O.C. Welfare Cuts Start Taking Their Bite Today

About 1,100 Orange County residents become ineligible for food stamps today, and more than 30,000 stand to lose other benefits over the next few months, as the county continues the long process of implementing welfare reform.

The action marks the first time since reform legislation was passed by Congress last year that Orange County recipients have lost benefits. But it’s only the beginning of a complex process that will ultimately affect hundreds of thousands of poor people.

According to a detailed county report released Thursday, the county’s Social Services Agency will stop providing food stamps today to 1,100 able-bodied adults without children who, under new federal guidelines, will not be eligible again for food stamps for 33 months.

Next week, county officials will start interviewing thousands of legal immigrants to determine if they might still be eligible to receive food stamps. It is expected that 14,000 of these legal immigrants will lose their food stamp benefits beginning in April.

By August or September, about 20,000 legal immigrants--mostly elderly, blind and disabled people--stand to lose federal Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits.

Aid recipients across the state face the similar cutoffs as counties impose sweeping new rules designed to move poor people off welfare and into jobs. Thousands of other families, children and elderly people will be affected by upcoming changes to other welfare programs.

The reforms have government agencies, as well as local charity groups, scrambling to assess the impacts, especially among the county’s large Asian and Latino legal immigrant communities.

“This is very tragic,” said Mai Cong, president of the Vietnamese Community of Orange County, a nonprofit social services group. “These people depend on food stamps for their daily needs. . . . They are the lowest in our society, in terms of cash needs and daily survival. For many, food stamps are the only means for them to survive.”

Cong said that welfare reform will be felt most harshly by elderly and frail immigrants, who will have trouble finding jobs or other sources of income.

“We have many elderly adults who have no children to support them,” she said. “They rent a room and need food stamps to buy their food. The money they receive is minimal. I don’t know how they would survive.”

Reacting to such concerns, county Supervisor Charles V. Smith, a former mayor of Westminster, is organizing a crisis team made up of municipal officials, community leaders and others to assess how best to deal with the impending changes.

“There is concern that some of the people will be forced onto the streets when this is all done,” said Smith, who represents Westminster, Santa Ana and other areas likely to be hard hit by welfare reform. “We need to determine the size of the problem. Then we can work toward a solution.”

Anaheim Mayor Tom Daly, a member of the team, said that the county’s improving economy could soften the impact of welfare reform on some who stand to lose benefits, but that others might still face hardships.

“We need to make sure that the impacts on families, and especially on senior citizens, are anticipated so we can help make this transition,” Daly said. “Fortunately, the economy is expanding and job opportunities are growing daily, so I’m hopeful that things could be balanced out.”

Still, the reforms have some families on edge.

Tho Ba Tran and his wife, Cuc Thi Nguyen, have been on SSI since their arrival in the United States in 1992. The couple get $1,107 a month, a large chunk of which goes toward rent for the $750-a-month, two-bedroom apartment they share with their 32-year-old son in Fullerton.

Last month, they received notification that they may no longer be eligible for SSI come August. Tran is 70 and his wife is 69. “It is not possible for us to get a job at our age,” Tran said Thursday.

“We were never prepared for this, that our only source of survival may be impacted,” Tran said. “We’re very worried because our future is so unpredictable. Right now, we feel as if we’re blind, groping in the dark because everything is an unknown.”

Backers of the welfare reform laws that will deprive Tran and other legal immigrants of their SSI benefits have argued that they should rely on their immigration sponsors, their families, and private charities for aid.

If they do lose their federal SSI benefits as expected--and there are moves afoot in Washington to allow certain legal immigrants to continue receiving them--a state law requires counties to provide them with General Relief, which in Orange County amounts to $240 a month for persons who don’t qualify for other forms of welfare.

County officials have long feared that federal welfare reform would result in a sharp increase in General Relief spending by the county, as recipients are forced off other forms of public assistance. Such a scenario could bust the county’s carefully crafted budget, they said.

Earlier this week, the Board of Supervisors approved a preliminary welfare reform policy that asks the state to take responsibility for the county’s General Relief spending.

But Gov. Pete Wilson has taken the position that counties should deal with the increased demand for General Relief by reducing the monthly payments, or eliminating the program altogether.

Wilson’s proposal is one of five now being debated in Sacramento, and a final state plan isn’t expected for several months.

Until then, the county won’t know exactly how much the welfare changes will cost its treasury, or exactly how many people will be forced off the rolls, said Angelo Doti, assistant director of the Social Services Agency.

Immigrants who learned of the slash in services reacted somberly, but said the news was expected in the anti-immigrant climate that prevails in California today.

“It’s bad,” said Maria Salgado, 26, who sells fresh strawberries near the El Toro Carniceria market in Santa Ana.

Salgado is an eight-year resident of Santa Ana who receives $200 a month in food stamps, and supports four children, aged 4 months through 9 years, on her own.

The strawberry sales add some to her income, but Salgado has no idea how she will make ends meet when she loses her benefits.

“I don’t know what will happen to us,” she said. “I guess I’ll work a bit harder.”

The change in policy, she said, stems from “racism, nothing more.”

“What are we going to do with nothing?” she asked. “We’re already working. But that’s the way it’s going to be.”

Ramiro Valdovinos, who stood outside the market Thursday perusing the bulletin board for new material for his car’s interior, expressed similar feelings.

A legal immigrant and father of three U.S.-born children, he has never relied on food stamps, he said, but knows plenty of hard-working immigrants who have been forced by circumstance to turn to government help.

“I think all people who need food stamps should get them,” said Valdovinos, a Lake Forest picture framer. “Unfortunately, there are those people who don’t really need them who receive them. But there are also single mothers, and people who are physically incapacitated, who will lose them.”

Immigrants forced off food stamps or SSI because of welfare reform could receive benefits again if they become citizens, as many are attempting to do, Doti said.

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Cutoff Calendar

Some key dates for Orange County recipients who stand to lose benefits under the federal government’s sweeping welfare reform plan:

* Today: 1,110 able-bodied adults without children lose food stamp benefits

* March: County begins interviewing thousands of legal immigrants to determine food stamp eligibility

* April: An estimated 14,000 legal immigrants begin losing food stamp benefits

* By August: About 20,000 elderly, blind and disabled legal immigrants will lose Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits

Source: Orange County Social Services Agency