Welfare Reform

Your “success story” on work training for welfare mom Mary Bowman was about as surreal as the welfare reform programs themselves (Dec. 26). We learned that Bowman has mastered the necessary skills to earn $7.50 per hour or about $300 per week. On this she is supposed to feed, clothe and shelter herself and her four children. Housing alone, probably substandard, is likely to eat up more than 50% of her earnings.

Training could be a good thing, but in the absence of additional kinds of support, such as public funding for affordable housing, it is just another cruel hoax inflicted on the millions of families at the bottom end of the economic ladder.

RICHARD A. WEINSTOCK

Ventura