Down and Downsized

Broken lives are not easily mended.

Pieces don’t always fit together the way they once did. Sometimes the pieces aren’t even there anymore. And unless one asks, one might never know that the homeless woman who hasn’t seen a doctor in years was once a licensed vocational nurse. Or the man on welfare was a builder of pools and waterfalls.

For these--the poorest of the poor--not having the basic necessities of life is like being sucked into a river’s violent undercurrent, pulled down deeper and deeper.

Work can be a solution.

But when a person has reached this point, some things must come before the job, says Linda Benoit, a Lutheran Social Services worker. “It takes a lot of steps to prepare people to go to work.”

Some have no home, food, transportation, clean clothes, health care, child care, work skills, education or confidence, said Walter Sebesta, the agency’s employment manager.

“Until you have been absolutely flat broke, without a penny in your pocket,” Sebesta said, “you don’t understand how powerless you are.” And how poverty has a momentum all its own that can make finding the way out a slow and tedious journey.

*

Soft-spoken and somber, Maurice speaks like a man who has seen more than he ever wanted to see, whose eyes are still focused on harsh scenes.

“Can you imagine not having a place to stay, not having a place to take a bath or wash, and if it’s wet outside, you’re wet, if it’s cold outside, you’re cold, and it doesn’t make a difference because you’re hungry?”

For a year Maurice did not have to imagine; that was his life. Homelessness was the culmination of a string of hard luck: He lost his job, was evicted from the apartment building he managed and suffered what he called an illegal seizure of his possessions.

During that time, he did not search for work.

“If you can smell me walking up a half a block away, how anxious are you going to be to hire me?” he said. “How silly are you going to be to think I’m going to improve your business?”

Three times he was awakened by a foot kicking him. Sometimes it was someone trying to rob him. Sometimes it was someone with nothing better to do.

He lost more than any joy his attackers ever could have received; several teeth are gone and so is his faith in ideals he once held sacred.

“My respect for the police, for the law of this country, went down the toilet,” said the 53-year-old man.

In the eyes of those who saw him then, he was “sidewalk trash,” he said, and treated as such, moved along by police when there was no place to move along to.

He had “no money, no food, no hope, and not even a direction to turn to,” he said.

A friend suggested he try Lutheran Social Services.

“He was a street person,” Sebesta recalled, and he looked like one. But he was also very eager to get his life together.

Social workers provided food and clean clothes. His blondish hair was long and unkempt, so Sebesta paid from his own pocket for Maurice to have a haircut.

“Nobody gets rich doing this,” Sebesta said. “It’s more a calling than an occupation.”

Sebesta helped him complete a resume and allowed him to use the agency’s phone number and address--hearing back from a potential employer is difficult when a person has no home or no phone. Sebesta set up the interview that led to Maurice landing a job as a data collector.

Does he like the job? The question, Maurice said, is irrelevant.

“I’m doing what is necessary.”

Until today, he was sleeping on the street at night and working in an office during the day. But today Maurice signed a lease and has a Van Nuys home in which to put the big blue plastic bag that contains his possessions.

“I have a job, a place to live,” he said. “I have a life now. . . . It wasn’t the 7th Cavalry that rescued me. It was Lutheran Social Services.”

Though he is grateful, there is still a certain sadness about him.

“I probably sound like somebody very bitter and discontented. And I really am,” he said softly.

*

The government gives Carlos Valencia $607 every month. He has three children and a wife who does not work. The government also gives Valencia a monthly allocation of food stamps and health care through Medi-Cal.

It is not enough.

“Welfare is no future for nobody,” he says. “You get into that category, you don’t want to go out, you have no money. Sometimes there’s no food.”

On this day he is in the pantry of Lutheran Social Services, filling plastic bags with cans of vegetables, rice and bread for needy families.

Through GAIN, a statewide program that helps welfare recipients make the transition to jobs, he is relearning the ways of the work world. He receives no pay for his work, but he can use the pantry as a reference on job applications. And what Valencia wants more than welfare is a job.

“It gets you in the motion to want to work,” he said. “It shows you how to be responsible, how to get up early in the morning. Since I’ve been on AFDC [Aid for Families With Dependent Children] for the last three years, you kinda lose the rhythm of work.”

There was a time when he moved to that rhythm easily. He constructed swimming pools and waterfalls for two Valley companies. In 1991, the companies laid off all the employees and went bankrupt.

Valencia went on welfare.

His parents received welfare, but Valencia, 33, had worked since he was a 10th-grader--the year he dropped out of school.

He had always managed to find a job, even without a high school diploma or formal training.

But the job market of the 1990s had become more demanding and far less understanding.

“I didn’t meet the standards,” Valencia said. Each time he applied, the routine was the same: They’d ask the questions, and he supplied answers that left him as jobless as when he entered. “Do you have a high school diploma?” “No.” “Have you been in the service?” “No.” “Any special training?” “No.” “I’m sorry. I can’t help you.”

“That’s when I started falling in a depression,” he said. “I said, ‘I give up. What the hell? I’m going to sit here and watch TV.’ ”

Eventually he settled into a life of slack.

“I got so used to being on welfare,” he said.

Through GAIN he is learning to think differently, how to call endless numbers of employers, how to fill out applications, how to not give up--even after the 10th, the 20th, the 30th rejection.

“My main thing is to get a job so I can get myself going again,” he said. “I’m tired of being on AFDC. And my kids, I don’t want them to get used to that. I want them to learn responsibility.”

*

Sharon Brown said she would never clean toilets for a living.

It was something she and her schoolmates would joke about when she was a kid. They told each other, you’re going to be a toilet scrubber, cleaning white people’s toilets.

She ended up doing just that, and she did it with no shame.

“I’ll clean houses, baby-sit, whatever it takes to survive,” she said.

She asked that her real name not be used, not because of shame, but for fear of reprisals from county officials. Brown, who recently found a nondomestic job with the help of Lutheran Social Services, also receives general relief.

“I mainly need my general relief for my medical care. And this company I’m working for, they don’t have any health benefits or anything like that,” the Sylmar woman said.

Nor does she make enough to pay for her own health care.

For Brown, public assistance is not something that prevents her from working; it is a supplement that actually enables her to work. Through general relief she receives a boost to her meager income. It is just enough to fill in the gaps that her earned income cannot cover.

Brown applied for general relief initially because she could not find work. Then her health began to deteriorate and the help became even more critical. The 39-year-old has a bad heart, high blood pressure, diabetes and carpal tunnel syndrome.

But Brown needs and wants to work; and so she does.

“You can’t live on $212 a month,” she said, referring to her monthly general relief check. “I’m not trying to abuse the system. I’m doing what I have to do to survive. Until I can get a better job or get in a better situation, this is where I’m at right now.”

It is not where she wants her life to be, she said, but it is better than before.

Brown was once married to a man who was abusive. The marriage ended, and Brown turned to drinking and illegal activities to make money. It ended only after a stay at Synanon, a drug treatment center.

Although that time in her life has long since passed, she is still paying the price--each time she applies for a job. She does not have a college education or training. And the experience of cleaning houses never helped in her search for a job and a better way of life.

“There are a lot of people on GR. That’s how they want to live, but that’s not how I want to live,” she said. “I’d love to have a job making $10 or $12 an hour. You think I wouldn’t get up and go to work every morning?”

In March she was hired at a company that pays $6 an hour--and she is happy.

“It made me feel real good,” she said, and the job is preparing her for the next job, an even better one. She is learning to type and use the computer.

“I know you can’t always start at the top,” she said, “I know you’ve got to work hard to get anything. I watched how my mother raised us. I just wish I would have felt as strongly about this 20 years ago because I wouldn’t be in this situation. I can’t change what happened. All I can do is try to make my situation better right now.”

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About this series

The Times Valley Edition today presents the first of a four-part series exploring poverty in the San Fernando Valley.

* Today: New figures reveal that 16.3% of Valley residents fall below the poverty line, a higher poverty rate than the United States as a whole.

* Monday: Today’s immigrants are finding it harder than earlier generations of newcomers to move up the economic ladder.

* Tuesday: More and more children are working to help their families pay the rent and buy groceries.

* Wednesday: The Valley’s social service agencies are struggling to cope with growing needs as federal budget cuts reduce their funding.