O.C. a Leader in Trimming Its Welfare Roll

Propelled by a booming economy, Orange County has become a leader in California’s campaign to remove aid recipients from welfare, according to a study to be released today by a Washington think tank.

The Brookings Institution report found that Orange County has reduced its welfare roll by 42% since 1994, the biggest drop in Southern California and the second-largest statewide behind Santa Clara County in Silicon Valley.

Researchers concluded that prosperous suburban counties like Orange and Santa Clara are experiencing a more rapid cut in welfare cases than urban areas like Los Angeles (23%) and less affluent suburbs in the Inland Empire.

Orange County is enjoying an economic boom that local officials have credited for helping welfare recipients get jobs that pay a living wage.

But the Brookings Institution report suggested another factor for the trend: The county’s relatively small number of long-standing, impoverished neighborhoods. Researchers said such neighborhoods are home to families that have received welfare for generations and are often the last to see the fruits of a strong economy.

“The economy is rapidly decentralizing. Jobs are farther from the city cores,” said Bruce Katz, director of the Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy at the Brookings Institute. “Low-income and minority families in urban centers may have been left behind.”

The think tank found that about 29% of Orange County residents live in “central city” areas, compared to 44% in Los Angeles County and 53% in Fresno.

Welfare reform is now in its third year. Under the law, able-bodied adults are limited to five years of aid over their lifetimes and may receive assistance for only two years at a time.

Counties provide recipients with job training and social services aimed at helping them find and keep jobs. Recipients continue to get some aid temporarily even after they find employment.

Patricia Ramos, 32, a mother of three children, receives welfare benefits but has a job at a restaurant in Orange, earning $6.50 an hour. She worries how she will manage if the welfare subsidy ends--or if anything goes wrong in her life.

If it weren’t for her mother, she would have no child care, she said. If her 10-year-old car doesn’t run, it can take 90 minutes to get to work on two buses.

“I want to work, but there are so many issues to deal with before I even punch the clock,” she said. “It’s a miracle I am able to make the little money I do.”

Brookings researchers said Ramos’ concerns are shared by welfare recipients across the nation and that government officials need to make greater efforts to provide child care and transportation.

“What we have is a sprawling economy, yet we have low-income . . . families locked into communities of poverty,” Katz said. “The policies in place really don’t address this mismatch.”

County officials agreed that more can be done to help the transition from welfare to work and stressed that the difficult part of welfare reform is still to come.

The county Social Services Agency has identified some of the 23,000 people on welfare as “hard cases” who have great difficulty holding jobs because of medical problems, lack of child care or other factors.

To address these cases, the county is embarking on a program that would give highly structured job training and day care to certain recipients. They also would be rewarded for continued work by being allowed to supplement their aid money with extra income.

Finding solutions to other problems such as adequate mass transit between residential areas and job centers is proving more difficult.

“Transportation is one of our biggest issues,” said Social Services Agency director Larry Leaman, noting that one private firm administering welfare reform for the county has gone as far as offering bicycles to clients.

The Brookings study suggests that California counties face significantly different challenges in dealing with welfare recipients.

The more affluent areas like Orange County and Silicon Valley have fewer welfare recipients per capita than the statewide average. But counties like Los Angeles, Fresno, Kern, Sacramento, San Bernardino and San Joaquin have disproportionately high shares. Los Angeles, for example, has 235,000 people on its welfare roll.

“Cities represent the unfinished business of welfare reform,” Katz said.

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Welfare Jobs

Orange County is second on to Santa Clara County in moving welfare recipients into jobs. Officials attribute the success to the area’s booming economy. Here’s a comparsion with other large California counties:

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County Welfare % Decline % Population Cases in 1994-1999 in central city, 1999 1998 Alameda 25,584 31.0% 40.8% Fresno 26,040 27.8% 52.7 Kern 19,191 12.0% 33.3 L.A. 235,321 23.8% 43.7 Orange 23,301 42.0% 29.2 Riverside 25,369 27.1% 17.7 Sacramento 36,550 19.6% 34.6 San Bernardino 43,458 31.0 11.4 San Francisco 7,710 41.1 100.0 San Joaquin 16,363 24.8 43.7 Santa Clara 15,480 51.1 52.5 CALIFORNIA 640,989 28.7%

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Source: The Brookings Institution