-director of California Food Policy Advocates, worries that the childless adult provision may even have a greater impact on California’s farming communities, with their legions of seasonal workers.

“When we have a welfare bill that is dependent upon people working, we have several strikes against us,” said the Rev. Walt Parry, executive director of Fresno Metro Ministry, an interfaith organization. “One is the high unemployment, two is high seasonal employment and the third would be low wages.”

Typically, he said, seasonal workers have eight to nine months of employment, followed by three months of unemployment when “food stamps help people survive.”

Unemployment in Fresno County, he said, usually ranges from 11% to 23%, and many low-wage jobs would not qualify as “work” under the new federal law. To continue getting food stamps, childless adults must work 20 hours a week. Parry said a lot of workers are “doing well if they get 15 hours a week.”

Food agencies are ill-prepared for an influx of needy people, said Paul Rengh, business manager for Food Inc., a food bank that serves about 50 agencies and distributes roughly 250,000 pounds of food a month in Fresno County.

“I really anticipate in the next 12 months the demands on the agencies we serve will just be incredible,” he said. “The family that may have come to us four days a month is now going to be at my door 25 days a month.”

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The new law carries provisions that would allow local and state governments to soften the impact on the poor. But Standish, the food policy expert, said: “How we will be able to implement this is a huge question.”

One problem, she said, is the vague language of the section governing childless adults. For example, the law provides an exemption for areas where unemployment exceeds 10%, but it fails to define what an area is.

If exemptions are granted for areas as small as a ZIP Code, certain portions of Los Angeles would qualify. If they are granted for counties, Fresno, Kern and Imperial counties, where unemployment has steadily exceeded 10%, could also qualify.

So far, federal and state officials seem to be at an impasse on how the exemption would be implemented.

A spokeswoman for the western regional office of the U.S. Department of Agriculture said it will be up to the state to define the areas and to apply for the exemptions.

But Burt Cohen, assistant secretary of California’s Health and Welfare Agency, said the state would be reluctant to make any moves without clear direction and guidelines from the federal government.

“Generally the way we proceed is to wait for regulations or some other form of written instructions from the federal agency before we implement things like that,” he said.

The new law also allows states to establish workfare programs that would fulfill the employment requirement for food stamp recipients. But Congress has not provided funding.

Bruce Wagstaff, deputy director of the welfare division of California’s Department of Social Services, said it is up to counties to decide whether to fund workfare for food stamp recipients.

Lynn W. Bayer, director of the Los Angeles Public Social Services Department, said she would like to expand the general relief workfare program but worries that funds would not be available.

“I’ve been in county government 27 years, and I’ve never ever seen a public policy change of this magnitude where there are so many unknowns,” she said of the new law. “I mean, this is like this huge, incredible experiment.”

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Losing Food Aid

A last-minute amendment to the mammoth welfare bill approved Aug. 1 by Congress will cut off food stamps to jobless poor adults who have no dependents.

* Who’s targeted: Able-bodied adults, ages 18 to 50, without children and without at least half-time jobs.

* Who’s affected: An estimated 1 million people a month nationwide, including 200,000 in California and 80,000 to 90,000 in Los Angeles County.

* The current benefit: A maximum $120 a month in food stamps, depending on income and assets. The average recipient in Los Angeles County receives $72.23.

* What stamps can buy: About 70 cents worth of food per meal. Experts estimate $1.20 is necessary for a nutritious meal.

* The new law: Limits food stamps for this group to three months per three-year period.

* Next step: Goes into effect Nov. 22. In February, adults who have not found employment will begin losing eligibility for food stamps.

* Who is exempt: The physically or mentally disabled, pregnant women, adults responsible for children, working poor employed at least 20 hours a week, those under 18 or over 50 years of age, people participating in workfare programs. Also exempt are areas where the jobless rate exceeds 10%.

Sources: U.S. Department of Agriculture, California Department of Social Services and California Food Policy Advocates