Works In Progress - July 2003 - Open Letter to Governor Locke

We are here to meet with you today about your support of low-income families. We are members of WROC, the Welfare Rights Organizing Coalition, and our allies. WROC is a grassroots, nonprofit organization whose mission is to affect social and economic justice by educating and empowering our members to effect positive change in their communities and in their lives.

We are concerned that you have told DSHS that they must reduce the welfare caseload by 6% by August. We understand that the increasing caseload is an economic concern, but it is not surprising in our current economic climate. We talk to families every day who have been looking for work for months, with no luck. They have no choice but to depend upon TANF, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families.

We understand that you are looking at three options; full family sanctions, a thirty-day wait period before receiving benefits, or time limits with no exemptions. All of these possibilities would be devastating. TANF recipients are already living at 40% of poverty level. These policies would take away what little they have and we would see an increase in homelessness and foster care.

Of immediate concern to us is how DSHS is going to achieve the 6% caseload reduction. What is going to happen to these families (60 in Thurston County) when they are forced off TANF? Is the pressure you are exerting on DSHS going to result in case workers increasingly ignoring legal safeguards and sanctioning and terminating welfare grants more indiscriminately? Are the individual needs of these parents and their children going to be ignored in the push to get them off assistance? Are benefits going to be harder to get, so that parents are left without a safety net? Are we going to see more homeless and hungry children as a result of your actions?

You can achieve the savings you need to meet the increasing caseload without hurting families. For example, TANF recipients must make 15 job contacts a week; people receiving unemployment insurance must make three. TANF recipients must go to the Work Source office every day to sign in on a computer, UI recipients can phone in, fill out a claim online, or mail their claim once a week. TANF recipients often have inadequate transportation, but even though this is a legal reason for noncompliance, they are told they will be sanctioned if they do not make it in every morning.

I have spoken with students whose children go to child care at their college, yet they are supposed to take them to child care, go back to the Work Source office, sign in (because they can't take their child in with them) and then go back to school. This can take three to four hours on the bus. I have also spoken with parents in rural areas who have to drive or catch rides for the 40 to 50 mile trip into town, to sign in. They are given gas vouchers which only provide enough gas to last half the week.

Job search for TANF recipients is incredibly inefficient and reportedly ineffective. I challenge you to ask TANF recipients if job search was useful. We have been asking that question for over a year and almost all recipients say, if they found a job, it was despite job search, not because of it. Could you make job search more efficient and increase its effectiveness by combining WIA, the Workforce Investment Act, and job search? Differences exist between the TANF populations and the UI populations. Millions of dollars could be saved, reducing inefficient and excessive programs like job search and WPLEX.

Look at options that do not harm low-income families. If they are expected to leave the TANF rolls, then provide them with the supports they need: education, child-care and other work supports. During a recession, it makes sense for TANF recipients to use their 60 months to increase their job skills, so they will be eligible for living wage jobs when the economy improves. People are not numbers!

Sincerely,

Members of the Welfare Rights Organizing Coalition