By PAUL TEPPER
Angelenos often ask why are there are so many homeless people throughout Los Angeles County. They ask why these men and women don’t use their welfare checks to rent a room and get off the street.
Let me provide one very simple answer. The least expensive room for rent in the city costs somewhere around $350 a month. General Relief, the L.A. County-funded welfare program of last resort for indigent men and women, provides destitute adults with $221 a month. Needless to say, there is virtually no housing available for $221 a month.
Think about what you are paying for your home or apartment and then consider that the humblest hotels on Skid Row charge $350 a month for a room with no toilet or cooking facilities. These $350-a-month rooms are few and far between. Numerous downtown hotels marketed to poor people charge far more. Many Skid Row hotels ask for $600 or more for a month’s lodging. Make a few calls in your neighborhood and ask about rents. Make a few calls in any neighborhood.
A $221 General Relief check minus $350 in rent for the most meager housing in the city equals homelessness. Can it be any plainer than that?
Only very, very poor people are eligible to receive General Relief, commonly known as “GR.” You can’t have more than $50. You can’t be earning more than $221 per month and in almost all cases any money you make is deducted from your GR check. GR applicants are the men and women who, if not homeless today, are likely to be homeless tomorrow.
By the way, if you’re thinking, “Why don’t those folks get a job?”, rest assured that the County Department of Public Social Services requires all employable General Relief recipients to actively look for work.
Only people with “a diagnosed physical or mental incapacity that prevents finding, accepting or continuing existing employment” are considered unemployable. If you fail to comply with the job search requirement or scores of others in the 401-page General Relief policy manual, you may very well be “terminated” and “sanctioned,” that is, lose public assistance.
GR is not a gift or grant. Recipients are required to repay the county any aid they receive. Accounts are sent to collection as soon as a former recipient gets a job or acquires any money.
No choice
It’s no wonder that 80,000 men and women are homeless in L.A. County, when 59,000 adults receive General Relief each month. Nearly three quarters of these poor adults are disabled. While public assistance may pay for a week of housing, none can afford to put a roof over their heads for an entire month. Their only alternative is a friend’s or a relative’s couch, a homeless shelter, or the streets. But with hundreds of thousands of poor, marginally housed and overcrowded households in the county, 80,000 homeless people and only about 15,000 shelter beds, tens of thousands of General Relief recipients have no choice. Homelessness is the only alternative for about half of all General Relief recipients.
This wasn’t always the case. Sixty years ago, in 1947, General Relief was just under $55 per month and the Cecil Hotel on Main Street rented rooms for $1.50 per day.
In 1980, General Relief provided $226 a month. A room at the Morrison Hotel, featured on the cover of the Door’s fifth album, could be had for $45 a week. The California Hotel charged $150 per month.
Today the Cecil charges $49 a night for a room without a toilet. Remember, the monthly GR grant is $221.
This is not rocket science. The cost of housing for poor people has only increased in recent decades and is not likely to fall in any significant way. During this same period, homelessness has grown and General Relief has actually fallen. For the poorest of the poor, those without income who are either looking for work or cannot work, General Relief is all they have, and it’s not enough to pay for the most modest of accommodations. General Relief must be increased to cover the cost of minimal housing. Otherwise, many of these men and women will continue to live on the streets of Los Angeles. It’s just simple arithmetic.
Paul Tepper is a writer who lives in Los Angeles.
