Charities Brace for a Flood of Hungry People

With 15,000 Orange County residents set to lose food stamp benefits over the next two months, soup kitchens, food banks and other charities said Friday that they might not be able to accommodate all of those in need.

Charity organizers expressed fear that this first phase of welfare reform will only worsen the county’s already serious hunger problem and overwhelm their agencies.

“The impact will be tremendous,” said Scott Mather, development director of the St. Vincent de Paul center, which distributes food to 280 other charity organizations.

“We’re always behind,” he said. “We’re able to operate, but with hunger, we’re only able to deal with about 40% of what we project as the numbers now.”

An estimated 300,000 people go hungry on any given night in Orange County, and food distribution centers serve only about 180,000, he said.

Beginning Friday, about 1,110 able-bodied residents with no children were barred from receiving food stamps, becoming the first public aid recipients in Orange County to lose benefits under the federal government’s sweeping welfare reform.

Because of a provision in the reform legislation that they can receive food stamps for only three months in any three-year period, they will not be eligible for food stamps again for 33 months.

Over a three- to four-month period beginning in April, an estimated 14,000 legal immigrants will lose food stamp benefits. And by August, 20,000 legal immigrants--mostly elderly and disabled people--will lose their Supplemental Security Income.

While some charity leaders and recipients have bitterly criticized the changes, proponents of welfare reform praise them as a way of moving poor people off welfare and into jobs.

“This is something that in the long run will make the county stronger,” Supervisor Jim Silva said. “It’s unfair for a society that pays 50% of its income in taxes to provide aid to people who don’t want to go out and earn a living.”

Silva said the new reforms rightly force legal immigrants to rely on their immigration sponsors and family members, rather than the government, for financial support.

“With the system we have now, it’s home-free for everyone but the taxpayers,” he said. “We can’t afford this safety net anymore.”

County officials said the 1,110 who lost their benefits Friday consist of able-bodied adults who have been unemployed for at least three months. Most of them either live with relatives or are homeless.

Recipients have the right to appeal their loss of food stamps, but the Social Services Agency has yet to calculate how many people are taking this course of action.

They can also apply for general relief, a form of welfare that in Orange County pays $240 a month to people who don’t qualify for other types of aid. If they succeed in getting general relief, however, they are required to look for work and participate in a community service program.

June Marcott, program manager for welfare reform planning, said the county has been working with food banks and soup kitchens over the last few months to help prepare them for the food-stamp cuts.

“Many of these people have probably been using these food banks all along to help them get through the month,” Marcott said. “I am sure they will be turning to these organizations with more frequency now.”

The Orange County Rescue Mission, which distributes boxes of donated food daily, is already preparing for the anticipated surge by hiring a coordinator to organize its 9,000 volunteers.

“We are gearing up to take on a larger and larger load,” executive director Jim Palmer said. “In 1996, we provided 323,000 food box meals, which was 47% higher than our 1995 total. This would probably give us a good idea that it’s going to continue to grow in that fashion.”

Dwight Smith, a volunteer for Catholic Worker in Santa Ana, which feeds 150 homeless and destitute people a day, called the cuts devastating and un-Christian.

“We are really praying for the courage to starve with them,” he said. “Fourteen thousand people is too many. There’s not a ghost of a chance those people are going to be taken care of. Everyone’s jammed.”

Catholic Charities, which serves 16,000 to 20,000 people a year in Orange County, has already put the word out for more volunteers to deal with the greater demand that will be caused by welfare reform, deputy director Raoul Aroz said.

“The overriding assumption seems to have been that somehow the private sector of community and voluntary organizations will emerge to meet the impact,” he said. “But that all takes time.”