Home Visits for Welfare Families
Re “Welfare Applicants to Receive Visits at Home,” Sept. 17: Congratulations to the county welfare department for finally figuring out that it has become necessary to physically check on those who are applying for welfare benefits. I am quite sure that there is a certain percentage of the population that applies for welfare that truly is deserving, but it’s the rising percentage of those who are standing in line in front of me at the grocery store clothed in very expensive designer clothing, diamonds and gold and $125 tennis shoes who pay for their groceries with food stamps and glare at me from the window of their 1999 Lincoln Navigator when I stare at them in total disbelief. I should be so lucky.
As for [Western Center on Law and Poverty attorney] Robert D. Newman’s comment that the visit is “a demeaning and humiliating experience”: If you have nothing to hide and you truly need the assistance, then what’s the problem?
L.M. GILLMORROW
Whittier
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What outrageous sights does the county expect to chance upon when it kicks down the doors of an indigent family’s house? Vast ballrooms beneath massive chandeliers? Satyrs offering revelers in evening dress flutes of champagne? The odd and occasional “gotcha!” this insulting scheme might produce does not justify its contempt for the basic human right of privacy.
SARAH LAWRENCE
Los Angeles
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