A Mother’s Plan to End Welfare Reliance

Six months. In Heidi Martin’s calculations, if everything goes according to plan, if her luck holds, if the new apartment comes through and the college schedule works out, in six months Martin and her two young children will be off welfare.

There are a lot of “ifs” in Martin’s scenario, but her destiny is being driven by the relentless force of welfare reform, which is shaping the futures of thousands of young mothers like her.

As with others on public aid, Martin’s life has been a study in shifting goals and expectations. A 25-year-old Venice resident and mother of a daughter, Dejuan, 7, and a son, Gabriel, 3, Martin began receiving welfare nearly three years ago after divorcing an Army soldier stationed in Georgia.

Overcoming a rocky childhood, she had emerged an articulate, well-read and savvy young woman, one not opposed to seizing an opportunity. Public aid offered the chance to get a full-time education while receiving a reasonable monthly income supplied by the government.

But state and federal welfare legislation has imposed new limits and conditions. Current recipients must find work within two years and can spend no more than five years of their lives on aid. Those in school must be in a program that will lead to employment and have two years to complete their studies.

For Martin, it has meant reining in some of her long-term ambitions and setting new priorities. She works part time now but is looking for a full-time job and will schedule her coming college courses for the evenings instead of days to accommodate work.

Those classes will reflect a more pragmatic program in computer science rather than the social science curriculum she has been pursuing.

Being a welfare mother has not been an easy life, she says, and she is tired of the hassles of public aid, fearful of the psychic damage such dependence may be inflicting on herself and her children.

She desperately wants to keep these past few years from becoming the defining experience of their young lives. So she is retreating, weaning herself from the dole, perhaps a bit sooner than she would have liked.

Her path may not follow exactly the script of the thousands of other California recipients who are dropping from the welfare rolls, many before the onset of time limits, many having found jobs on their own.

But if the authors of welfare reform intended to spur among recipients a reassessment of their lives, in Heidi Martin’s case they appear to have succeeded.

‘I Have to Downsize My Dreams’

Martin approaches most days like a charged-up battery, up by 6:30 each morning, feeding and dressing her children for the family’s daily bus trip to school and day care in Santa Monica.

She is a tall, attractive young woman with an air of purpose. She has an enthusiasm for life that seems to belie her troubled upbringing. And she appears to be a natural leader, someone whose presence commands attention.

Martin helped to found a student-run support group for single parents at Santa Monica College--the CARE Club--and is its president.

At a recent meeting, when the president of the college, Piedad F. Robertson, pledged $100 of her own money to a Christmas project the group is organizing, Robertson thanked Martin for inviting her and other college officials to speak to the group.

Martin is in class from 9:30 a.m. until noon, after which she walks across campus to the computer lab where she works as an assistant--checking out books and software, answering phones and student questions--until 4 p.m. The work-study job is part of a financial aid package that allows her to attend the community college.

She has never fit the mold of the stereotypical sit-at-home welfare mother. Nevertheless, she has been moved to redouble her efforts, at school, in finding work and in maintaining her relationship with her children.

“I started out late and with two kids, and I know I have to downsize my dreams,” Martin said. “But right now I’m trying to get the basics I know I’ll need. I want to get in everything I can before they cut me off.”

Her computer skills, combined with the urgency to find work quickly, have helped Martin refocus her educational goals. She once dreamed of becoming a doctor, but chose a psychology major at Santa Monica College. Now she has settled on computer science. Her boss at the computer lab has promised to help her learn programming once she completes a computer science class.

“I’m pretty good at it, and I like to do it,” she said. “I like social interaction, so maybe teaching or in a company designing. It’s definitely opened up a whole new vista for me.”

A member of her church who owns a graphic design company has offered to train her in computer technology used in that field, and Martin is applying for a program that could lead to a teaching assistant position.

Martin has no illusions of quick wealth, but she wants her efforts to lead to something better than a minimum wage job. Like leading critics of welfare reform, she is concerned that she could be forced into a succession of low-paying jobs that offer no prospect of lifting her family above a subsistence level.

“If I didn’t have kids, I could get a job for $8 an hour, but I have growing children who need things, who want to dress up as Dracula at Halloween,” she said.

Martin owes $5,000 on credit cards, which she used to pay for living expenses after her move back to Venice. She pays about $113 monthly for her rooms in a transitional women’s shelter and about $105 monthly in day care expenses.

She notes wryly that despite receiving income from three sources, she brings in less than $1,000 in cash monthly.

The family shops at the 99 Store and occasionally brings food home from food pantries around town. Martin receives $239 in monthly child support from the father of her young son. The check comes from the Department of Defense, which deducts the payments from the father’s military paycheck.

Earlier this year, Martin received a notice from the district attorney’s office in Los Angeles telling her she would also need to establish a court order in California to obtain child support for her son. Martin says she ignored the letter because she already had a support order from the Georgia court that granted her the divorce.

Because she failed to comply, the family’s cash welfare grant was reduced this year from $565 to $456. The family also receives $175 a month in food stamps and is covered by Medi-Cal.

Hoping for a Real Home

After work, Martin walks across Pearl Street to the nearby John Adams Day Care Center to pick up her son. They board a bus that takes them to her daughter’s public school. With additional bus connections, they usually arrive back at the women’s residence, in the Oakwood section of Venice, no sooner than 7:30 p.m.

“My quality time is on the bus with my kids,” Martin said.

On Tuesdays, Martin leaves the campus early to get the children back home so they can take computer classes from 5:30 until 7 p.m.

Martin ended up at the women’s residence after spending nearly six months at an emergency homeless shelter, after the breakup of a marriage she says had become increasingly hostile. She landed in Los Angeles, where she had grown up, about three years ago with her children and the clothes on her back. In her hurry to leave, she had brought no identification. She had no high school diploma, little self-esteem and even less confidence, she said.

After rooming with friends and relatives and maxing out the credit cards she brought with her, she began receiving Aid to Families With Dependent Children and learned of a unique shelter program.

The 650 Westminster Transitional Living Center is run by three nonprofit organizations and requires that mothers be working or in education or vocation programs. The women must attend parenting, life skills and computer classes, which are provided on-site, and they receive career counseling, family therapy and some child care.

Martin and her children have been there for almost two years. They have a small bedroom in a three-bedroom unit that also accommodates two other families. The families share a kitchen and living area.

Through a skills center associated with the shelter, Martin obtained her high school diploma, graduating as class valedictorian. She won a school essay contest and a $1,000 scholarship and then enrolled at Santa Monica College.

Although Martin has felt comfortable at the shelter, she is eager to move on. She recently learned that her application for subsidized Section 8 housing had finally been approved. For Martin it is one more step on the road to self-sufficiency.

And it will mean a real home for the family after more than three years of dislocation.

Section 8 vouchers are subsidized by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development and pay 70% of the rent. Martin has 60 days to find an apartment that rents for less than $737 and meets federal standards.

“They gave us a list of locations, and it’s hilarious--Bel-Air, Brentwood. We were cracking up. Where am I gonna find a place to live in Brentwood?” she said, smiling, then added more somberly: “I’m really nervous ‘cause I haven’t had a true place of my own in seven years, since I was 18.”

She is sitting in the office of 650 Westminster, where the children of the shelter are creating a cacophony as they gambol about, playing games on a bank of four computers lining the wall.

“I won this one,” Dejuan proudly announces at one point. She is a slim first-grader with a bright face that resembles her mother’s. Gabriel, almost 4, is playful and curious.

“I know I’m going to need more money, but I know I need the stability even more,” Martin said.

Concern for Her Children

Stability has been an elusive commodity. Originally from Kansas, Martin moved to the Venice area of Los Angeles with her family as a child. Her father worked for a bus company and her mother was a registered nurse. The family’s California dream life shattered quickly, with her father leaving and her mother suffering a nervous breakdown.

Martin lived in foster homes on and off for 15 years and saw the worst Los Angeles had to offer. Unlike many of her peers, however, she enjoyed school and loved to read, she said. But she became pregnant with her daughter at 17, living with her older boyfriend for a while before moving back in with her mother. It was an adolescence adrift, she conceded, “hanging out, selling weed.”

Then she began seeing her future husband, whom she had known since she was 6 and who had entered the military to escape life on the streets. The marriage was difficult from the start, and sometimes violent. “I stayed because it was stable and I did want my kids to have what I never had,” she said. “Until I was 8 years old, I never knew a friend who had a dad in the house. My husband knew I was afraid I couldn’t make it on my own.”

Returning to Venice, Martin quickly accumulated $8,000 in debt. Food, clothes, diapers--all ended up on a charge slip.

She began receiving welfare and has been trying to recover her equilibrium ever since.

Part of her effort has included family therapy sessions. Dejuan especially has been affected by the family’s unstable life, Martin said.

“There are major problems because of what I’m having to do, between working and classes,” she said, sitting at a desk in the computer lab. “She’s acting up, performing below level in school.”

The little girl grows attached to families at the shelter who then are suddenly gone, Martin said, and is upset at not being able to have company over. Because the family must stretch money and food as far as possible, Dejuan knows that she is not supposed to share her things, even an extra Popsicle with the other children, and this saddens her, her mother says.

“This is why I have to pull back and look at what is happening, and why I’m going to be in classes part time for the rest of school, why I’ve got to get a job, because I’m losing my kid,” Martin said.

She has also learned that there is a psychological toll to be paid.

“In a way, I wish they were younger. My daughter will remember being in a shelter and the white Medi-Cal card and standing in line to get a check at the first of the month.”

And for herself:

“When I don’t have to sign any county checks, carry around the food stamps, deal with the substandard medical care I will feel a whole lot better,” she said. “Having a check that’s on your own effort makes a big difference. When the county pays you, they have control.”

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Costs in a Typical Month

Here are living expenses for Heidi Martin and her two children:

Monthly resources:

* Cash welfare assistance: $456 (for two-person household)

* Child support: $239

* Work study: $250 (varies by the number of hours up to a total of $1500 per semester)

* Food stamps: $175 (non-cash vouchers)

TOTAL: $1,120

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Monthly expenses:

* Rent: $113

* Food: $250

* Child care: $105

* Household bills: $290

* Miscellaneous: $175

TOTAL: $933

Notes: Living temporarily in a transitional women’s center; housing costs will probably rise when she moves into subsidized housing; the family also receives Medi-Cal to cover health-care needs.

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About This Series

As changes in the federal welfare system play out, The Times is taking an up-close look at how several families and individuals cope. The sweeping overhaul signed into law in August 1996 affects poor people, disabled children and legal immigrants who receive cash assistance, food stamps or health benefits.

* The law abolishes entitlement to welfare under the Aid to Families With Dependent Children program and gives states new authority to devise their own assistance programs. Adults are required to get a job within two years, and the lifetime limit on benefits for most recipients is five years. Each state will decide on exemptions for physical disabilities or other problems that make recipients difficult to employ.

* The new welfare law also tightens eligibility for the federal Supplemental Security Income program, which provides cash assistance to the elderly, blind and disabled. Many legal immigrants and some disabled children have become ineligible for SSI coverage. Many immigrants have lost their food stamps, as have many single adults unable to find work.