Says time limits on welfare assistance makes life harder
By Lynn Hulsey
DAYTON | LaQuan Bell reached the end of her rope in March.
Unemployed, cut off welfare cash assistance, living on about $250 a month, the 23-year-old mother of one checked herself into psychiatric intensive care.
"It was like everything just started to build up and I couldn't take it no more. I felt like I was going to harm myself or harm somebody else," said Bell, who has since been released from the hospital and is taking anti-depressants and attending counseling sessions.
She's past the crisis point but still can't see a way out of her financial situation.
"I still don't have no money and I still don't have nobody helping me," said Bell, who is raising Shawnt'e, her 8-year-old daughter.
Bell and Shawnt'e were among the 585 families in Montgomery County who lost welfare benefits after reaching the state's 36-month limit on cash assistance.
Some, like Bell, have struggled through a combination of bad decisions and bad luck. Critics say welfare reform won't truly be successful until people like LaQuan Bell and her daughter no longer trade welfare for a life of subsidized housing, food stamps and Medicaid.
Shawnt'e's father dropped out of their lives before the girl turned 2. He has paid only $17.11 in child support despite a court order to pay $51 a month, Bell said. She also often keeps her 3-year-old nephew when his mother drops him off for weeks at a time, and she recently took in her pregnant sister, who suffers from frequent seizures.
They live rent-free in a Hilltop Homes apartment operated by the Dayton Metropolitan Housing Authority. Bell gets a $24 monthly subsidy to use for bills, $228 in food stamps, and Medicaid. To get food stamps, Bell has to work 44 hours a month without pay for Hilltop Homes. She's had no luck finding paying work.
"You go in and put in an application when they're hiring and the next minute they done filled up all the spots because you got there too late or they didn't accept your application," she said.
Bell was months behind on her electric bill after moving into the apartment in December, but she was able to get caught up on that bill and others using the earned income tax credit for an income tax refund.
"The $228 takes me and (Shawnt'e) a long way. The food is not the problem," said Bell. "It's not having no money. I have to buy household items, school supplies for her, her uniforms, personal hygiene items for me. It's hard."
It wasn't always this way. Bell has her GED and has worked in factories, as a hospital cashier and as a nurse's aide. In 1998 she began baby-sitting children in her home for the Montgomery County Department of Job and Family Services.
She loved the work, and she was able to buy things for her daughter and live in a house.
But that ended in July after Bell's brother was caught with drugs in her house.
Bell said her brother, Antjuan Bell, 25, came to visit his son, the nephew she baby-sits. Police say he was living there and they moved to arrest him that day after observing drug activity at the house. When police arrived, Antjuan ran into the house and dropped drugs, which officers confiscated, said Dayton Police Detective John Ness.
Ness said LaQuan Bell should have known that drug activity was occurring because police warned her with a notice she signed on May 31, 2001, and told her she'd be evicted if she didn't halt the activity.
Ness said there is no indication that Bell was involved in drug sales. Antjuan Bell, and a cousin, Demetrius Bell, 22, were charged with possession of crack cocaine and granted treatment in lieu of conviction, according to Montgomery County Common Pleas Court records.
LaQuan Bell, who was never charged with a crime and said she doesn't do drugs, wound up getting evicted under the city's public use nuisance law and lost the baby-sitting job. She and Shawnt'e lived in Red Cross Emergency Housing for five months.
"A person can be on welfare and still be homeless. There's a lot of things that can occur to a family," said Robert L. Kelley Jr., director of the emergency housing program, which has also sheltered welfare recipients who became homeless after Montgomery County sanctioned them or withdrew benefits because of time limits.
When Bell was living in the shelter, she learned she had nearly reached the 36-month time limit on benefits. Bell said caseworkers had never told her that the smaller welfare checks she'd been getting while working a low-paying job counted against the time limit. She also was sanctioned with loss of cash assistance during her stay with the Red Cross because she missed her new welfare work assignment. Bell said she was sick and unable to find child care.
When her eligibility for cash benefits ran out in December, Bell was unable to get a hardship extension, which is not available to people who are sanctioned within six months of reaching the end of eligibility.
Bell is still uncertain why she couldn't get more help.
"I guess they thought the money was coming out of their pocket because they're the taxpayers," Bell said of welfare workers.
Dannetta Graves, director of Montgomery County Job and Family Services, declined comment on Bell's case, citing privacy rules. But Graves did say that the department could not allow her to continue baby-sitting because of the drug incident and said all welfare clients should know how many months of eligibility are left because it is printed on the welfare check.
For Bell, welfare reform simply hasn't worked out. She thinks time limits on cash assistance have only made life a harder struggle for the poor.
"They need to put it back the way it was," said Bell. "They would give you enough to pay your bills and buy your little household accessories. But you still would have to make ends meet one way or another."
Contact Lynn Hulsey at 225-7455 or lynn_hulsey@coxohio.com [From the Dayton Daily News: 06.17.2002]
e-mail address: lynn_hulsey@coxohio.com
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