Welfare recipients approach time limits

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Posted on Sat, Nov. 23, 2002 In East Bay, many affected by reforms are two-parent Asian immigrant families who work but earn low incomes By Jack Chang CONTRA COSTA TIMES

Welfare reform's moment of truth is close at hand in California: More than 100,000 low-income people statewide will be permanently kicked off the rolls because they haven't become economically self-sufficient over the past five years.

As a stick to force recipients to work, Congress adopted landmark welfare reform laws in 1996 that imposed lifetime limits of five years during which people could receive aid.

In California, the time limit ax falls at the end of the year for recipients who have received aid since 1998 when the law went into effect here. Roughly 1,700 people in Alameda and Contra Costa counties will be among those losing hundreds of dollars in monthly aid.

An average of 2,000 people statewide will fall off the rolls every month after January. By June, about a quarter of the state's welfare caseload is projected to time out.

Many of those being forced off have been working -- but earn so little that they have remained eligible for cash aid.

Oakland resident Bao Quyen Chu is one of those losing aid in January.

An ethnic Chinese refugee who fled war-torn Vietnam in the 1970s, Chu is scrambling to make up for the money that will disappear from her household budget in January. She had worked at a local food packaging factory but was laid off in September when the facility closed.

Even when she was working, she did not earn enough to raise her three children without welfare.

Now, her poor English is the biggest obstacle in her job search, especially in a tight economy flush with other job seekers; Chu doesn't speak, read or write English.

"Without English, the jobs just are not available," Chu said in Cantonese.

County officials said Chu's story is typical of others facing the welfare ax in the East Bay.

In fact, the numbers paint a surprising portrait of local aid recipients hitting their time limits.

They show that many East Bay households scheduled to time out are headed by two parents who are Asian immigrants who speak a language other than English at home and are working but earning low incomes.

In comparison, the general welfare population both statewide and locally has a higher percentage of single mothers and English speakers.

In Alameda County, 42 percent of the 1,604 people expected to time out in January are Vietnamese, by far the biggest ethnic group, followed by blacks, Afghans and Chinese.

In Contra Costa County, the biggest share of the 157 adults projected to time out by January are Caucasians followed by blacks, Vietnamese and Latinos, according to a report compiled earlier this year.

"Most of these people don't know what's going on," said Juana Tang, a case manager at the nonprofit service agency Lao Family Development Inc. in Oakland and San Pablo.

"They're getting letters from the county telling them about time limits, but they don't know how to read too well. They've depended on the county for so long, and when they're cut off, it's a surprise to some of them."

With the lack of language skills comes a cultural insularity that hinders people from going out into the world and finding work that is available, Tang said.

That insularity also translates into a resistance to county efforts to help, said Stefanie Pfingstl, an analyst with the Contra Costa Employment and Human Services Department.

"The fact is some people just don't want us in their lives," she said.

Perhaps the most revealing indicator of what's happening is data showing many people projected to time out work but do not earn enough to survive without government help.

In Contra Costa, 78 percent of two-parent families and 41 percent of single-parent families approaching time limits work but earn $7 an hour or less.

"I have people in here living with four-to-six children on $15,000 a year," said Carolyn Krantz, a pastoral associate at St. Peter Martyr church in Pittsburg.

Some factors temper the gloomy future facing the thousands who will lose their aid.

First, the monthly incomes of many households won't shrivel to zero because a large share of timing out recipients work.

Additionally, cash payments to children will continue even after their parents stop receiving aid. Many states cut off aid for the whole family once they reach their time limits.

In California, a single mother raising two children -- the most common welfare household configuration -- would lose $131 from her $679 monthly check after hitting her 60th month on aid.

Timed-out recipients can still receive food stamps, public health care and child care aid.

"I'm not sure whether for those people affected, it'll be traumatic for them," Pfingstl said. "There are just too many variables."

In the meantime, governments and nonprofit groups are making last pushes to help people learn job skills and find work, although their strategies don't greatly differ from what's been tried over the past five years.

Both counties are bringing in recipients facing time limits for yet more skills training but are also offering hands-on assistance such as driving people to job interviews.

Krantz is working with Contra Costa County to build a mentoring program that will pair recipients with church households in the hopes of teaching people the values and skills needed to become self-sufficient.

For people such as Chu and her friend Kiew Chuong Ngo, however, the prognosis is grim.

Neither woman knows how to read and write in any language; they spent their youths fleeing war and had no chance to go to school.

Both have no discernible job skills and have little to offer employers in what is clearly a buyer's market.

But on a recent morning, both were dressed up and waiting to talk to job counselors at Lao Family.

"There's not enough money to live on," said social worker Melissa Mach. "They have no choice."

-- Anonymous, November 23, 2002


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