THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 15, 1995 TAG: 9501150090
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARGARET EDDS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Long : 175 lines
On the frame of one gas-guzzling 1987 Fleetwood Cadillac rests the employment security of Lisa Wade and three of her relatives.
When the 31-year-old, $4.50-an-hour AmeriCorps worker slips behind the wheel of her mom's car each afternoon, she begins an odyssey as intricately choreographed as a performance of Swan Lake.
Before Wade checks back into work the next morning, the car will have transported her mother, brother and niece to and from their combined total of five jobs. Between 5 o'clock one afternoon and 8:30 the next morning, the family makes 20 stops - not counting gas station visits - involving work, day care and school.
Such are the hurdles facing working Americans of limited means.
Such is the life to which Gov.George F. Allen hopes to entice, prod or force thousands of Virginians over the next four years through welfare reform.
At the center of reform plans, crafted over the last three years by a bipartisan group of politicians, bureaucrats and community activists, are thousands of women not unlike Lisa Wade.
The majority are young black mothers in their 20s and 30s with one or two children and a high school education or less. Like Wade, most are not long-term, multi-generational welfare users, but women who move on and off the rolls as jobs shut down, day care falls through, cars collapse or new pregnancies complicate life.
About 74,000 Virginians receive Aid to Families with Dependent Children - a program that gives money to low-income, single parents and is the focus of the welfare reform debate. Under Allen's plan, up to 48,000 of them would gradually have to start working for their checks, beginning this summer. Once into the program, they could collect no more than 24 months of benefits in a five-year span.
As advocates urge bold action to end dependency and critics warn of the risks to children, the lives of women like Lisa Wade cut through the rhetoric. Theirs is a stark world in which work is a precarious goal, and adolescent whims, economic swings and luck often have more influence than government policy on who succeeds and who fails.
Over the last eight years, Wade has moved on and off AFDC four times. She has worked full-time or part-time at seven jobs, has been certified as a nursing assistant and has taken high school courses. She sees her current economic situation as the best of her adult life: $160 a week in take-home pay, plus free child care and medical benefits.
But her job with AmeriCorps, a government service program launched by the Clinton administration, is guaranteed for only one year. When it ends, uncertainty awaits.
It is early evening in the two-bedroom apartment Wade shares with her children, 8-year-old Antonio and 5-year-old Margarthe. Wade's typical schedule after leaving work is to pick up Margarthe at day care, pick up her brother, Thomas Wade, at his 7-Eleven job, drop Thomas at the house of her mother, Lillie Wade, and pick up Lillie and niece Latosha, drop Latosha at her job at Taco Bell, pick up Antonio at his after-school program, drive Lillie downtown for her part-time cleaning job at the Federal Reserve Bank and return home.
Now, Wade and the children have a three-hour break before they load up for the hour-long night run: downtown to pick up Lillie again at 9:30, back to Lillie's house to drop her and pick up Thomas, over to Taco Bell to pick up Latosha, back to Lillie's house to drop Latosha, and home. From there, Thomas heads downtown for his second job as a transportation worker at the Medical College of Virginia.
Her athletic frame momentarily slumped on the sofa, Wade shakes off the weariness and demands to see Antonio's homework. She sets Margarthe to practicing writing her name and phone number.
``I live in a home,'' Wade reads the sentence written by Tony, a solemn, third-grade honor student.
``That don't sound right,'' she says. ``Home? What kind of a home? A town home?'' She orders him to redo the sentence.
Wade dropped out of school, bored and struggling, when she was 17 and in the ninth grade. When she was tested before beginning work on a G.E.D. certificate a few years ago, her educational skills measured at the third-to fifth-grade level.
After almost two years of study through a local Catholic center, Wade took the G.E.D. test and failed. But she was encouraged by her progress, and this month will begin studies again through a community college outreach program.
While the Allen plan would cap benefits at two years, Wade's pursuit of a high school equivalency degree has taken longer.
Math is her forte; language her nemesis. ``I can read something and I forget it like that,'' she sighs.
The vivacious smile that regularly lights Wade's features vanishes as a dull, unpleasant aroma floods the apartment. ``I hate this. It's why I want to get out of here. You can't sit in your own living room,'' she says, lowering her voice out of earshot of the children.
The odor, she explains, is from crack cocaine being smoked in a nearby apartment. The flow of drugs in and out of the complex keeps her from letting her children play outside.
She is thinking of moving her sofa away from its perch against the hallway wall. ``Anything could come through this wall,'' she says.
Wade would love to move, but her prospects for a new home are limited. She pays $105 a month for the government-subsidized apartment, and figures overall housing costs - including utilities and telephone - consume about one-third of her $826 monthly income from work and food stamps. She has no savings.
Her most realistic alternative would be to join Thomas and Latosha in living with her mother, who is a teaching assistant at a local elementary school and owns a bungalow in a working-class neighborhood. It is not an idea Wade relishes.
``My mother is a blessing, God knows,'' she says, recalling her mom's strength in raising five boys and a girl after separating from an alcoholic husband. But mother and daughter get along better since Lisa moved out on her own two years ago. Lisa prefers independence.
For policy-makers considering welfare reform, Lisa Wade's life poses these questions: If all government support were withdrawn, could she and others like her survive on their own? How much support is too much? Or too little?
Barring additional help from the father of her two children, the answer to the first question is almost certainly no. Strip away food stamps and housing subsidies (something Allen has not proposed, despite his disdain for government handouts), and a minimum wage job - even with child care thrown in - could ill support three people.
Wade's former boyfriend is a house painter who moves frequently and is hard to track down. While the Allen reform plan calls for extra effort to collect support money from fathers, Wade is not optimistic that the measures will help in her case.
But would she wind up in a homeless shelter or on the streets? Probably not. Despite the stresses relocation would cause, her mother provides a safety net, as do a network of friends. ``I have a lot of positive people in my life,'' says Wade.
The more realistic question is this: With federal housing and food subsidies intact, can Wade make it once her AmeriCorps job ends?
That answer is uncertain. What is critical for independence, say many welfare experts, are earnings of at least $7 to $8 an hour. Wade reached that income level once, as a bread-truck driver a few years ago. She lost the job after being accused of shoplifting a flea collar.
What makes Wade's current job work are the child care and medical benefits, and her mother's car. Some of her past jobs have floundered because of inadequate babysitters and poor transportation. Even now, if Lillie's car needs to be repaired, Wade must find piecemeal transportation.
While policy-makers hope tougher welfare rules might limit out-of-wedlock births, Wade says government policy had nothing to do with her pregnancies. ``You've got to have something to leave behind in this world,'' she explains.
Looking ahead, Wade has two primary hopes for a better life: marriage and earning her G.E.D. Statistics suggest that either can help, but not necessarily.
The precariousness of her dreams is underscored by the residence of the man Wade hopes to marry: the city jail.
Wade is attracted by her friend's intelligence. She believes his mind can help her overcome her academic shortcomings, while her religious faith and buoyant spirit can help with his weakness, drugs.
``I prayed on that, I really prayed on that,'' she says of her quest for a mate. Not wanting to sound greedy, she did not ask God for wealth.
``I asked him to give me someone who didn't have anything so we could grow together,'' she said, ``and I got it.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
CHRISTOPHER REDDICK/Staff
Lisa Wade works hard to support her family, but needs help from the
state. She and thousands of women like her will find out first if
reform works.
Graphic
WADE'S STATUS:
In the past eight years, Lisa Wade has moved on and off welfare
four times and has worked at seven jobs. Her current economic
situation: $160 a week,plus free child care and medical benefits.
HER FUTURE:
Wade's job with AmeriCorps, a service program launched by
President Clinton, is guaranteed for only one year.
Photo
CHRISTOPHER REDDICK/Staff
Lisa Wade carves out time to spend with her children, Antonio, 8 and
Margarethe, 5, in their subsidized apartment. She can't let them
play outside because drug abusers lurk there.
KEYWORDS: WELFARE SYSTEM VIRGINIA by CNB