When Reform Demands Patience

The change happened slowly. It always does. People don’t become statistics in the war on welfare overnight. He had gone to college, grown up middle-class, but something had misfired. Had his folks been more sophisticated, they might have caught it earlier, but they didn’t. Whatever. They didn’t even know how far he’d fallen until the worst of it hit.

By that time, he was well into adulthood, a man in his late 20s, able-bodied, as they say. But inside, emotionally, he could barely focus. However the wind blew, that was how he’d sway. He got a job and lost it. Got a girlfriend and she left. Laid down on the couch in his apartment one day and just didn’t get up. Just couldn’t. You couldn’t understand it unless you knew him, as we did, and even we didn’t understand at first.

He was a relative. We loved him. It appalled us when we heard he was getting food stamps. We got out a newspaper and forced him to circle ad after ad. He got another job. Telemarketing. Minimum wage. It took every ounce of emotional fortitude he had. Finally he quit, told everyone he was going into show business. Inside a year, he was out on the street. He stayed with one friend, then another. Lived in his car. Showed up on our doorstep, emaciated. We took him in, gave him something to eat.

And yelled at him. We couldn’t help it. There’s something about “able-bodied” poor people that makes you just want to slap them straight. We sent him to the mall, made him apply for job after job. Made him cut his hair and rehearse interviews. But, like all God’s creatures, people have a sixth sense about each other. He was scary. No one would hire him. What little resolve he could muster dried up like dew in a desert. We got even madder and yelled at him some more.

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We have an image of a course of life that is “normal,” a trajectory in which nice people grow up and get nice jobs and marry nice spouses and move into nice homes. We perpetuate that image, though in real life, I have yet to meet the human whose circle of friends and family completely fits it. Show me a “normal” person and I’ll show you the parent or cousin or niece or in-law of an “able-bodied” adult on the edge.

Such adults are increasingly in the news now and, though we are loath to admit it, never before has that news hit so close to so many homes. What happened in our circle is, I am sure, only one tale among millions in this era of welfare reform.

Indeed, this week brought a fresh news angle, as the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors began cutting off General Relief payments to the first wave of as many as 48,000 “able-bodied” women and men. They are the most impoverished people behind the statistics, the ones ineligible for other aid. They are also the ones for whom it is hardest to muster sympathy, the ones who seem just shiftless, from all appearances. They drink, they use drugs, they fall down and don’t get up. They’re scary, even to those who know them. And beginning this week, as the shelters scurry to prepare for their exodus from flophouses and cheap rentals, all 48,000 will slide closer to the edge.

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When we got tired of yelling, we cut off all money. No gifts, no free lunches, no loans. Our “able-bodied” loved one fell in with street people. They preyed on him. It was as if every bad thing you ever saw on the news had hit home.

Finally, we tried counseling. When the first counselor seemed ineffective, we searched until we found someone who was said to get results. We treated the situation as a serious illness. The approach was expensive. We subsidized his housing. It took a few years, but he gradually improved.

He got a job and lost it. Got another and quit. Got two more and did better this time. Got into a bar fight, got arrested. Worked his way back. Got yet another job. It was not a smooth climb. All the while, though, he stayed in counseling. Say what you will about therapists: It worked. He gained confidence. Felt bigger. Began to focus. Got better friends and a better job and a better life.

And now--well, he is normal, whatever that is. He is a successful human being. I withhold his identity because he has earned the right to put his past behind him, but I share the broad outlines of the story because it says something about what works and what doesn’t in this struggle to do the right thing.

What worked wasn’t just money, and it definitely wasn’t the so-called tough love we claim to be giving when we punish those who disappoint. What worked was good housing, sound mental health care--and patience. Because the change happened slowly. It always does.

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Shawn Hubler’s column appears Mondays and Thursdays. Her e-mail address is shawn.hubler@latimes.com