County to Slash Relief Payments to $212 a Month

After years of trying, the supervisors of financially ailing Los Angeles County voted Tuesday to slash general relief payments to about 90,000 welfare recipients by more than 25%, prompting warnings of increased homelessness and suffering among the poor.

Advocates for the indigent and homeless immediately threatened a lawsuit similar to one that thwarted a general relief cut in Alameda County last year. They warned that cutting the monthly payment from $285 to $212 will irreparably harm many of the single men and women who rely on the money for food, shelter, clothing and even bus fare to get to medical care.

But county officials said they had no choice but to approve the cut, which goes into effect March 1, as they battle a continuing fiscal crisis that nearly resulted in insolvency last summer.

The cut will save the county about $78 million over a one-year period.

The 4-0 vote by the supervisors, approved without discussion, could have repercussions beyond the borders of the state’s most populous county. “L.A.’s decision today is the latest and by far the biggest step in dismantling the safety net in California,” said Michael Herald, a legislative advocate for Housing California, a Sacramento-based statewide coalition of homeless and housing groups.

Other counties will race to cut their welfare programs to avoid becoming “magnets” for Los Angeles’ welfare recipients, Herald predicted.

As part of their biggest-ever downsizing of government, county officials have already curtailed many health care programs used by general relief recipients, including outpatient hospital care and some services at walk-in medical and mental health clinics.

About half of the 90,000 people on general relief are either physically or mentally disabled.

“I think this is devastating what we are doing,” said Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, before voting to approve the cut. “But the state should come up and help us. . . . We just have come to the end of our rope. We don’t have the money.”

Burke, whose southern and and central Los Angeles district includes some of the county’s most impoverished residents, was the only supervisor to speak on the issue. Supervisor Gloria Molina was absent.

The supervisors have been determined to cut general relief payments for years, even though they have been thwarted by the state government and courts. This time, the magnitude of the county’s financial crisis made it easier to cut welfare because the supervisors’ other option would have been to make deeper cuts in law enforcement, libraries, parks and cultural services--programs important to middle-class voters.

In 1992, the supervisors lowered general relief benefits from $341 a month to about $300, and then, pleading poverty, to $212 the next year. They justified the latter reduction by saying they were providing recipients with a health benefit plan. However, a state appellate court ruled that benefits had to be restored to $285.

The supervisors then tried to get the Legislature to approve the cuts at the end of last year’s session. That failed when squabbling lawmakers never voted on the proposal. Finally, citing “significant financial distress,” the supervisors appealed to the state’s relatively new Commission on State Mandates in November. After a lengthy administrative process, the county won permission last month to cut the welfare payments.

County officials said they expect the cut to withstand any legal challenge because they had the state commission’s approval and because it is needed to avert unprecedented budget problems.

“When you compare it to closing jails and privatizing health clinics . . . we have no choice but to proceed in this direction,” Chief Administrative Officer Sally Reed said in an interview.

Supervisor Mike Antonovich called the reduction necessary “to keep spending under control. The program was never meant to be a permanent welfare crutch, but a temporary program to get people back on their feet.”

To be eligible for general relief, recipients must not earn more per month than the amount of the welfare payment, have a car worth more than $4,500, have more than $500 in cash or more than $500 worth of insurance.

In recent months, advocates for the poor have mounted an aggressive campaign to fight the welfare cut. But before Tuesday’s vote, only one showed up to oppose it.

“This is a done deal,” said Bob Erlenbusch, executive director of the Los Angeles Coalition to End Homelessness. “We didn’t want to waste [homeless] people’s time.”

Erlenbusch then launched into an impassioned plea before the supervisors. “All this will do is increase homelessness, increase destitution, increase the number of people who will show up in the emergency room even sicker,” he said.

His voice wavering, Erlenbusch said advocates for the homeless will spend the next year documenting each case in which someone suffers or dies partly as a result of diminished welfare benefits. “We will start tracking, on March 1, every time someone loses shelter, every time somebody gets TB, every time somebody falls into substance abuse, every time somebody gets HIV and every time somebody dies because of the cuts today. And we will come back March 1, 1997, and say, ‘We told you so.’ ”

People will become sicker, homeless advocates said, because they will have less money for healthful food, clothing, shelter and transportation. Many will also postpone seeking medical treatment and paying for prescription drugs. Welfare benefits in Los Angeles after the cut will be at a level below that of 10 years ago, Erlenbusch said.

Three other counties have won approval from the mandate commission to cut welfare benefits, after supplying detailed documentation of the required “significant financial distress.”

General welfare payments in Sacramento County were dropped from $266 a month to $201 in June. Since then, “we have seen increased homelessness, increased desperation--it has not been a good scenario,” said Jennifer Horne, staff attorney at Legal Services of Northern California. “People are going hungry and having to forgo other necessities of life, like medicine.”

In Alameda County, a judge issued a preliminary injunction in June that barred officials from making a cut after advocates filed a lawsuit saying previous cuts had already harmed the poor. A previous reduction in welfare from $335 a month to $280 already had forced many poor residents onto the streets, according to Herald. He said that in Oakland there is now a 28% vacancy rate among once-full single-room-occupancy motels that cater to indigent clients. Advocates in Los Angeles predicted a similar result, with many inhabitants of the cheap residential motels not being able to make their rents on just $212 a month.

Several states, including Michigan, have entirely eliminated general welfare payments. Although Los Angeles County officials contacted state representatives there who said the cuts did not have a serious effect on the poor, one state study concluded that they had.

“I would argue that there was evidence of increased suffering,” said Julie Henly, who worked on the study conducted by the University of Michigan and the state. “The people we did survey overall reported increased suffering in health and economic well-being.”

Erlenbusch warned the supervisors of a similar fate in Los Angeles. “We are importing a failure from Michigan,” he said.

* ON THE EDGE: A cut in general relief could push one former teacher out into the street. B1