alabama possible from the alabama poverty project

Mike Cason

The Birmingham News

July 29, 2006

Alabama has cut the number of families who receive welfare by more than half in the 10 years since Congress overhauled the cash program for the poor.

But there’s disagreement about whether the reform has left the state’s poor better off. State officials don’t know much about what happened to thousands of people who left the system.

“We certainly have fewer people on the welfare rolls,” said Ron Gilbert, a policy analyst with Alabama Arise, an advocacy group for low-income families. “But you can argue about whether their standard of living and quality of life improved significantly.”

On Aug. 22, 1996, President Clinton signed the landmark welfare reform bill, the first major change in a program created during the Depression to help poor families with children. Since then:

– The number of families receiving welfare in Alabama has dropped from 40,964 to 18,696, a 54 percent decrease. The cost of the program also has dropped, from $68.7 million in fiscal 1996 to $47 million in 2005.

– About 28,000 Alabama children are in free or subsidized child care,

50 percent more than in 1996. Many welfare recipients need help with child care to begin working. The cost of that program has more than doubled, from $38.3 million in fiscal 1996 to $80.5 million in 2005.

– In Alabama, 1,412 recipients have reached the five-year lifetime cap that was a key part of the reform law. They are no longer eligible for welfare assistance.

– Alabama’s poverty rate has declined slightly, although officials don’t consider welfare reform a major cause.

– The rate of births to unwed mothers, the most common cause of welfare dependency, has gone up slightly.

– Nationally, the number of welfare cases fell from 4.4 million in August 1996 to 2.1 million in March 2001, according to the Urban Institute, which found that about three-fifths of the former welfare recipients were working, with wages aver- aging about $7-$8 an hour.

– Federal funding to states for welfare was frozen from 1996 through 2010.

The numbers reflect the profound changes reform meant for welfare recipients. In Alabama, the vast majority were single mothers and their children. Those mothers were required, with some exceptions, to work or attend work preparation programs to receive welfare payments.

The law placed a five-year lifetime cap on payments. The name changed from Aid to Families with Dependent Children, AFDC, to Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, TANF.

Stuck with low wages

Many believe the focus on work and the temporary availability of welfare have helped most recipients.

“Five years is long enough for anybody to learn a skill and become gainfully employed,” said Sonya Bumpers of Birmingham, 42, a single mother who got off welfare by cleaning restrooms.

But there is concern about the impact of the five-year cap on some people in poor, rural counties with limited work opportunities.

Even in areas where jobs are more plentiful, some say the reformed system is flawed because it forces recipients to settle for low-wage jobs instead of improving their lives long-term. Former recipient Carlissa Strong of Hoover, a divorced mother of four, put herself through college after going on welfare. But she said the system was not geared to helping people get much beyond low-wage jobs.

“For me, they couldn’t see the bigger picture that they’re stopping progress for this family,” Strong said.

More changes are coming, and they are expected to further reduce welfare rolls.

Starting Tuesday, the Alabama Department of Human Resources will increase penal- ties for recipients who fail to follow certain rules, such as keeping an appointment or attending a job training class. It will extend from three months to six months the time that recipients can stay on welfare after starting work. The agency also has added about 80 welfare case workers to step up efforts to move recipients to work.

Congress imposed tougher requirements on states in this year’s Deficit Reduction Act. “I think there’s a good chance that caseload will ratchet down a little more,” said Joel Sanders, welfare reform director for DHR.

But DHR has done little to keep up with those who already dropped off the welfare rolls. In 2000, the agency tried to survey about 2,700 former recipients but could find fewer than 500. DHR has not followed up on that study.

Three-room shack

Sharon Kennedy of Camden is one of those who hit the five-year lifetime cap on welfare and dropped off the rolls.

The 28-year-old, who is single and unemployed, has four boys and one girl, ages 6 to 12. She said she receives $761 a month worth of food stamps and pays $50 to rent a three-room shack. Her home is on a narrow street a few blocks from downtown Camden, county seat of Wilcox County, where 27.9 percent of the people live below the poverty rate, according to the U.S. Census. That’s almost twice the state poverty rate of 15.2 percent.

Rust covers the metal roof of Kennedy’s home, and chunks of siding are missing. Kennedy swats flies repeatedly as she sits on the sagging plywood porch. Her children and others from the neighborhood wander in and out of the house, cooled only by a window fan. Kennedy believes welfare recipients should not be cut off until their children reach age 18.

“I know they can do better than what they’re doing for people that need this help,” she said.

Kennedy didn’t finish high school after having her first child at age 16. She’s never gotten her GED, either, and said she’s had trouble keeping a job partly be- cause she hasn’t had a reliable car.

Since losing her $275 monthly welfare payment, she has survived partly because of help from her sister, one of the fathers of her children and the food stamps. One of her biggest concerns is finding school clothes for her children. “It gets harder around school time because all five of them are in school,” she said.

Richard Crow, professor emeritus of social work at the University of Alabama and interim director of the Alabama Poverty Project, said it’s harder for people in poor, rural counties to find the entry-level jobs that most welfare recipients can perform.

“It’s much more difficult in those areas to do what the law was intended to do than it is in Birmingham or Shelby County,” Crow said. ‘

“How many McDonald’s are you going to find in Wilcox County? There may be people who are adversely affected by the new regulations.”

The biggest obstacles to independence for welfare recipients are the lack of jobs and transportation, said Edward Anderson, who has been a DHR family assistance caseworker in Wilcox County since 1975.

“You’ve got large numbers of people here who are ready to go to work,” Anderson said. ”But employment opportunities are not here.”

Anderson said families who lost their welfare payments after reform have suffered but have not been devastated, partly because the payments were so low to begin with. A mother with two children in Alabama receives $215 a month, one of the lowest payments in the nation.

“With the state of Alabama having that small amount for a payment, I don’t know if it’s hurt,” Anderson said. “I know it may have put a damper on them. They’re still eligible for Medicaid and food stamps. A lot of their families help out. They pick up odd jobs. They get by the best they can.”

From welfare to Samford Just getting by wasn’t enough for former welfare recipient Carlissa Strong.

Strong turned to welfare when her husband walked out. She was pregnant with her fourth child and had moved to Birmingham from Virginia a year before.

“Needless to say, that was a traumatic situation, because I had no family here,” Strong said.

In February 1998, Strong began getting a monthly welfare payment of $200. Two months later she found a part-time job. She found the welfare-to-work rules some- times clashed with her desire to set long-term goals.

For example, she wanted to attend college, but DHR would help pay for child care only while she was working. She also ignored DHR’s advice to move into subsidized housing, where her monthly rent would have been just $18. She did not want her children growing up around poverty and bad influences, so she stayed in a three- bedroom apartment in Center Point and paid $495 a month.

Strong relied on food stamps and help from her church and others. She obtained scholarships, first based on need, then on good grades. She used student loans to pay for child care. She earned degrees from Jefferson State Community College and Samford University and works at Compass Bank, where she earns enough to make a $1,024 mortgage payment on a townhouse in Hoover. Strong wants to stay in Hoover because of the school system.

“I still struggle from paycheck to paycheck,” Strong said. “But every time I make my payments, I know a little more (of the home) is mine.”

While Strong resisted the pressure to settle for low-wage work instead of welfare, Sonya Bumpers found a new career through an entry-level job she landed because of welfare reform.

Bumpers was scraping by on $146 in monthly welfare payments in 1996 when her DHR caseworker asked her to make 20 job inquiries as one of the new requirements under welfare reform. One of the inquiries led to employment with a janitorial service in January 1997. Bumpers cleaned the BellSouth building downtown.

“Cleaning 32 bathrooms was a humbling experience,” said Bumpers, a single mother with one daughter. “But more than anything else, I did it because I could work and wanted to work.”

Bumpers soon earned too much to stay on welfare. She excelled at her job and won recognition as an advocate for welfare reform. She landed a job as a welfare- to-work caseworker for United Way. She now works as social services director for MPower Ministries, a faith-based social services ministry on Fourth Avenue South.

Bumpers says the work requirements that came with welfare reform were positive. “For moms that get on and use it to benefit them and their families for the short term and use it as a stepping stone, I think it’s a wonderful program,” Bumpers said. “But those that get on it and stay on it and become complacent, they are the ones that need a nudge.”

‘Living under bridges’

Some dire forecasts about welfare reform did not pan out.

Kimble Forrister, state coordinator for Alabama Arise, an advocacy group for low- income families, served on a welfare reform task force in 1995 and 1996. In a July 1996 column published in The Birmingham News, Forrister predicted: “Two years from now, 27,000 Alabama families are told their welfare benefits have run out, and women and children are found living under bridges.”

Forrister acknowledges that his prediction did not come true. But he believes some people have suffered because of the time limits.

“It was good for the people who got jobs,” Forrister said. “It gave them in- centive and support to go into the work force. But for a lot of people with severe barriers, the system has failed.” Forrister believes some recipients were forced to move in with relatives when their benefits ran out.

In about half of the remaining welfare households in Alabama, the children receive the welfare payment, which generally means they are living with a grandparent, aunt or another adult who is not a welfare client.

The shrinking welfare rolls don’t mean that poverty is going away and don’t affect the rising cost of Medicaid and food stamps, which are much larger programs. Still, officials say reform fundamentally changed welfare in ways that helped many recipients.

“If the sort of intuitive message about welfare at one time was that it was available and it was a free ride, that message has changed, and I think it has permeated the culture,” said Sanders, the DHR welfare reform director.

Sanders said welfare reform should never have been viewed as a way to lift the state’s poorest citizens into the middle class.

“I think in some circles welfare reform might have been overpromised in 1995 or 1996,” Sanders said. “I think to the degree that people thought welfare reform would significantly address poverty, they were a little bit off the mark.”

“A lot of people have gained skills and good work ethic,” he said. “But they haven’t gained a college education, and in many cases haven’t gained a high school education. So they’re better off, but they’re still poor.”

EMAIL: mcason@bhamnews.com

[sidebar]

The Personal Responsibility and Work Reconciliation Act went into effect 10 years ago. It:

–Required most welfare recipients to work to keep receiving benefits.

–Placed a five-year lifetime cap on benefits.

–Changed welfare funding from an unlimited federal entitlement to block grants for states based on their 1994 welfare spending.

Under the Deficit Reduction Act passed by Congress this year, amounts will be unchanged through 2010. The act also required states to put more of the remaining welfare recipients to work.