By JAMES DAO
Published: August 9, 1995
FRIENDSHIP, N.Y.— This region of cornfields and shale-encrusted hills near the Pennsylvania border once seeped with wealth in the form of crude oil. Now the very same hills conceal pockets of poverty and welfare dependency.
In this town where oil barons lived in splendor 100 years ago, today an estimated 1 in 6 households is on welfare and 1 in 4 is poor, about the same percentages as in Brooklyn.
Yet amid this year’s vigorous push in Albany to change the state’s welfare rules, there was little discussion of the problems that afflict the rural poor. The debate focused almost entirely on one thing: reducing welfare costs in big cities.
But the way poor people here tell it, in tightening the rules, the Legislature created hurdles that are far higher for country people than for the urban poor. Paradoxically, upstate Republicans whose main goal was to curb what they considered runaway welfare fraud and abuse in New York City were the ones who championed those changes.
In one major revision, able-bodied adults will start losing their welfare benefits this summer if they cannot demonstrate that they have got in touch with five different employers a week, with no repeats in a month.
But in many mountain towns, welfare recipients might not find 20 employers within a 30-square mile area. So meeting the rule could prove impossible, for here, unlike in New York City, one of the biggest challenges for people trying to get off welfare is transportation.
“That’s an onerous requirement for some of our folks, because of a lack of job openings and the lack of means to travel,” said Joan Sinclair, director of social services for Allegany County.
New rules enacted into law this year will also impose tougher penalties on welfare recipients who miss even one day of their public work programs, known as workfare. One unexcused absence can lead to a 90-day suspension of benefits; four such absences can cause expulsion from welfare.
Welfare workers and recipients said those penalties, too, are likely to fall more heavily on rural people who, because of undependable transportation, are more apt to miss work, or appointments at welfare offices.
“It stinks,” said Sharon DeBarge, a welfare recipient. “What are us people in rural areas supposed to do, if you don’t have a license, or you don’t have a vehicle?”
In Allegany County there are no public buses. Throughout the region, welfare recipients typically can’t afford dependable cars, much less insurance. Those who do have good cars have to sell them: state rules say welfare recipients cannot own vehicles worth over $1,500.
“You don’t have reliable transportation at that price,” said Anne Erickson of the Greater Upstate Law Project, which lobbies for the rural poor in Albany. “In New York City, that’s not going to be a problem. How many people in New York City own cars?”
Even welfare recipients who can keep their cars say that can be a mixed blessing. The cost of upkeep, insurance and gasoline for driving long distances can eat away at welfare checks.
Gertrude Riffle, 60, a welfare recipient who lives in a trailer park in Addison with her mentally retarded son, said that maintaining her 11-year old Pontiac Bonneville was one of her major expenses. “It always needs repairs,” she said. “So I’m just getting by.”
These problems can have devastating effects. Susan Lewis spent years refiling job applications along her town’s four-block main street because those employers were the only ones she could reach on foot.
“You get embarrassed because you’re letting people know you’re still not working, week after week,” she said. State social service officials argued that five job applications a week is not an excessive number for rural residents. “We believe there are a lot of jobs out there,” said John Fredericks of the State Department of Social Services, in his office in Albany.
State officials have contended that tougher work programs in rural areas have reduced welfare rolls. But it remains unclear whether the people quitting welfare have found jobs or simply vanished from the state’s view.
Senator Joseph Holland, chairman of the Senate Social Services Committee and an advocate of tougher welfare rules, said he did not think the new regulations would have a harsher impact on rural residents. But Senator Holland, a Rockland County Republican, acknowledged that the effort to tighten the rules was done with city, not rural, recipients in mind because “people think welfare is better controlled upstate.”
He also said there is bipartisan agreement among legislators from outside New York City that more must be done to reduce welfare spending.
“I guess the people in need come to major cities because more services are there, so they have a different philosophy,” the Senator said. “We are not separated by parties on this issue. We are separated by upstate and downstate.”
In dozens of interviews, welfare recipients in Allegany and Steuben counties said they wanted to work but couldn’t find accessible jobs.
Dan Barber lives in Belmont, a village of 1,000 people, one stoplight and a handful of stores. Though Belmont is the seat of Allegany County, Mr. Barber can visit all of its businesses in a day or two. Then he must go elsewhere to fulfill the job-search obligations.
Because he can’t afford a car, Mr. Barber, 25, does his job canvassing by foot, sometimes hitching rides. On Fridays, his day off from a county workfare program, he rises at 3 A.M. to travel 30 miles to Olean, a city of 18,000, where he scans want ads for minimum-wage jobs at grocery stores and fast-food restaurants. He is worried that he won’t be able to reach five employers a week, as the new welfare rules require.
Inevitably, the subject of transportation arises in job interviews. The typical exchange has become depressingly familiar, said Mr. Barber, who is single and has been on welfare since 1991 when he severely injured his foot in a work accident.
“They ask how I got there, I tell them I walked,” he said. “After that, the interview doesn’t go any farther.”
David DeBarge lives in a three-bedroom trailer home on a wind-swept bluff overlooking Addison, population 2,700, with his wife and three children.
Last March, he found full-time work as a machine operator in a metal stamping plant in Elmira, 40 miles away. His driver’s license had been suspended three times since 1991, and he could not afford the $500 needed to reinstate it. So he relied on two co-workers for transportation, an arrangement that worked well for a few months.
Earning $5 an hour and working full time, he managed to pull his family off welfare. “I was scared to death,” he said of the decision to exchange a steady public assistance check for the vagaries of private employment. “But you’ve got to take that leap sooner or later.”
But then in June, he lost one ride after arguing with the driver. The next month, a second ride stopped traveling to Addison. With no buses available during his night shift, he stopped going to work. His bosses told him they would hire someone else to fill his job.
Now Mr. DeBarge, a tall, coarse-voiced man of 33 with tattoo-covered arms, is debating whether to reapply for welfare for his family. If he does, they may have to wait three months for their first check. Then he will face the same transportation problems as he tries to meet the rule requiring five job contacts a week. “I’m a recovered alcoholic,” he said. “Now I know why people relapse.”
In Albany, the welfare debate has pitted urban Democrats against upstate Republicans, who contend that cities are sponges for tax dollars.
Statistics from the Department of Social Services show that New York City, with 40 percent of the state’s residents, receives 72 percent of its welfare spending, over $2 billion this year.
But a recent study commissioned by the Republican-led Senate found that in several poverty indicators, the state’s rural areas were losing ground to its metropolitan regions. Rural areas have higher unemployment rates, lower per-capita income and a smaller percentage of adults with college educations, according to the report by the New York State Commission on Rural Resources.
Moreover, between 1950 and 1990, most rural areas experienced faster growth in the number of families living in poverty, the report found. It concluded that a continuing decline in manufacturing jobs had left rural areas with low-paying service jobs that rarely provided benefits like health insurance.
Allegany County regularly ranks near the bottom of the state’s 62 counties. It has the third lowest per-capita income. The 1990 Census found that it had the fifth highest percentage of families living in poverty: 15 percent of its 55,000 residents, lower than the Bronx, Brooklyn and Manhattan, but significantly higher than Queens and Staten Island. That same year, 10 percent of Allegany County’s households received public assistance, just below Manhattan’s 11 percent.
In Allegany County, registered Republicans outnumber Democrats by more than 2 to 1. Several welfare recipients who are Republicans said they thought Republican lawmakers had overlooked the possible damage that sharp cutbacks in welfare might cause.
“You’ll start seeing things here that you only expect to see in New York City,” said Susan Lewis, who spent several years on welfare.
Ms. Lewis, 28, is one of the success stories of the welfare system. In late 1989, her boyfriend was laid off, and she went on welfare.
In 1992, the county placed her in a workfare program, training her in secretarial skills. Her break came late last year, when she was hired from a pool of 30 applicants for a receptionist’s job at a home health-care concern. She earns less than $5 an hour and receives no health benefits, but with her boyfriend’s income, it is enough.
Photo: State rules tend to discourage welfare recipients in rural New York from owning dependable cars. Gertrude Riffle, 60, who lives with her son in Addison, N.Y., said that her 11-year-old Pontiac Bonneville was a major expense. “It always needs repairs,” she said. “So I’m just getting by.” (Michael J. Okoniewski for The New York Times) (pg. B4) Map of New York (pg. B4)
Posted on June 17, 2010 by WP
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