Tribal Groups Meet Welfare Needs

Pregnant, unmarried and just 20 years old, Inez Houston started the summer worried that a hard, desolate life was all that lay ahead.

Jobs are as scarce on this barren Mojave Desert reservation as dilapidated mobile homes and weather-beaten cars are plentiful parked along the web of dirt roads. Unemployment and high school dropout rates top 50%, feeding endemic problems of substance abuse and domestic violence.

“I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do,” said Houston, who lives in a tiny cramped home with her mother, two brothers and two sisters. “There weren’t many choices.”

But by the time Houston gave birth in October, she was married to the child’s father and owned her first car--a used Ford Taurus. The car and the young couple’s wedding reception--including food, drinks and traditional Cahuilla Desert Indian bird singers--were paid for by an innovative welfare program that began in August, a program designed for and run by Native Americans.

The newly formed Torres Martinez Desert Indian Consortium in Riverside County is one of three Indian-led groups in California that have taken over responsibility for welfare services on their tribal lands--and a similar welfare program will soon be available to needy Native American families in Los Angeles County.

Tribes gained the right to administer their own family assistance and welfare-to-work programs, using state and federal funds, under the sweeping welfare reforms passed by Congress in 1996, and were given the flexibility to design programs that meet particular needs of Native Americans.

Tribal programs offer benefits and requirements not found in the county-run programs they replace: Tribes can use welfare dollars to help pay for traditional Native American wedding ceremonies and even offer cash bonuses to schoolchildren who earn good grades. Cultural activities, from harvesting pine nuts to silversmithing, can count toward a recipient’s mandated work requirements.

Unlike welfare programs off reservations, the Torres Martinez tribal welfare agency also requires drug testing for everyone applying for benefits. Those who test positive receive treatment--which they are allowed to complete before they must start searching or training for a job.

“It has to do with sovereignty--to show that we can take care of ourselves,” said Mary Belardo, tribal chairwoman of the 700-member Torres Martinez tribe near Indio. “People on the reservation weren’t well served under the old system. Who knows their needs better than us?”

Many Felt Ignored by County Welfare System

Belardo said many tribal members felt ignored by the mammoth county welfare system. They live on remote desert reservations, far from social service branch offices.

The Riverside County welfare agency often exempted those reservation tribal members from work requirements because of the difficulty they had getting to potential job sites or training programs, said Virginia Wells, administrator of the Torres Martinez program.

“That’s not what people want. They don’t want to just collect a check. They want a job; they want to be well-trained,” Wells said.

Social workers in the tribal program, all of whom are Native American, drive out to the homes of welfare recipients when they need assistance. The agency has a fleet of vans to give them rides to work, job training, counseling or the welfare office.

The tribal consortium also built a special computer training facility at its headquarters on the Torres Martinez Reservation and goes out of its way to find proper educational and job preparation programs.

When several tribal members wanted to become heavy-equipment operators, the agency sent them to Phoenix for training--and paid for their meals and lodging, Wells said.

On average, the tribal program gives needy families $75 more a month in cash assistance than families receive from Riverside County, Wells said. Tribal members in the program are given a bank account so their cash assistance can be deposited electronically.

One of the goals under the federal welfare reforms was to encourage two-parent families, so the Torres Martinez welfare agency gave Houston and her husband a $2,000 “marriage bonus” to get them started. The program is paying for her husband, 20-year-old Joseph Houston of Indio, to earn his general equivalency diploma and enroll in computer training.

“It’s helping a lot,” said Inez Houston, who is exempt from work requirements until her newborn daughter turns 1. “If this wasn’t here, we’d be depending on our families, and they don’t have much.”

The Torres Martinez consortium has received about $7 million in federal and state block grants to serve more than 800 needy families this year. The program includes nine tribes in Riverside County: Torres Martinez, Agua Caliente, Augustine, Cahuilla, Morongo, Pechanga, Ramona, Santa Rosa and Soboba.

Of those, the Agua Caliente, Morongo, Pechanga and Soboba tribes operate Vegas-style casinos, which provide income that has eliminated the need for welfare for tribal members. However, those reservations also have residents who don’t qualify for a share of the gaming profits--either because they don’t qualify as full tribal members or they belong to another tribe--and are in need, Wells said.

35 Programs Serve About 50,000 Families

The program is patterned after California’s first tribal welfare agency, created in 1998 by 18 tribes in San Diego County. The third tribal consortium was formed this summer in the Owens Valley. They are among 35 federally approved programs nationwide that offer welfare services to about 50,000 families in 173 Native American tribes.

In California, the federal welfare grants given to the tribes are matched 100% by the state--the only one in the nation to do so.

In October, the Torres Martinez consortium received federal approval to expand to Los Angeles County, which has the largest urban Native American population in the country, with about 77,000.

The tribal agency will receive more than $32 million in federal and state money to offer welfare services to members of all federally recognized Indian tribes. It will be the nation’s biggest tribal welfare program and have five branch offices in downtown Los Angeles, Long Beach, Commerce, East Los Angeles and in the San Fernando Valley.

“It’s unique--it’s the first program we’ve approved that’s outside reservation boundaries,” said Tribal Services Director John Bushman of the federal Administration for Children and Families, a branch of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “There’s a tremendous need there, and these programs have been enormously successful.”

Grace Bull Child was on welfare when she lived in Long Beach and said she had little hope of escaping a life of poverty. That changed when she moved to the Torres Martinez Reservation this fall with her husband and six children. The social workers at the tribal welfare agency treat her with respect and understand the struggles she’s been through, she said.

“Indians understand each other. Most other people have no idea what it means to grow up on a reservation, what it was like, how poor it was and how bad the schools were,” said Bull Child, who lives in a small, two-bedroom home provided by the Torres Martinez tribe.

In Long Beach, she said, county social workers were overwhelmed--and didn’t seem to care if she found a job or had a place to live. That wasn’t the case on the reservation. The 40-year-old landed a job within a month, working at one of the tribal agencies. The Torres Martinez program also gave her money to buy school clothes for her children: $300 apiece for high schoolers and $200 for everyone else.

“Otherwise they’d be wearing old hand-me-downs, if they were lucky,” Bull Child said.

The Torres Martinez welfare agency will begin setting up their program in Los Angeles County this month and start offering benefits to eligible Native Americans in February, said Wells.

‘We Know Our People’

Those who qualify will have the option of receiving assistance from the tribal agency or the county. The goals of both programs are the same: to wean people off welfare and into self-sufficiency, Wells said.

“We know our people, and we know what education and training will work,” said Wells, a Seneca Indian. “We’re different in that we’ll take care of their problems first, whether it’s the need for transportation, child care or drug-abuse counseling.”

As with county welfare agencies, tribal welfare programs across the county place a 60-month limit on benefits and place work requirements on most of those receiving cash assistance. The time limit remains in place for those who transfer from the county to a tribal welfare agency.