5 Years Later, Welfare Reform Draws Fire From Recipients and Advocates

Stephanie Briggs would like any congressmen whose vote in 1996 led to passage of landmark welfare legislation to visit her South Los Angeles neighborhood and see how she lives.

As she sees it, she’s one of the ones who got left behind, amid plummeting welfare caseloads and authoritative voices that proclaim such reform efforts a success. Despite completing a county-mandated job readiness program, Briggs, 37, is still not employed. Nor is she confident that anyone wants to hear her story.

“I feel like what I have to say probably wouldn’t make any difference,” she said Wednesday at a Watts rally marking the fifth anniversary of laws that dramatically altered the nation’s public welfare system.

About 150 welfare recipients and advocates gathered at the Maxine Waters Employment Preparation Center to protest what they consider to be the policies’ flaws that hamper rather than help them.

The federal program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families was designed to promote self-sufficiency, holding welfare recipients to strict deadlines to find jobs or lose eligibility for cash aid.

Caseloads have declined sharply just about everywhere. In California, welfare rolls reached a high of 2.7 million people in 1995. In January 2001, the most recent count, there were 1.5 million recipients, a 42% drop.

Los Angeles County, with a welfare population larger than any local government in the nation, reports that more than 158,000 people have been employed as the result of welfare-to-work programs.

But there is a continuing debate on whether such changes resulted from the big stick of stringent work requirements or the natural effects of what was a booming economy. Nor is there any consensus on whether these advances will hold as the economy falters.

And many advocates for the poor contend caseload reductions mask unstable, low wage jobs.

These groups argue that as Congress considers reauthorizing the welfare legislation in coming months, the focus should shift to education over the work-first approach.

“No one would defend the old program, because it was broke,” Bob Erlenbusch, executive director of the Los Angeles Coalition to End Hunger and Homelessness, said at Wednesday’s rally. “But one of the good things about it was the value it placed on education and training. We’re not saying scrap everything that was done in ‘96, but don’t hide your heads in the sand and pretend like everything was a success.”

A statement read at the rally from Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles), who is a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, said he will try to help welfare recipients who have substance abuse problems, mental or physical disabilities, and trouble finding safe and affordable child care.

Steven Golightly, interim director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services, stressed in an interview that the agency has fundamentally changed “to help people succeed once they enter the job market.” He said the department will continue to adapt.

A recovering addict, Stephanie Briggs said she lost a job at a bank when a background check uncovered her conviction for drug possession. She and her 7-year-old son Michael receive $520 a month in cash aid and spend $350 on rent. They look at the coming school year with trepidation.

“When I think about clothes for school, supplies, plus the rent and food, it’s hard,” said Briggs. “The people who make decisions need to come down to where we’re living, to see just how tough it is.”