Welfare reform to impact homeless

I first started at the Bemidji (Minn.) Pioneer as an intern in the summer of 1996. That would begin six years as a news reporter, sports reporter and copy editor for a small, six-day-per-week daily newspaper in northern Minnesota. I wrote a large range of stories from multiple beats, to features to sports, my favorite being the coverage of the Red Lake Reservation High School basketball team named the Warriors. Here is a collection of my stories from my time at the Pioneer.

Feb. 9, 1997

By Devlyn Brooks

Staff Writer

Area social service providers are scrambling in trying to determine what effect new welfare reform will have on Beltrami County, Ann McGill, assistant director of the Bi-County Community Action Program, said Friday at a homeless forum hosted by an area housing coalition.

But most importantly, she said, people are forgetting the effect the new plan will have on the homeless, a problem the county already is facing.

About 60 representatives from various social service providers met to discuss the relationship between poverty and homelessness and how welfare plans will affect the county's homeless.

"I certainly don't pretend to be an expert on this issue, but there is very little talk about housing in welfare reform," McGill said. "We need to talk about this now."

The key features of the new federal welfare plan, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, include expanded state discretion in some area, limited state or federal duties to individual recipients and new federal mandates such as time limits and work requirements, McGill said.

"We're really very supportive of welfare reform. We think it's a necessary step," McGill said of the housing coalition members. "We just want to determine how we go about it."

She said there are three current welfare reform proposals being considered in Minnesota. One is Gov. Arne Carlson's plan which is modeled after the current Minnesota Family Investment Plan with a few modifications. MFIP is a comprehensive county/state welfare reform experiment that has demonstrated an ability to move people from welfare to work.

The second plan has been introduced by state Sen. Don Samuelson, DFL-Brainerd, and the third has been introduced by Sen. Linda Berglin, DFL-Minneapolis.

However, McGill said it is important to remember that welfare is not guaranteed to end poverty, so the issue of affordable housing and homelessness is a viable concern for Beltrami County.

Becky Hoffman, director of the House of Hospitality, a second sponsor of the homelessness forum, said to understand welfare reform, people must look at the effect it will have on homelessness.

"24 percent of Beltrami County is living in poverty, and 28.2 percent of those are children," she said. "Being poor for many means living a paycheck or two away from being homeless."

She said that locally housing costs are higher because landlords can charge $500 to $700 rent for a house to a group of college students, but for a family the price range is not affordable.

Diana King, a member of the Race Relations Task Force, said when she worked in U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone's office she handled many cases where people had lost their homes because they could not afford them and pay for necessities. Even in two wage-earner families, she said, there is a possibility of losing a home if one member loses their job.

"Were going back to a worse system than 14 years ago, and there is no incentive to work. Five years does not have to come," she said of the year 2002 when the first group of welfare recipients will be mandated out of the system. "It is just men in Washington making these laws. We could change this law next year and make it better. We all know we need welfare reform, but how do we do it? We have to have certain safety nets."

The housing coalition plans to have further public discussions nearer the July 1 deadline to inform people about housing issues, McGill said.