WELFARE TO WORK
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When ends When federal and state welfare reform laws were enacted in 1996, recipients were allowed to collect government aid for five years before they had to find jobs or other means of support.
don’t meet
Agencies struggle to continue aid work
Six months after the state cut almost
By the numbers
2,000 from its welfare rolls, private
charitable agencies are inundated
with requests for financial aid
Searching for a home
DHS sees few complaints
By Pat Gee
pgee@starbulletin.comHowever, they are not totally cut off. They still may receive medical insurance and food stamps, while those who work a certain number of hours a week also may receive $200 in cash and child-care support.
The first round of welfare "layoffs" began last Dec. 1.
The new laws have put "a lot of people in very vulnerable positions," says Salvation Army coordinator Chad Buchanan.
"They have no resources, little skills, little education. It's always people who are the most at risk that suffer. Single mothers who have children are most at risk. There's not a safety net now," he said.
In a sink-or-swim situation, many of the unemployed managed to find jobs. But many of the jobs are only part time without any benefits, so people have to get two or three jobs just to pay for their medical insurance, Buchanan said.
"They still cannot keep up with the bills. ... Without medical (insurance) and being employed at a minimum wage, it's almost worthless (to get a job)," he said.
Of the 1,897 residents who lost benefits between Dec. 1 and May 1, 1,214 already were employed, according to Kristine Foster, an administrator with the state Department of Human Services.
Still, even they are having a tough time paying the rent and buying groceries.
One of them is a single mother the Star-Bulletin interviewed in December, identified only as "Penelope" at her request. She still works long days driving a taxicab to support her two daughters. For the past 10 years, without family support, Penelope has been working more than 12 hours a day and was "living hand to mouth" on welfare. Her benefits were greatly reduced Jan. 1.
Instead of the $500 a month she used to get, she receives $200 cash a month from DHS, a supplement given to those who work at least 32 hours a week.
Penelope pays $775 a month for rent but does not qualify for a rent reduction because she cannot get into public housing.
"God knows, I don't know how I'm going to make the rent this month," she said. "It's been so slow (the taxi business). And I had to make car repairs."
Penelope also has to pay for rent on the garage space, car insurance and the use of her taxicab, amounting to about $500 a month, she said.
With insufficient rest and health problems, "I don't know how long I can last," she said.
The Salvation Army and Catholic Charities are the two agencies in the state that provide financial assistance for emergency rent payments, in addition to providing food and other services, Buchanan said.
The demand for food and financial help has increased dramatically since October 2000 -- a year before the Sept. 11 attacks mangled the economy and the welfare cutoffs began, he said. The huge job layoffs post-Sept. 11 made it even harder for welfare recipients to get jobs in what became an extremely competitive market.
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Sister Earnest Chung, social policy director of Catholic Charities, said the agency has seen a 40 percent rise in requests for food and rental assistance since Sept. 11 and the welfare cutoffs. Her agency used to get 90 calls a month, she said."Now we're getting 90 calls a day," Chung said.
And federal funding that went toward financial assistance for housing has been almost used up at both agencies.
"It's the federal government's responsibility to maintain a safety net that's very important," Chung said. "It's (the government) not recognizing that it takes more money to get a homeless person back on his feet that it takes to prevent them from becoming homeless in the first place."
She said: "We definitely feel helpless. We look at people who bring in kids who are sick and hungry. ... We've seen people come in tears. ... It's like a fire on many ends."
Guy Lamasa, manager of the Makalapa Community Center, which works in conjunction with the Honolulu Community Action Program and the state Oahu Work Links Program, said there was a huge increase in displaced workers seeking help after Sept. 11, averaging 400 to 500 a month compared to 250 to 300 a month prior. However, Lamasa said he cannot extrapolate how many of those applicants were on welfare.
Most have found jobs in the Central District, but residents in the rural Leeward District are not as successful because they are far from job sites and have no reliable means of transportation or access by bus, Lamasa said. Quite a few do not even have high school diplomas.
"People are getting very frustrated and giving up," he said. "They get a lot of assistance, but they are depending on someone to help them." While HCAP's Waianae office "tries very hard to give them hope, the end result is, they still have to leave the area to get a job," which they are unable or unwilling to do, he said.
Ed Suka, a volunteer at HCAP's Leeward office, said crime rates and the number of child protective cases have increased in his district since the welfare cuts were made.
The unemployment rate is high in the Leeward area because people have low skills, little education and few opportunities for employment, Suka said.
"They can go to work at McDonald's, but can you raise a family on it?" he asked.
There are those who are trying. Daphne Kaauamo, a single mom with three boys in Salt Lake, lost about $550 a month in benefits in January. She said she had been unemployed since 1983 because she did not have the necessary skills or training and she had to stay home to care for her children without a husband to help.
When the Star-Bulletin interviewed her last year, she was worried about not being able to pay her rent and support her sons. But Kaauamo found a part-time job in March at Taco Bell, working more than 32 hours a week, seven days a week.
"Now that I'm working, it makes me feel better. I don't have to worry now," Kaauamo said. It helps that her rent is subsidized. She gets $40 a month in child support but should be receiving $200 a month for finding employment.
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WELFARE BY THE NUMBERS
16,101 Number of families on welfare receiving financial assistance as of March 31. Of those, 5,768 are employed. 1,897 Number of families reaching the five-year limit on financial assistance as of May 1. Of those, 1,214 are employed. 120-150 Number of families expected to lose financial assistance each month for the rest of 2002. $500+ Average amount of monthly financial assistance. $200 Cash and child care each month for those working at least 20 hours a week (minimum to be changed to 32 hours in July). >>Other assistance still available: medical insurance, food stamps and rent reduction if in public housing
Source: Kris Foster, state Department of Human Services
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IN SEARCH OF A HOME
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Homelessness
constantly on the riseThere is no room at the inn for Hawaii's homeless, whose numbers have increased since welfare reform last December and the economic slump due to the Sept. 11 disaster.
The 24 homeless shelters administered by the state have always been full, and putting one's name on a waiting list is usually an exercise.
Sandy Miyoshi, who heads the state's homeless program under the Housing and Community Development Corporation of Hawaii, says the best measure of the number of residents in need of a home is the feedback she gets from outreach caseworkers.
"They reported an increased in numbers from just before Sept. 11, and they just continued (to increase) ever since," she said.
"Traditionally, there has always been a delayed reaction after an event," she said. "People usually max out their credit cards, don't pay rent for a few months or live in someone's garage for a while," so the worst effects of welfare reform and Sept. 11 may have yet to manifest, she said.
Why the increase began even before the two events, noticeably in August, is unknown, Miyoshi added.
The 1996 federal welfare reform laws made recipients ineligible for about $500 a month in financial assistance after five years. They still may receive medical insurance and food stamps regardless of whether they work. Those who do work at least 20 hours a week get $200 per month and child care.
Miyoshi said the outreach workers go to the beaches and parks where the homeless gather, and the demand for their services has gone up. The outreach workers include public health nurses who tend to cuts, infections and colds and provide prenatal care. Workers give out food, clothing and medical supplies.
"(The workers) get to know people in person and make sure they are as safe as possible while living exposed to the elements," she said.
Miyoshi said there also a dire for "remediation places" where people needing medication can be monitored.
"We vitally need a family shelter in downtown (Oahu) for 30 more families" and 48 units for remediation support in the same location, she said. A "safe haven" shelter on Fort Street Mall downtown is needed for the "desperately homeless'' who have wandered the streets for years and cannot help themselves because of mental illness or substance abuse, Miyoshi said.
"We need more affordable housing -- that's really the answer," she said. But she does not count on it happening soon.
The state does make a difference in helping the poor and uneducated get back on their feet, but if they are to "move on to more economic self-sufficiency, they need to have manageable rent to make ends meet," Miyoshi said.
"There's always more people on the public housing list than there are houses available," she said.
The state's $1 million EAGLE grant program that was initiated to offset the Sept. 11 job layoffs "snatched a lot of people from the brink of homelessness," she said.
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DHS reports
few complaints
When 1,897 people lost a major part of their welfare benefits between Dec. 1 and May 1, the state welfare department expected a major hue and cry.What has been "a surprise to all of us is that we're not getting any calls at all, not even complaints like, 'I'm getting evicted,' or 'I didn't know, no one told me,''' said Kristine Foster, the Department of Human Services administrator overseeing the inception of the new welfare reform laws.
Another surprise was that "so many people exited (or gave up their benefits) voluntarily" before their five-year limit was up, a time frame imposed by 1996 welfare reform laws that started taking effect last December.
DHS had "originally projected an average 300 a month" would no longer receives full benefits, but now project between 120 and 150 per month for the rest of the year, Foster said. That is "way under what we had anticipated, and we're assuming it's because they have jobs," or made some other arrangements, she said.
A recent survey of the 1,809 people who lost full benefits from December to February revealed that only 52 have returned to apply for full benefits -- for reasons that now renew their eligibility, such as becoming disabled or having someone leave the home, Foster said.
Losing full eligibility means losing roughly $500 a month in financial assistance out of which to pay rent and other "day to day living needs," she said.
However, welfare recipients can continue to have medical coverage, food stamps, and, if they have jobs, child care.
About 50 percent of those losing their financial assistance choose to exit the system completely, even if it means giving up medical and other benefits.
"They don't want to have anything to do with us if we're not paying them, which is understandable ... Many choose to barely make it if they feel they can do it on their own. Once they start working, they don't want to be answerable to us. You have to report lots of stuff monthly (when you're on welfare); it requires a lot of participation," Foster said.
Harry Winfield, manager of the state's Workforce Development Division and the Oahu Work Links program, said he expected a large number of welfare recipients to come looking for jobs, but they never materialized.
"In January we thought we would be flooded, but it didn't happen ... After 9-11," by comparison, "there was a long line of people" from all walks of life, he said.
Winfield speculated that some welfare recipients were able to get extended benefits for 13 additional weeks if they were unemployed, "but by July the (benefits) should be over." They could also increase their volunteer hours to maintain their eligibility for some welfare benefits, "but we haven't seen a lot of it, he said.
For those who seek it, "There is work out there; we've seen an increase in job orders," Winfield said. "The job market has been improving."
Community service manager Sue Quinn, of the Honolulu Community Action Program's Central District, is impressed with the number of people who were able to find jobs once they were given the help needed to find them.
"We knew they could do it, once they got the tools to do it, and they did. Sometimes it's just a lack of self-esteem" that job training could fix, or just a matter of having proper clothes to go on an interview, she said. HCAP's Central District helps residents with low incomes from Aiea to Haleiwa move toward self-sufficiency.
"We can see such a change in people once they are given the tools to work with. Our district has been real positive," Quinn said.
The program's clients include about 100 regulars, most of whom are "the working poor," who lost their benefits. But for many of those who were not working, getting cut from welfare was the impetus to find jobs, she said.
Chad Buchanan of the Salvation Army agreed that the reform laws have been very "successful" in forcing people to find jobs.
"At first I was very much opposed (to the reform laws), because I thought it was a punitive system to motivate people, but I have seen a lot of people motivated to get jobs," he said.
But former Hauula resident Maili Pula-O'Rourke says it's just not that simple or that easy.
Pula-O'Rourke, an elementary and special education substitute teacher, was forced to move to Utah April 1 to live with her family when she lost her state support Feb. 1. Until then, she had lived in Hawaii all her 25 years.
She had been supporting three children alone on $400 in welfare aid and about $1,500 from the state Department of Education each month. She couldn't work as a full-time teacher because she was not certified, and she couldn't afford to go back to school to get the certification.
When her welfare eligibility ran out, her food stamps were increased, but she didn't have the cash to buy laundry soap, toilet paper, gas and other items not covered by the stamps.
She also couldn't get into subsidized public housing.
"If you are meeting DHS's work requirements and trying your best, and still not making it, how are you magically supposed to be able to survive without (welfare) in five years? What are you supposed to do ... go homeless?" Pula-O'Rourke asked.
