Rent Aid Proposed for Welfare Recipients

The Clinton administration, touting a broadening decline in the nation’s welfare rolls, on Wednesday unveiled a $1.3-billion program to help defray the housing costs of welfare recipients making the transition to work.

The president’s latest initiative came as the federal government released new figures showing the nation’s welfare rolls have dropped by 2.2 million in the last year alone. That is the lowest level in more than 25 years. For the first time since 1971, there were fewer than 10 million individuals in the United States relying on welfare checks.

Between August 1996 and August 1997--the first full year following passage of the landmark welfare-reform bill--welfare rolls dropped nationwide by 21%.

In the same period, California’s rolls fell from 2,648,772 people to 2,269,558--a reduction of 14% that suggested the state is at last catching up with a national trend.

The president’s 1999 budget proposes funding new housing vouchers for 50,000 public aid recipients who need rent assistance to help them get or keep a new job. Clinton’s plan, which is to be forwarded to Congress early next month, would seek $289 million in new spending in 1999 and roughly $300 million for each of the following four years.

An expansion of the federal housing-voucher program would bring the Department of Housing and Urban Development more fully into the nation’s welfare-reform efforts. To date, HUD’s principal role in supporting welfare reform has been to help cities establish new bus lines and van pools to ferry the inner-city poor into suburban areas where jobs are plentiful.

But under the Clinton proposal, most of the new vouchers would be used to help welfare recipients actually move their households into job-rich areas. In so doing, the proposal would address one of welfare reform’s most difficult obstacles: the geographic mismatch between entry-level jobs and the welfare recipients who are being pressed to fill them.

About two-thirds of new jobs are being created in the suburbs, while three of four welfare recipients live in rural areas or central cities.

The 50,000 new vouchers would represent a small increase over the 1.5 million “tenant-based Section 8 vouchers” now in circulation. But experts said that by earmarking new vouchers for use exclusively by welfare recipients moving into work, the proposed initiative could have a broader effect.

About one-third of the HUD rental vouchers are being used by families on public assistance, according to the agency. But a host of factors--from bureaucratic obstacles to fear of discrimination--has discouraged many of those welfare families from using their vouchers to move closer to jobs. By focusing new attention on the fact that the vouchers can be used for that purpose, the new program could have an effect far beyond its small numbers.

But the proposal is certain to meet with some opposition on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers have blocked any proposed expansion of the voucher program in recent years.

Administration officials hailed the latest drop in welfare rolls as a sign that reform efforts, a growing economy and a sustained downturn both in drug use and teenage pregnancy have combined to reverse more than two decades of steady growth in dependence.