Welfare Law Puts Strain on Urban Charities That Serve the Poor

When Carlene Greene gets to work at 8 a.m., she knows that by evening she will have fielded requests for help from 100 or more people. As the program coordinator at Catholic Charities’ Northeast Family Center, a gleaming white rectangle amid northeast Washington’s rundown lots and homes, Mrs. Greene spends her day juggling visits and phone calls from the many poor clients who seek assistance to pay for food, housing, and child care.

Such requests for help have been on the rise in the past five years, according to Catholic Charities and other nonprofit groups that serve this city’s poor.

“In 1996, we’d get about 60 to 70 calls per day at each of our three Washington centers,” says Ed Orzechowski, who heads Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington. “Now, 100 or more is the norm.”

Mrs. Greene and Mr. Orzechowski blame the growing workload on the 1996 overhaul of the welfare system.

As the federal government has shifted the emphasis of its assistance program for the poor from entitlement to work, many aid recipients have found jobs. But many of those workers are paid low wages and have trouble stretching their paychecks to make their rent and electric bills, some nonprofit groups say. They say some former welfare recipients can’t always afford to put food on their tables.

With other government aid, such as rent subsidies and food stamps, drying up for some of those who have left the welfare rolls, charities are filling a growing share of the demand for stopgap help, Mrs. Greene says.

Money from local United Ways and charities like the Northeast Family Center have helped cover rent or mortgage payments for some people. But those programs will dry up prematurely this summer because people have made so many more aid requests than were expected. “I was counting on that money through October,” Mrs. Greene says.

Trouble Paying Bills

Mrs. Greene’s travails have been playing out in many urban areas, as cities cope with high concentrations of welfare recipients, including those who are hardest to help, as well as workers who can’t make ends meet.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors reported last year that requests for emergency assistance jumped by 18 percent in 26 cities.

Although precise numbers of those requesting aid from Catholic Charities haven’t been tallied, Mr. Orzechowski says “anecdotal evidence suggests that people formerly on welfare” account for the increase in charities’ caseloads.

A study recently published by the Economic Policy Institute, in Washington, backs up the notion that those leaving welfare aren’t faring particularly well. The study reported that 58 percent of families with one full-time worker who had left welfare within the past year say they have not always had enough food. Thirty-eight percent say they have been unable to pay their rent, mortgage, or utilities.

And in December, a report released by the Children’s Defense Fund said that 58 percent of workers formerly on welfare had family earnings below the poverty line. Half of the families surveyed did not receive food stamps, even though they were eligible for the program.

One reason for that, says Sharon Daly, vice president of social policy for Catholic Charities U.S.A., is that low-wage workers cannot take time off from their jobs to spend a day recertifying their food-stamp eligibility. Also, people who have found jobs often don’t realize they still qualify for food stamps, she says.

State administrations that haven’t adjusted their bureaucratic thinking since the 1996 retooling of the welfare system might also be to blame, Ms. Daly adds.

“A lot of states are taking people off of food-stamp rolls once they have jobs, even though they are still eligible for them,” she says.

Many organizations like Catholic Charities say they may have to cut back on other programs, such as education and training services, to deal with the budget strain. Other national groups have increased their commitments to linking people with government services other than welfare for which they are eligible but may not be tapping.

In Washington, the local Catholic Charities — which offers education and employment services, substance-abuse counseling, health care, and legal services in addition to emergency aid — isn’t in such dire straits yet, says Mr. Orzechowski. But the organization has changed its tactics for raising a portion of its $22-million annual budget.

“We target our fund raisers toward emergency service,” says Mr. Orzechowski. “When we apply for United Way community-service grants, we’ll earmark them exclusively for emergency-service needs. We’ve done that more in the past year than we ever have.”

Mrs. Greene can attest to the need. In addition to the burgeoning requests from people getting off welfare, local organizations still must deal with people on government assistance who have their own set of urgent problems.

A Brookings Institution study last year found that, as rolls nationwide have been reduced, those still on welfare are more intensely concentrated in cities. With nearly 60 percent of all welfare recipients in 89 large urban counties, social-service groups in cities are concerned that they will be unable to meet the needs of both working and nonworking people.

As she counsels Kim Edwards, a 45-year-old welfare recipient who has been laid off from her job at a clothes shop, Mrs. Greene says she favors extending unemployment insurance to those who lose their jobs too soon to qualify for the benefit, increasing tax credits for those with low incomes, and extending benefits for the poor to workers who need them “until they get their feet on the ground.”

Worker Training

But she’s skeptical about job training in areas such as Washington, where the job market is tight. “I don’t see anybody getting the kind of training that gets them long-term jobs,” she says. “You see a lot of people leave welfare, then jump right back on because they’re laid off.”

Like many Washington welfare recipients, Ms. Edwards continues to receive vocational training through a nonprofit organization — Goodwill Industries — but only manages to find temporary work.

Ms. Edwards, who receives $298 monthly in government aid to provide for herself and her frequently ill daughter, Haneefah, 9, spends the night in a homeless shelter while waiting for a subsidized apartment to open up. Mrs. Greene gives her a bag of food and a $40 clothing voucher.

For women like Ms. Edwards, the image of a job that pays well enough to put the brakes on the cycle of poverty often dissipates as soon as it appears, Mrs. Greene believes.

“Things aren’t really changing at all for them with welfare reform,” she says. “It’s like a revolving door.”