Helen Olbrecht, 54, of Oak Lawn, lost her office manager’s job and is left with two daughters, a grandchild, a dog and a stiff mortgage. She searches fitfully for work and gets by on $318 a month in welfare and $286 in food stamps, while dealing with a foreclosure notice on her home.
“That’s all I’ve got. It’s scary,” she told me last week in the south suburban Blue Island office of the Illinois Department of Human Services. She had earned around $56,000 a year. “This is a drastic change.”
A day spent in the government’s “safety net” prompts a mix of shock, awe and vague hope. I was taken aback by the scores of needy and the administrative confusions they face, but heartened by the improbable equanimity of staffers with caseloads of 2,000 families. I suspect that fundamental, efficient and humane reconfigurations could be executed.
One in eight Illinoisans is on food stamps, and the welfare caseload is increasing. The legislature declines to solve the budget fiasco, and, in the Internet age, outposts like Blue Island are so backward, a black-and-white TV airing of “The Ed Sullivan Show” would be fitting. There are hundreds of packing boxes with written applications, Rube Goldberg computer systems and phones that go dead.
Whether it’s welfare, food stamps, child-care subsidies, child-support enforcement or other programs, they all operate in silos without any rational link to one another, and their rules trigger unfair consequences. A dollar-an-hour raise could mean the loss of a child-care subsidy or Medicaid eligibility.
What should we do, especially in the midst of government downsizing and scant political will to raise revenues?
“In a free market economy, a capitalist economy, there are winners and losers,” said John Bouman, president of the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, based in Chicago. “Ultimately, we need to pay attention to the ‘losers’ and level the playing field so people don’t free-fall into abject poverty.”
Mr. Bouman played a key role in pushing for state legislation, effective July 1, to ease stifling welfare eligibility rules, all traced to the historic 1996 federal welfare-to-work law. The changes are embraced by Michelle Saddler, head of the state’s human services department, and Jennifer Hrycyna, associate director of human capital development, who runs a system she criticized not long ago as a lawyer at the Shriver Center.
Smart changes include raising the welfare eligibility income ceiling to $9,000 a year from $6,000 for a family of three; making benefits retroactive to the application date, rather than having them kick in after a 30-day wait; not mandating work-related activities during the first 30 days, while recipients await their first check; and expanding protections for victims of domestic and sexual violence.
Mr. Bouman would give states incentives to focus on getting people out of dire poverty, rather than on reducing caseloads. He would allow education and training to constitute work credit under the welfare law, which is not the case generally. He’d modernize moth-eaten data-collection methods and do more online and via community groups.
Ms. Hrycyna, the outsider, now insider, is also rethinking the delivery system and its points of entry. Why not apply for benefits at a public library, for example? Remove the stigmatized culture of the government waiting room?
Her view, which includes not forcing people into “low-wage and unstable work,” isn’t shared by Larry Temple, who oversees the Texas welfare system. He contended that we’re wedded to a paternalistic, government-knows-best job search and training that’s more about “what I want to do when I grow up” than “what I can do right now.”
Ron Haskins, an author of the 1996 welfare-to-work law as a Republican staffer on the House Ways and Means Committee, conceded that welfare programs have not been fully responsive during the recession. But he argued that a mother who works close to full time at minimum wage is far better off than on welfare, especially if she is also getting food stamps and $5,000 or so via the earned-income tax credit.
Like Mr. Temple, he argued that almost any job is better than welfare and that state job training is dubious. Yet Ms. Hrycyna doesn’t totally demur, stipulating that any streamlining of bureaucracy and job-search process demands rigorous analysis.
Clearing out the Blue Island office would be all well and good. But a smart alternative is not a new universe of no welfare and no work.
by JAMES WARREN | May 23, 2010
Helen Olbrecht, 54, of Oak Lawn, lost her office manager’s job and is left with two daughters, a grandchild, a dog and a stiff mortgage. She searches fitfully for work and gets by on $318 a month in welfare and $286 in food stamps, while dealing with a foreclosure notice on her home.
“That’s all I’ve got. It’s scary,” she told me last week in the south suburban Blue Island office of the Illinois Department of Human Services. She had earned around $56,000 a year. “This is a drastic change.”
A day spent in the government’s “safety net” prompts a mix of shock, awe and vague hope. I was taken aback by the scores of needy and the administrative confusions they face, but heartened by the improbable equanimity of staffers with caseloads of 2,000 families. I suspect that fundamental, efficient and humane reconfigurations could be executed.
One in eight Illinoisans is on food stamps, and the welfare caseload is increasing. The legislature declines to solve the budget fiasco, and, in the Internet age, outposts like Blue Island are so backward, a black-and-white TV airing of “The Ed Sullivan Show” would be fitting. There are hundreds of packing boxes with written applications, Rube Goldberg computer systems and phones that go dead.
Whether it’s welfare, food stamps, child-care subsidies, child-support enforcement or other programs, they all operate in silos without any rational link to one another, and their rules trigger unfair consequences. A dollar-an-hour raise could mean the loss of a child-care subsidy or Medicaid eligibility.
What should we do, especially in the midst of government downsizing and scant political will to raise revenues?
“In a free market economy, a capitalist economy, there are winners and losers,” said John Bouman, president of the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, based in Chicago. “Ultimately, we need to pay attention to the ‘losers’ and level the playing field so people don’t free-fall into abject poverty.”
Mr. Bouman played a key role in pushing for state legislation, effective July 1, to ease stifling welfare eligibility rules, all traced to the historic 1996 federal welfare-to-work law. The changes are embraced by Michelle Saddler, head of the state’s human services department, and Jennifer Hrycyna, associate director of human capital development, who runs a system she criticized not long ago as a lawyer at the Shriver Center.
Smart changes include raising the welfare eligibility income ceiling to $9,000 a year from $6,000 for a family of three; making benefits retroactive to the application date, rather than having them kick in after a 30-day wait; not mandating work-related activities during the first 30 days, while recipients await their first check; and expanding protections for victims of domestic and sexual violence.
Mr. Bouman would give states incentives to focus on getting people out of dire poverty, rather than on reducing caseloads. He would allow education and training to constitute work credit under the welfare law, which is not the case generally. He’d modernize moth-eaten data-collection methods and do more online and via community groups.
Ms. Hrycyna, the outsider, now insider, is also rethinking the delivery system and its points of entry. Why not apply for benefits at a public library, for example? Remove the stigmatized culture of the government waiting room?
Her view, which includes not forcing people into “low-wage and unstable work,” isn’t shared by Larry Temple, who oversees the Texas welfare system. He contended that we’re wedded to a paternalistic, government-knows-best job search and training that’s more about “what I want to do when I grow up” than “what I can do right now.”
Ron Haskins, an author of the 1996 welfare-to-work law as a Republican staffer on the House Ways and Means Committee, conceded that welfare programs have not been fully responsive during the recession. But he argued that a mother who works close to full time at minimum wage is far better off than on welfare, especially if she is also getting food stamps and $5,000 or so via the earned-income tax credit.
Like Mr. Temple, he argued that almost any job is better than welfare and that state job training is dubious. Yet Ms. Hrycyna doesn’t totally demur, stipulating that any streamlining of bureaucracy and job-search process demands rigorous analysis.
Clearing out the Blue Island office would be all well and good. But a smart alternative is not a new universe of no welfare and no work.