Coping With Welfare Equals Losing 13 IQ Points

[daredtowork]

14. You may have misunderstood the word "reform"

It was welfare reform of the 1980s that gave County governments free reign to totally gut the cash portions of welfare in the name of incentivizing work.

Now there is NO income-based welfare for more than 3-months out of the year for single people in Oakland, CA. So if you've lost out in work musical chairs and you've run out of Unimployment Insurance and you're not married or shacked up - tough cookies to you. You're now homeless.

And what about all the disabled people in the multi-year gap applying for SSI (where I fell). What are they supposed to be living on if there is no "cash" welfare?

I asked someone at a nonprofit recently about the major categories of single people on General Assistance welfare who would qualify for the exception that would allow them to get it for more than three months out of the year. Disabled with a doctor's letter is one exception. One that raised my eyebrow was displaced youth. General Assistance - which is a $336/month LOAN that goes DIRECTLY TO A LANDLORD - is all these displaced youth can get because all the welfare programs that would actually provide cash forms of support are GONE!

But no one outside the system knows that. They are still trying to figure out how to block and tackle the Big Black Welfare Queens the politicians keep telling them they should be mad about.