Looming Welfare Cuts Put O.C.’s Poor in Worry Mode

Every afternoon for two years, 40-year-old Suong Nguyen and 43-year-old Nga Phan have chatted in front of Richman Elementary School while waiting for their children.

Lately, their conversations on the tree-lined sidewalk have been filled with anxiety about how their families are going to survive without government aid.

Standing against a backdrop of children laughing and chasing one another, the two women, both immigrants from Vietnam who depend on welfare, commiserated with each other.

“I just don’t know how we go about preparing for this,” Nguyen said, sighing. Her friend shook her head and replied, “I worry too. I don’t know where we could go to find jobs. I feel helpless. I don’t know what to do.”

The fear expressed by Nguyen and Phan characterizes the mood in their south Fullerton neighborhood, known as Valencia. Here, some residents worry about poverty while carrying on with daily routines such as picking up the children, fixing the cars, doing the laundry, shopping for food. New federal welfare laws, some technically already in effect, will change life in the rectangle of tree-canopied streets, where many residents eke out a living with a boost from the government.

In Fullerton, about 1,800 people receive $2.9 million yearly in welfare, and about 2,000 people get food stamps. Its Valencia neighborhood is neither the poorest area in Orange County nor the most crime-ridden or welfare-dependent. It is, however, typical of the pockets of low-income areas throughout the county, as well as across the state and nation, where new welfare laws will cause dramatic changes.

Welfare reforms already require counties to shut off all federal aid to legal immigrants, although Orange County welfare officials have yet to act, waiting to see if a court challenge will overturn the regulation.

But the restrictions on legal immigrants are only a small part of a major dismantling of welfare. Longtime recipients will have to find jobs. Working poor who have relied for years on food stamps will no longer be able to get them indefinitely. Businesses whose cash flow is in part dependent upon those receiving government aid may lose customers.

“If you have large numbers of people who are going to be cut off [from welfare payments], there’s the potential for a significant amount of current revenue to cease flowing into the community,” said Angelo Doti, director of financial assistance for the Orange County Social Services Agency.

“Most people don’t want to see [welfare] expenditures of this kind, but it’s a stream of income; it pays utilities and food bills and goes to the small mom-and-pop stores where people go because they can walk [to them],” Doti said.

“It’s a frightening prospect for cities like Fullerton,” Councilwoman Jan M. Flory said. “Right now we don’t have a mechanism for . . . helping welfare recipients, such as job training. We have none of that.”

Ultimately, the concerns of those living and working in the Valencia neighborhood are being shared by the 114,000 people in Orange County who receive government cash and the 148,476 who receive food stamps.

In some ways, business owners seem to accept that one day soon, they may have fewer customers.

One of the magnets for Valencia neighborhood shoppers is the 98 Cent store, where owner Tony Majid sees about 300 customers each weekday, up to 500 on the weekends. Majid estimates that 90% of his customers receive welfare.

“The business will definitely go down at first,” Majid said. But he is optimistic, he said, that greater wealth for both his customers and himself will follow, once welfare recipients have found jobs.

“Now many of them, they’re getting welfare and sitting around. But I’d say only 40% of the people who come here--the women and the children--really need it,” he said.

Majid, 21, emigrated from Pakistan five years ago, worked two and sometimes three jobs, took English classes and last year bought the store where he once was a clerk. If he can achieve the American Dream, he said, so could others.

“When I came to this country I would make about 20 applications for jobs, and when I’d come home there would be three or four offers on my answering machine. It’s not that hard to find a job,” he said.

Life in the Valencia neighborhood is sometimes perplexing, said Ricardo Villegas, 44, a vendor who with his wife, Raquel, sells everything from tuna to shampoo from his truck.

Talk of the cuts in the welfare system--particularly elimination of aid to legal immigrants--is rumbling through the neighborhood.

“Many people here will suffer, and we will too probably,” Villegas said. “But what can you do? I don’t ask my customers how many of them are on welfare, but many people are poor.”

Clair Lucas, 40, also moves around Valencia, which is bordered by South Euclid Street on the west, South Harbor Boulevard to the east, West Commonwealth Avenue to the north and Valencia Drive to the south. As the letter carrier for the neighborhood for the last two years, Lucas totes his bag up and down the streets amid the aromas wafting from Mexican, Asian, Indian and Pakistani immigrant homes. He describes the neighborhood as being “stable,” family-oriented, but poor.

“I’m sure the new regulations will have an effect on a lot of people here,” Lucas said. “I know, because I see a lot of welfare checks going to this neighborhood, and this is a big-time social service area.”

From behind the counter at the local Circle K store, owner Muhammed Fahin, 36, has already felt the hard times. His immigrant customers have told him they now fear the state’s anti-immigrant mood. Dozens of Latino immigrants, holding the green cards that allow them to work, are not spending as much these days and are hoarding what little they do have, Fahin said.

“Business is already bad right now,” he said. “We’re really feeling the squeeze. We have basic customers who are looking at these new welfare changes and . . . they don’t know the full effect yet. But they’re afraid and have started saving their money.”

But not everyone in Valencia is fearful of welfare reform.

At Richman Elementary School, Eileen Rollings, 44, a mother of six, said she and her husband make do with his salary and no government help.

“We’re doing it without food stamps or Medi-Cal,” Rollings said. “And if we can do it, they can do it. I personally think our government is just too lenient. We make it too easy to get on welfare. Just because you moved in from another country doesn’t mean you deserve welfare.”

The student population at Richman Elementary reflects the area’s racial makeup. According to Principal Minard Duncan, 82% of the 930 students are Latino, 8% are Asian, 6% are Anglo and 3% are black. About 90% of the students receive free or reduced-cost lunches.

“We probably have a lot of people who will be affected by the reforms,” Duncan said. But, he emphasized, even if some people do receive welfare, many if not most of his students’ parents also work. (According to county officials, 38% of welfare recipients hold jobs.)

“I don’t see people just lazing around, collecting welfare,” he said. “The people I see are working hard, maybe two jobs trying to make it.”

The school holds English as a second language classes for the parents and evening meetings to teach them how to help with their children’s homework. Richman also collects clothes for poor children and has tapped into 45 area businesses to sponsor children for various programs.

If the parents of his students fall on hard times, the school will just keep doing what it already does--making links with the community to meet the needs of the people, Duncan said.

Children are also the concern at My Children’s Childcare, a privately owned, nonprofit day-care center on Highland Avenue, where about 40% of the parents are single mothers in a county welfare-to-work program called Greater Avenues to Independence (GAIN). The program helps the women subsidize child care, which costs $90 a week per child.

“We’ve always given GAIN mothers priority, but soon it’s going to have to be a first-come, first-served basis,” owner Cynthia Rose Martin said.

Martin said that when the GAIN mothers stop receiving welfare, they will no longer be able to afford child care.

“They’re going to have to see if family members will help them with child care, but most don’t have relatives,” she said. “I just don’t know where these kids are going to go.”

For 12 years, Frank Kawase, owner of Highland Market, has seen familiar faces come and go. Many of his customers are food stamp recipients, but Kawase doesn’t believe his business will diminish because of the reforms.

“These people are very resourceful,” Kawase said as he inspected a delivery of frozen beef and pork. “If they don’t have food stamps, they will [turn to] other things. They’re very enterprising, so whatever opportunities are there, they will afford themselves of those opportunities.”

Elsewhere in the market, Elda Alvarez, a mother of three, used her food stamps to buy rice and beans. Alvarez said she is worried about losing her $380-a-month allotment.

“I will have to find a job soon,” the 31-year-old woman said through an interpreter. “If I can’t find one, I don’t know. . . .”

Changes Ahead

Although it is not the poorest area in Orange County, this Fullerton neighborhood is typical of the low-income pockets around the county where new welfare laws will cause lives to change.

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Pockets of Poor

The areas receiving the most welfare money this year are all in North County cities. Here are the places with amounts received through Sept. 13:

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City ZIP Code Amount 1. Westminster 92683 $1,640,876 2. Santa Ana 92704 1,053,962 3. Santa Ana 92703 1,024,562 4. Anaheim 92804 989,900 5. Anaheim 92801 832,546 6. Santa Ana 92701 827,326 7. Garden Grove 92643 802,816 8. Anaheim 92805 752,386 9. Santa Ana 92705 649,527 10. Garden Grove 92640 630,963

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Source: Orange County Department of Social Services