County to Raise General Relief Payments

Eyeing a potentially costly judgment, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to raise the maximum grant paid to general relief recipients by $19 a month, the first such boost since conservatives assumed control of the board in 1980.

On a 4-to-1 vote that followed a two-hour secret session, the board voted to increase the monthly payment from $228 a month to $247, or about 63 cents a day. On the same vote, the board dropped most penalties that had discouraged recipients from sharing housing and other costs.

Supervisor Mike Antonovich, to the surprise of his colleagues, cast the lone dissenting vote against the increase. Antonovich said the money, about $8.1 million a year, could be better spent on such things as increasing Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner’s staff. Several board members said that they thought the relief grant increase would be approved unanimously.

The increase will affect about 40,000 people, many of them homeless, who are ineligible for other forms of welfare. In public hearings over the last several years and in a pending lawsuit, civil rights lawyers and advocates for the homeless have contended that the current grant level is too low even for people staying in the sleaziest of downtown Skid Row hotel rooms.

But Supervisor Pete Schabarum said the new levels--combined with the elimination of most of the penalties for shared housing--will provide minimum subsistence for the county’s poor. Schabarum based his view that the new levels were sufficient on a study conducted by UCLA geography professor William Clark that found 273,000 rental units in the county charging less than $300 a month. Clark’s study also found 33,700 units charging less than $149 a month.

“We’re indicating that as a result of the (Clark) survey the levels approved are clearly justifiable and meet the (minimum subsistence) requirements,” Schabarum told reporters after the vote. Schabarum, who has consistently voted against general relief increases in the past, described the $247 monthly allotment a “very minimum figure,” adding that “it seemed to be a prudent thing to do given the fact that we hadn’t changed numbers in four or five years.”

Schabarum said one of the primary motivations behind approving the increase was a lawsuit pending against the county that attacks current general relief payments as inhumanely low.

“We intend to clearly demonstrate that those things contended (in the lawsuit) aren’t true,” Schabarum said.

But Gary Blasi of the Legal Aid Society--a party to the lawsuit against the county--expressed strong disapproval of the board’s move as well as skepticism over Clark’s findings that there exist nearly 34,000 rental units in the county for under $150 a month.

“I would like to see 33 apartments, much less 33,000 apartments, at less than $150,” Blasi said. “All our clients indicate there isn’t housing at that price.” Blasi added that the board move is not likely to lead to a settlement of the lawsuit because the funding level is still too low .

But Supervisor Ed Edelman, who fought unsuccessfully for years to raise the grant level, praised the board’s move as a “step forward.”

“The combination of years of not raising it and the fact that a lawsuit is pending got the board’s attention,” Edelman said. “Without specifying the amount, I would have liked to have provided more.”

The new grant levels would raise Los Angeles County to 28th place from 29th among California’s 58 counties. Such payments, which are set by each county’s board of supervisors, rank from a high of $354 a month in Santa Barbara County to a low of $140 a month in Mono County. Examples of other grant levels include Orange County ($289), San Diego County ($225), San Francisco ($303) and San Bernardino ($222).

Currently, general relief recipients are paid $143 a month for housing, $74 in food stamps and $11 for personal care and household upkeep. Beginning Oct. 1, the payments will rise to $150 for housing and $86 for food, while the personal needs amount will remain at $11.

A key feature of Tuesday’s board action is the elimination of most of the penalties if two recipients try to cut costs by living together. Currently, a household with two recipients receives $369 instead of $456, a penalty of $87 a month. That penalty was reduced to $17.

While the penalties will be greatly decreased if two recipients share housing, they will continue to be stiff if three or more decide to pool their grants. The $247 monthly per-person grant will fall to $184 each for a three-person household, $125.67 each for a six-person household and $101.60 each for a household in which 10 or more are living.