Welfare reform hits shelter

"People always say, `Why are people homeless?'" says Louisa Marra. "If you spent a week here, you'd see. My God, there are so many reasons."

Ms. Marra directs Marillac Residence, a shelter for homeless families that operates through St. Catherine's Center for Children in Albany. She told The Evangelist that welfare reform laws are having a devastating effect on the families who come to Marillac.

In its first year, reform has dropped 456,000 people from New York State's welfare rolls. Families receiving benefits are now required to participate in "workfare," looking for work and taking part in job-training programs if they qualify.

Problems

Therein lies the problem, said Ms. Marra: The new laws do not take into account that some adults classified as "able-bodied" and thus able to find work may have developmental disabilities, addictions to drugs and alcohol, or mental health problems that keep them from being able to comply with the regulations.

Those with children may receive assistance with child care from the Department of Social Services (DSS) after they get a job, Ms. Marra said, but there is no one to watch their children while they look for one. Employers for menial jobs are often unforgiving when parents need to stay home with sick children. In addition, she said, they may lose some health benefits if they go to work.

"Now, when you work, you're definitely penalized for it," Ms. Marra stated.

Obstacles

Some former welfare recipients are told that they do not qualify for job training because of previous job experience, even if that experience only involved janitorial work. They may not even know what steps to take to conduct a job search. Others have known no other life except that on welfare.

"Welfare has always enabled families, and now they're being shoved off it," Ms. Marra explained. "When you've grown up on public assistance, you don't know any other way. It's not, `Oh, you didn't look for a job.' You've got to at least show them!"

Families who don't mount a job search, she said, are classified as "noncompliant" and are sanctioned, which means they lose their benefits. While their children continue to receive food stamps and rent subsidies, an average subsidy would be $298 -- not nearly enough to pay rent on an apartment. In a month or two, these mostly one-parent families are evicted for non-payment of rent. Homeless, they come to Marillac.

Serving the homeless

Once there, said Ms. Marra, "we have to focus on their housing search."

Last year, Marillac Residence served 200 families. The shelter can house 24 families for an average stay of 34 days, but the director is seeing families staying longer and longer as they struggle to find adequate housing. Eventually, she envisions families living in the shelter for four or five months.

If families move out while still being sanctioned, the alternative is to move into whatever housing is available for the approximately $250 subsidy available to them.

"Your choices are going to be limited," said Ms. Marra. "Some of these apartments are terrible, but families need to move in there. We're moving families into high-crime areas."

Families sometimes try doubling up in apartments, which can prove disastrous, Ms. Marra explained, because many don't have the coping mechanisms necessary to deal with such overcrowding: "To live in an environment where there's a lot of people around is very stimulating. The children or adults fight, the police come -- and someone has to leave."

Services

Marillac Residence does much more than just helping families find housing. Its staff of caseworkers -- each with a caseload of just eight families -- also helps parents who are unable to meet their children's basic needs by subsidizing them for staples like food, clothing for their children, soap and toilet paper.

Marillac's budget is also tightened by the working-but-homeless families it takes in. The DSS only pays a portion of the shelter costs for such families, "and we take the loss," said Ms. Marra. "We do not want to choose `who can pay.'"

Teenage mothers are particularly difficult cases. Because they are minors, their parents are responsible for them. If Marillac takes the young mothers in, the DSS will not set them up in an apartment. "We have to proceed with caution," Ms. Marra said.

Education

Since so many of its residents will have to continue to use food pantries after they leave, Marillac holds special nutrition classes to teach families how to best use the food they are given -- "which is a lot different from the food you get in a grocery store," Ms. Marra stated.

Home maintenance classes help those unfamiliar with household upkeep to present better skills to potential landlords.

Caseworkers also teach families how to budget their money while they are still in the shelter, suggesting that they stockpile items like diapers before moving out. The employees try to get the families recertified to receive benefits, advocate with the DSS for shelter residents to go to night school, find doctors who will meet their mental health needs and arrange for families to participate in an aftercare program once they leave Marillac.

"There's so much hands-on [work], and the need of the families is so high," Ms. Marra said. "There aren't a whole lot of prevention pieces available. We always have to wait for a full-blown crisis."

Crisis moment

Sometimes, that crisis happens even after a family has become homeless and come to Marillac. Families with mental illness issues may avoid meeting a DSS caseworker, and eventually, their case is closed and their medication stopped.

"Then you have a mother who has three kids, and she's psychotic," she explained. "I have to wait until someone really harms themselves or their child to get any response. That's just really sad."

One family currently staying at Marillac was sanctioned for noncompliance and lost their apartment. The couple have four children to care for, but they also have "mental health issues as well as delays," said Ms. Marra. "We really question how much they do understand" about welfare regulations.

Many residents now arrive at Marillac after being discharged from mental health facilities or paroled from prison. "Technically, they're homeless," the director said. "We've kind of become a transitional place. There used to be halfway houses, but they're not there any more."

Successful effort

Despite the obstacles, Marillac still maintains an eight-percent return rate for its guests, the lowest in New York State. Most families who leave the shelter maintain their housing.

Ms. Marra proudly referred to Marillac as "our own community," stating that the staff can handle any crisis. However, she hopes to see the return of grassroots programs to help the poor and homeless, programs that made a difference in the lives of those now forced to live in shelters.

"People are seeing the word `homelessness' and it's not the new wave any more. We're forgetting these people that need services," she said. "Something needed to be done [to reform the welfare system], and I'm for empowering families, but we went right to a punitive side.

"There's a level of respect that needs to be maintained, and that's not there any more," she added. "The end result is a big, major crisis that will break up families, and that's not what we want to do."

(The Marillac Residence can be reached at 869-1960.)

(04-02-98)

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