A 20-Second Drive Away, but Miles Apart on Welfare

Lose your job on the Clarkston, Wash., side of the Snake River and you fall into the arms of the state welfare establishment, which guarantees $642 a month to a needy family of four.

Get the ax across the river in Lewiston and you kiss your perks goodbye. Idaho sets a $276-a-month limit on cash assistance, no matter how many children you have, and cuts all cash aid off after two years. Immigrants need not apply.

The fact that the nation’s 10th-most-generous welfare state sits a 20-second drive across the bridge from one of the stingiest raises a number of questions, not the least of which is why Lewiston’s entire population of the down and out doesn’t simply pack its bags and move across the river to Clarkston.

Since welfare reform tightened eligibility standards and reduced benefits in July, an astounding 70% of Idaho’s caseloads have disappeared from the welfare rolls, the biggest drop in the country. Lewiston lost 63% of its former cash-assistance clients.

They had, officials at first surmised, to be going somewhere.

Panicked that they were all driving across the Snake River Bridge, Washington adopted a law last year, similar to statutes adopted in states such as California, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, requiring newcomers to wait a year before cashing in on the state’s higher level of benefits.

But that was before the real, and quite unexpected, figures came in. Washington’s caseload didn’t balloon after Idaho’s tight restrictions kicked in last summer. In fact, only 108 families from lower-paying states have moved to Washington since the state started counting in November, five of them moving across the river from Lewiston to Clarkston.

And Idaho’s caseload drop, it now appears, is due not so much to people leaving the state as to them finding other alternatives: a job, in the case of at least half of them; a place to live with friends or relatives for many others.

“No one in their wildest imagination ever projected a 63% drop in caseload,” said Kathi Arnold, self-reliance program manager in Lewiston for the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare. “But it’s a very small number of people who consider cash assistance a lifestyle. . . . A lot of people said, ‘This [new program] is just too much of a hassle--I’m going to go get a job.’ ”

The twin cities along the Idaho-Washington border provide an important window into the evolving issue of welfare reform and a crucial question that has dogged the issue of aid delivery in America from the beginning: Do higher benefit states act as magnets to the poor? Do generous states like California and Washington risk nurturing generations of welfare recipients unwilling to migrate to potential jobs in other states at the risk of giving up lucrative benefits?

The American Civil Liberties Union, which has challenged the Washington anti-magnet statute in a lawsuit scheduled for hearing Friday, says the Idaho-Washington case proves what many sociologists have been saying for a long time: Most people make their decisions about where to live based on a complex weave of factors ranging from family to job opportunities, climate, friends and simple familiarity with an area.

“There are people who have lived in a community for six generations, and just because they’re having trouble because logging’s going down doesn’t mean they’re going to up and move,” said Debbie Coleman, an outreach worker with the Lewiston-based Community Action Assn. “People will stop by and bring a bag of groceries. I know one family, the neighbors did their whole harvest for them. It’s not like you can just walk away from that kind of support--and walk to a place where you don’t know anybody.”

None of which is enough to placate proponents of Washington’s anti-magnet statute, under which new residents for the first 12 months collect benefits at the level paid by the state from which they came. A nearly identical law was struck down in California, and a decision in that case is expected from the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals within a few weeks.

“It’s too early to tell,” said the co-author of Washington’s law, Republican state Sen. Alex Deccio, who has pledged to introduce legislation lowering the state’s benefits if the statute is overturned. “When they have a state to choose to go to, where are people going to go? If you look at Idaho and Washington, that’s [a difference of] $3,600 a year, and when you’re on public assistance, that’s quite a lot of money.”

“If I was somebody in that position, that’s probably something I would do,” admitted Mikey Krajcer of the Idaho Hunger Action Council. “Their cash assistance grant [in Washington] is up to five [hundred] something, they have better programs for people, and it’s just right across the river. For me, I never understood why people would want to stay in Idaho. . . . It’s pretty ugly right now.”

‘I’m So Far Behind, It’s Not Even Funny’

Colleen Astleford isn’t one of the 63% of Lewiston welfare recipients dropped from the rolls. She’s still trying to make it with Idaho’s reduced cash grant.

“I’m so far behind, it’s not even funny anymore,” said the 25-year-old single mother of three. “I was getting $382 a month, which wasn’t enough to begin with. You’re not really gaining, but you’re staying above water. In July, it went down to $276. And I completely drowned.”

Medicaid still pays the doctor bills for her 7-year-old daughter, who was born with a hole in her heart. But now, Astleford’s 9-year-old daughter has been diagnosed with leukemia. Her doctor says she must be treated in Portland, Ore. And Astleford has no car.

Why not move 10 minutes away to Clarkston? Washington’s cash assistance program also requires work or job hunting every week, but the benefits would be $642 a month--at least after the first year.

Astleford shakes her head. “That’s what everybody asks me,” she said. “I have kids--this is their home. I’ve always drug my kids around. Now, they have their school, they’re happy. They have their friends, and is it fair to drag them somewhere else again?

“Besides,” she said, “for me to move, do you know what’s involved? I have no vehicle. I don’t even have a skateboard.”

Becky Smith was comfortably married for years in a rural Idaho community outside Lewiston. When she left her husband, she knew Lewiston was the only place she’d be able to find a job. But then she thought again--and moved to Clarkston.

“When I needed the help, I was told, ‘Go to Clarkston, you’ll get more,’ ” said Smith, who lived for months in a travel trailer parked on the Washington side of the border with her two children. “It hurt to do it. I’d rather live in Idaho. But if you’re going to get help, you better get as much as you can,” she said.

The fact is, according to officials in both states, people who were in a position to move for higher welfare benefits probably did so long ago--at least long before Washington started tabulating the migration with the advent of the anti-magnet law.

Washington for years has had a benefit level substantially higher than Idaho’s, and the overall caseload in Clarkston’s Asotin County last June--before the welfare reform laws took effect--was almost double the number of cases in Lewiston’s Nez Perce County.

The precipitous drop in Idaho after welfare reform has left Clarkston with a caseload 10 times bigger than Lewiston’s. Still, Idaho officials say they are relatively certain their disappearing clients--cash assistance recipients went from 361 cases in June to 62 cases in December--didn’t move across the state line.

For one thing, Arnold said, Medicaid cases have fluctuated less than 5%, probably meaning that clients no longer receiving cash grants have held onto their medical aid and food stamps and gone elsewhere for other needs.

“As long as they could maintain their medical coverage and food stamps, as long as that tiny little lifeline remained, they were ready to rise to the occasion and go back to work,” Arnold said.

When the debut of welfare reform in Idaho was quickly followed by the caseload reduction, state officials commissioned a survey of 5,200 former recipients who had dropped off the rolls as of August. Of the 1,250 who responded, 79% were paying rent, and 50% were working (although nearly 40% of those were earning less than the minimum wage of $5.15 an hour and 69% were earning less than $6 an hour.)

“That’s not as good as we want, but it could have been a lot worse. We had concerns that most folks would be doing minimum-wage jobs, but with better than 30% making better than $6 an hour, and Idaho’s economy being what it is, it’s not as bad as it could have been,” said Alan Rowland, deputy administrator of the state’s welfare division.

A good many welfare recipients dropped voluntarily off the rolls, Idaho officials say, because of new “personal responsibility contracts” requiring them to immunize their children and spend 20 hours a week looking for work. Women are required to name the father of their children. Many found the contracts intimidating and confusing.

Some clients were no longer eligible because federal disability and child-support income were for the first time counted as income offsets against welfare grants.

Still others were put off by the threat of the new two-year cutoff and fears that however bad things are now, they could be worse later. “We called all the families in, we explained the gravity of 24 months and the fact that a benefit used this month may be a benefit needed more 25 months from now,” Rowland said. “A lot of folks said, ‘This isn’t worth it. I’ll just go to work.’ ”

The Idaho Hunger Action Council did its own informal survey and found different answers: one family living in a tent, a group of 10 people and three families in a two-bedroom trailer, families in their late 30s moving in with their parents.

“The picture I’m getting is that a lot of people are scrambling. A lot of people are getting into these very non-stable work environments, where they’re getting part-time jobs that don’t necessarily last, or they’re trying to take on too much too quickly. People are trying to go back to school and work and take care of their kids at the same time, and you call them back a month later and they’ve had to quit,” Krajcer said.

“The bottom line is, I think the majority who are getting cut off aren’t any closer to getting out of poverty than they were before.”

Across the Border, a Gentler Approach

In Washington, welfare reform has been gentler. The state kept its benefit level at roughly what it was under the old Aid to Families With Dependent Children program. It extended benefits to the full five years allowable under the federal welfare reform law, and it included immigrants among those who could receive cash aid. Like those in Idaho, Washington welfare recipients have to spend time every week looking or training for work.

What this means, however, is that people moving to Washington from all but nine other states are bound under the new anti-magnet law to receive a reduced level of benefits for at least a year--even while they are paying Washington’s relatively high housing and medical costs.

One woman joining the ACLU suit, who asked not to be identified, said she was a lifelong resident of Washington who moved to Missouri for a short time in July to escape her husband because he was threatening to kill her. She returned in October, believing her husband had left the state, but is having to support herself and her four children on the Missouri welfare level of $373 a month.

“I cannot support my family on $373 a month,” she said. “I did not return to Washington because of higher benefits. I returned because I consider Washington my home and because my family is here.”

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled nearly three decades ago that states could not impose residency requirements as a condition of welfare. Recent challenges to statutes like Washington’s have argued that such laws unconstitutionally interfere with the right to travel.

At least two federal judges and the 9th Circuit Court, in an earlier ruling, have agreed. “The [state] simply cannot attempt to discourage poor persons from migrating to the [state] in order to prevent the state from becoming a welfare magnet; the law is clear on this point,” U.S. District Judge Clarence C. Newcomer wrote in a Pennsylvania case in October.

ACLU lawyers are presenting testimony from experts who say the so-called welfare magnet effect is largely myth--despite studies that show a substantial proportion of welfare recipients in states throughout the country moved there from somewhere else.

“Policymakers would undoubtedly discover that a substantial percentage of state driver’s licenses are held by non-natives,” said John Hartman, a Columbia University sociology professor who has studied interstate migration patterns of the indigent for the last five years. “This is surely not because people are attracted to states with easy examinations and road tests.”

“The whole equal protection [under the laws] issue is why do you treat one resident different than another,” said Larry Carter, a Seattle attorney who is leading the challenge to the Washington law. “If a person comes across a state line because they think you have better schools, do you deprive them of going to school for a year? Do you keep them from going to the park?”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Welfare Comparison

Lewiston, Idaho and Clarkston, Wash., are only a river apart, but there’s an ocean of difference in their welfare rules. Figures are countywide.

*--*

Lewiston Clarkston (Nez Perce County) (Asotin County) Population 19,700 6,870 Unemployment 3.7% 3.5% Annual wage $18,515 $23,052 Population 16.3% 14% below poverty level Cash assistance 62 604 caseload in December 1997

*--*