Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, October 19, 1995 TAG: 9510190062
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Moving Virginia's welfare recipients off the rolls and into self-sufficiency could cost the state's working poor their share of public financial assistance, representatives of state community action agencies said Wednesday.
"I'm afraid that what we're going to see is a redirection of resources away from the working poor to people who have been receiving [Aid to Families with Dependent Children]," Robert Goldsmith said. Goldsmith - executive director of People Inc. of Southwest Virginia, a community action agency in Abingdon - gathered with 400 others in Roanoke on Wednesday for a quarterly meeting of the Virginia Council Against Poverty.
"When we're talking about welfare reform, we're talking about AFDC, which is really small potatoes in the state. That's not where most people receive public assistance."
More than 800,000 Virginians are classified as low-income, Goldsmith said. They receive food stamps, fuel assistance and medical benefits. Only 74,000 of those receive AFDC benefits. They are the poorest of the poor, living at or below 50 percent of the federal poverty level.
"It would be a shame to take resources that currently are targeted toward all these low-income people and redirect them to such a small percentage of the low-income population," said Judy Mason, the council's executive director.
A concern has emerged in the national clamor over welfare about how the massive overhaul will affect the working poor.
"When you talk about serving people at or below 50 percent of the poverty level and who are so needy that they take an inordinate amount of resources to provide services to, that certainly take more money to serve, more working poor are not going to be served," Mason said.
Virginia's new welfare plan cuts off AFDC benefits after two years and provides a third year of transitional benefits. The plan requires recipients to work within 90 days of their locality phasing in the plan's work component.
Virginia's 26 community action agencies - including Roanoke's Total Action Against Poverty - have been called critical to the success of Virginia's new welfare plan. Services traditionally provided by those agencies - transportation, job development and day care - are crucial for people easing off the welfare rolls, Goldsmith said.
"We expect that local departments of social services will be looking to community action agencies to provide those services to people," he said. "But we're not here to rail against the welfare reform plan. I think everybody involved who has worked with welfare or people seeking welfare benefits agrees that some change needed to be made. Whether this is change that I would have made really doesn't matter."
The Virginia Council Against Poverty celebrated community action agencies' 30 years of service to low-income Virginians at Wednesday's meeting. This year has been one of the toughest for the agencies, which fought an attempt by Gov. George Allen to wipe out core state community action agency funding. The General Assembly restored it.
"If the governor's budget had been passed as proposed, community action agencies would have had about a 25 percent cut in basic funding," Goldsmith said. "For some agencies it would have been more. For some, it would have been less.
"For some agencies, it would have meant closing the doors."
by CNB