Over the hill to the poor-house I’m trudgin’ my weary way—
I, a woman of seventy, and only a trifle gray—
I, who am smart an’ chipper, for all the years I’ve told.
As many another woman that’s only half as old.
What is the use of heapin’ on me a pauper’s shame?
Am I lazy or crazy? am I blind or lame?
True, I am not so supple, nor yet so awful stout;
But charity ain’t no favor. If one can live without.
Over the hill to the poor-house—my child’rn dear, goodby!
Many a night I’ve watched you when only God was nigh;
And God’ll judge between us; but I will al’ays pray
That you shall never suffer the half I do today. …1
In August 1982, the Board of Supervisors of Sacramento County, California, amended the county’s general assistance (GA) policy to provide some GA recipients with in-kind benefits consisting of shelter and food instead of cash grants. As of October 1, 1982, these in-kind benefits were being provided by Volunteers of America at the seventy-two-bed Bannon Street Shelter, which is in the City of Sacramento. At that time, the county contracted with Volunteers of America for thirty beds for GA recipients at a cost of $118,624.80 a year.
The rationale for requiring eligible GA recipients to accept in-kind aid at the shelter in lieu of the cash grant was, in the Board of Supervisors’ words, “budgetary limitations” that required the “cost-effective utilization of all available resources.”2 However, the introduction of in-kind services is not “cost effective” on a per capita basis. The annual cost of $3,954 per bed for GA recipients at the shelter is 44 percent higher than the GA cash grant of $184 per month given to GA recipients who are not in the shelter ($2,208 per year) if all the beds are occupied; for each bed unoccupied, the per-person cost rises proportionately.
Dennis B. Hart, director of the Sacramento County Department of Social Welfare, has stated frequently in the media that the county program has been successful in discouraging people from applying for GA. “Our welfare budget was accelerating rapidly, up 59 percent over the last two years,” Hart said in one newspaper report.3 In the first five months of the program, he added, the number of welfare applicants dropped by more than half. Hart estimated that the county was saving about $100,000 per month.
If all California counties had poorhouses and saved approximately $100,000 per month ($1.2 million per year), the poor people of the state would be deprived of tens of millions of dollars in GA grants; nationally, the figure would be in the hundreds of millions. Thus, it is evident that a lot is at stake.
On March 1, 1983, attorneys from Legal Services of Northern California (Sacramento) and the Western Center on Law and Poverty (Los Angeles) requested that the Superior Court of California issue a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to prevent the county from denying in-cash GA benefits to five plaintiffs and from continuing to require other GA recipients to live at what ‘the attorneys called “the poorhouse”—a term that has been adopted popularly for Bannon Street.
On March 4, 1983, the Superior Court judge granted cash aid to five individuals for the sole purpose of allowing them to leave the shelter. On March 21, 1983, plaintiffs asked for a second restraining order on behalf of an additional fourteen persons, which was denied on March 24, 1983.
NINETEENTH-CENTURY POORHOUSES
One must reach back into the American past to study American poorhouses. The last systematic study of poorhouses from a contemporary view was written by Warner in the 1890s. Warner documents the ways in which the different states were phasing out the almshouses and stated:
The almshouse is the fundamental institution in American poor relief. … It is ordinarily a depressing experience to visit an almshouse, and accordingly we find it an institution that even the benevolent willingly forget.
It was early seen that a sure way to train up paupers was to rear children in almshouses.4
Carelton’s poem cited at the beginning of the article shows the deep repugnance Americans had for this institution.5 But it was only at the beginning of the twentieth century that this country began to recognize that in an increasingly urban industrial society, many dependent persons could not be cared for adequately by their families without assistance from the community. The poorhouse did not disappear all at once from the American scene, however. During the Great Depression of the 1930s. shelters like Bannon Street sprang up throughout the nation and the poorhouse was temporarily revived as a means of meeting the needs of the unemployed. Sutherland and Locke, who were sociologists, contributed to the demise of these shelters by writing extensively about the detrimental effects of these facilities on the residents.6 The nation seemed to have learned the important lesson that individuals and families need social insurance and public assistance to protect them from fluctuations in the economy. Social reformers and social workers identified and made the public conscious of the special needs of particular populations to maintain independent living situations in as unrestrictive an environment as possible. Under the New Deal, the government responded by creating federal programs to help special categories of needy people; thus. Aid to the Aged, Aid to the Totally Disabled, and Aid to Families with Dependent Children took up the functions of the poorhouse, enabling people to meet their needs for food, clothing, and shelter while maintaining their independence.
This brief history of the demise of the nineteenth century poorhouse illustrates why Sacramento’s Bannon Street program is an anachronism. Over the last one hundred years, Americans have learned that it is better for dependent populations—the frail aged, dependent and neglected children, the physically handicapped, and so forth—to live in the community with their own families if at all possible. Deinstitutionalization is the thrust of current social policy. Community care and independent living are the preferred modes of care for dependent persons. However, unlike the vulnerable populations just mentioned, some of whom may require institutionalization, GA recipients are distinguished only by their financial need, which is tested stringently and vigorously by Sacramento County. Financial need is the sole basis for receiving GA benefits.
Under the Workfare program, those GA recipients who receive a cash benefit ($184 a month fora single person) are required to work seven days a month for Sacramento County—and the work is not pleasant. (One major work project is to clear brush around county facilities.) In addition, recipients must report changes in their eligibility status immediately. Failure to do so results in suspension from GA for thirty days.
Although some social welfare analysts are critical of workfare programs, in the authors’ interviews with GA residents at the Bannon Street Shelter and in the many statements filed by the residents against the county, no one complained about the work requirement. The residents’ major complaint was the loss of freedom and dignity they suffered by being compelled to live in the poorhouse.
IS BANNON STREET A POORHOUSE?
At this time, the only people eligible for GA who are compelled to accept residence at Bannon Street (if a bed is available) in lieu of a cash grant are English-speaking, employable, unmarried men and women without children under age 18 who do not own a home. (If all the beds are filled at Bannon Street, they will be given a cash grant.) Largely, the people who are eligible for GA are not a transient population of drifters, hoboes, alcoholics, or otherwise marginal people, most of whom could not meet the eligibility requirements for GA. But what most qualifies the Bannon Street arrangement as a poorhouse is that it compels people without financial means, who are otherwise able, to live in humiliating circumstances in which they are stripped of their identity and made dependent on keepers appointed by the state.
Residents cannot come and go freely at Bannon Street. A staff member must give them entry at all times. They must be up at 6:00 a.m., and curfew is at 9:00 p.m. There is no privacy in the shower or anywhere else. Residents live in a dormitory next to whomever the county chooses. The staff members decide when the lights go on and off. (The lights are dimmed but never actually turned off because the dormitories must be policed by the staff.) Because residents receive no cash allowance, many sell their blood to obtain money for personal items.
Bannon Street Shelter Is “over the hill”—literally “on the other side of the tracks”—and surrounded by factories and a mission for transients. At all hours, the men from the mission loiter around the shelter. It is in a dangerous-looking environment.
Before the first court hearing, forty-two of the seventy-two beds at Bannon Street were used for transients. In addition, men from the mission next door were allowed to use the showers, toilets, and other facilities at the shelter during the day. Residents had to bring their toothbrushes to the staff to receive their allotments of toothpaste, there were no doors on the toilet stalls, and toilet paper was distributed by staff because residents had been known to jam toilet paper rolls into the bowls. (This behavior is common among people who resent their Jailors.)
Since the first court hearing, the county has “improved” conditions. All the beds at Bannon Street are now used for GA recipients, thereby eliminating the transients, and the total number of beds has been reduced to sixty-seven to conform to regulations of the county Department of Health. (The transients now have nowhere to stay. They sleep on the pavement outside the County Office Building.) The transient men from the mission can no longer use the facilities at Bannon Street during the day. Residents are now issued their own personal tubes of toothpaste, a kind of toilet paper dispenser has been installed that will deter residents from jamming the toilets, and doors have been put on the toilet stalls. County officials are eager to meet any criticism regardless of cost because they want the program to continue.
The county has mustered a flock of administrators and agency functionaries to testify that Bannon Street is a fine place. For example, Jim Sawyer, an associate administrative analyst for the Sacramento Department of Social Welfare, answered some of the concerns raised by the court observers and the plaintiffs as follows:
It has been complained that insects have been found in the food. The staff at Bannon Street has never heard of such a problem, and no report has ever been made of such a problem to the management of Bannon Street.
It has been complained that people fight, get drunk. No one is allowed to drink in the facility at Bannon Street. If someone becomes disorderly he is required to leave the facility.
It has been complained that the lights are left on all night in the dormitories. The only lights which are left on are safety night lights which are required for safety regulations.
It has been complained that personal belongings are not secure and that thieving occurs at Bannon Street. The management is aware of very little thievery occurring at Bannon Street because of the many security measures taken by the staff.7
Thus, the county disposes of problems by decreeing that they do not exist.
Vicky Russell, who works for Catholic Community Services (CCS) of Sacramento to find shelter for transients, said she was “pleasantly amazed at the services rendered to the residents.” She “never heard that anyone lacked privacy. “ “The women’s quarters.” she said, “reminded me of my college dorm, but with more services available.”8 (CCS received at least $48,502 from the county last year.)
A GOOD PROGRAM?
The purpose of all California social services, as stated in California’s Welfare and Institutions Code, is “to provide for protection, care and assistance to the people of the State in need thereof, and to promote the welfare and happiness of all the people of the State by providing appropriate aid and services to all of its needy and distressed.”9 The California legislature has expressed its specific intent that “aid shall be so administered and services so provided, to the extent not in conflict with Federal law, as to encourage self-respect, self-reliance, and the desire to be a good citizen, useful to society.”10 To achieve this purpose with the GA recipients—able-bodied individuals capable of employment—social service administrators are faced with translating these laws into a practical and just program that meets the legislature’s intent but which protects the community’s interest as they interpret it (minimizing welfare costs by discouraging people from applying for GA). The county’s choice of the poorhouse as a solution leaves no doubt that its primary concern is not to protect the interests of people who are eligible for GA. The issue is not whether to require people to work if they are to receive welfare benefits; the GA recipients have no complaint about the workfare requirement. The issue is not the size of the grant; $ 184 is about what they would earn if they received the minimum wage for working the required seven days. The issue is not whether shelters such as Bannon Street should exist; people may need or choose to use such a shelter. The issue is one of choice, of control over one’s life.
By using the poorhouse as a deterrent to those who would otherwise apply for cash benefits, the county claims it has achieved its purpose of eliminating from the GA rolls people who are not truly needy. But the deterrent of in-kind aid does not rationally discriminate among those who are truly needy and those who are not. The people who are most reluctant to accept cash welfare benefits are those most likely to be deterred from accepting “help” offered in a demeaning fashion. It cannot be assumed that a reduction in the number of applications for GA bears any relation to the real needs of those who do not apply.
Thus, the decision not to apply is not a sufficient indication of the absence of need. To avoid the poorhouse, the needy who attempt to retain their pride may choose to sleep under a bridge or outdoors or to leave the county in which they have lived for a long time, thus contributing to a national problem of homelessness. Moreover, people who are forced to move to avoid the poorhouse may become needy in other ways with which the community will have to deal. For example, homeless persons are likely to develop major health problems requiring medical services that are considerably more expensive than GA.
In addition, homeless people lose what social scientists call “social margin”—family relationships, friendships, possessions, skills, and personal attributes that can be used, sold, or bartered in return for necessary assistance.11 Social margin is an aid in times of need; it protects or softens the fall of the downwardly mobile. People who apply for GA are usually neither transient nor disabled. Their application for welfare, often for the first time, is a desperate attempt to retain whatever social margin they have left and to bring themselves back into the working mainstream. By offering a form of aid that is unacceptable, the county forces these people to exhaust all social margin, making it more likely that they will become part of a chronically poor population incapable of restoring themselves to independent living. Unable to repay small loans or return favors from relatives and friends, they lose whatever contacts and help they may depend on from their social network to maintain an independent existence. Some of these individuals may come to accept in-kind aid on their path to chronic poverty. (The people who come to the poorhouse in the future are more likely to be chronically dependent.)
In the long run, the community may suffer from the resultant crime that is an alternative means of survival. Thus, although the poorhouse requirement initially may reduce the number of applications for GA, it may, in the end, push the truly needy into a more desperate situation, creating more severe problems for the community. And, it is ironic that the creation of a chronically dependent population eventually will lead to increased costs for the social welfare system.
IS THE POORHOUSE UNLAWFUL?
Two major legal issues are involved in using the poorhouse as a form of aid. The first is whether the Bannon Street solution conflicts with the law’s intent to “encourage self-respect, self-reliance, and the desire to be a good citizen, useful to society.”12 The second issue is whether, according to the law, an individual has a right to GA benefits that are provided by the state without having to forego the rights of privacy, free association, travel, and liberty.
Self-Respect and Self-Reliance
It has been amply demonstrated that institutionalization in controlled environments defeats the objective of encouraging people to maintain “self-respect and self-reliance.” Research on the effects of institutionalization has shown that living in a structured and regimented environment, although beneficial to some, has a harmful impact on many people.13 Institutions that impose strict routines and regimentation on residents create a syndrome of apathy and passive compliance that has been referred to as institutional dependence. 14
Moreover, institutional dependence occurs in persons with no other handicap than poverty, as Sutherland and Locke discovered in a 1934 study conducted for the Illinois Emergency Relief Commission Authority. In that study, Sutherland and Locke considered the life situations of unemployed men who were forced to accept in-kind aid (“lodging, meals, facilities for cleanliness and recreation”) in twenty government-run shelters in Chicago during the depression.15 The purpose of the study was “to secure better understanding of the life experiences and attitudes of the sheltered men and their reactions to the relief policies which were being used.”16 Sutherland and Locke noted that an unemployed man “does not choose, but is forced to enter the shelter because he is destitute and homeless.”17
They then described a phenomenon they called “shelterization”:
After a period of time, a man becomes less sensitive. … He shows a tendency to lose all sense of personal responsibility for getting out of the shelter; to become insensible to the element of time: to lose ambitions, pride, self-respect and confidence; to avoid former friends and to identity himself with the shelter group.18
The residents who were the most vulnerable to shelterization were those for whom the change in circumstances was the greatest. The transients (“hobohemians” as Sutherland and Locke termed them) were not as greatly affected and were much less likely to deteriorate because they experienced relatively little change in going to the shelter. There is every reason to assume that most of the persons who are forced to live at the Bannon Street facility are employable but unable to find jobs and that they will suffer the most psychological harm from institutionalization.
Contrary to assertions in the declarations submitted by the county, the length of time that an individual resides in an institution does not determine whether the person will develop institutional dependence. For example, Sutherland and Locke wrote about “two roads to dependency”—a long one and a short one.19 They found that shelterization could occur after a few months and that nontransients precipitously declined into shelter dependence. These individuals experienced a “personal crisis” and felt they had suffered a “social death” because they were forced to identify with persons from the lowest social strata and life in skid-row or ghetto areas.20
It is clear from the social science literature cited earlier that taking away the “locus of control” from the residents of institutions results in a loss of initiative; institutionalized persons effectively lose the capacity and inclination to care for themselves. Once individuals have settled into institutions, it becomes more difficult for them to resume independent lives in the community. Routine daily decisions become more difficult to make and are likely to be avoided. Thus, institutions like Bannon Street achieve exactly the opposite of what is intended: their residents become more dependent and needy and thus continue to require institutionalization. That this is happening at Bannon Street is confirmed by many of the residents’ statements: “There are so many rules that I can’t control my own Life”, “I lost the desire to participate in that rigorously controlled environment”; “I think I’m becoming a different person in this environment. I’m losing control of my emotions.”
Right to Privacy and Free Association
The right to privacy is especially protected in California. In 1972, it was specifically added to the “other inalienable rights of individuals” enumerated in Article 1, Section 1, of the California State Constitution. The California Supreme Court concluded that the right to live with whomever one chooses is also a constitutional right.21 But, at the Bannon Street facility, people are forced to forego their privacy and the right to free association and must live by standards imposed by an agency of the state. For example. Douglas Donovan, a resident at Bannon Street, had maintained an apartment until he was forced to move to the shelter. He had no choice but to abandon his furniture and to place his clothing and other possessions in storage: however, because he receives no cash benefits, he is likely to lose the little property he owns because he will not be able to redeem his possessions. In addition, according to Mr. Donovan, he has been deprived of contact with his friends and the woman he dates because he believes the area is unsafe and because there is no privacy at the poorhouse. He is embarrassed for people to know he is there. He cannot visit friends outside the facility because he receives no allowance for travel.
WILL BANNON STREET SUCCEED?
The Bannon Street Shelter will succeed—if the courts and community permit it. But viewed as a long-term solution to the problems of unemployment and financial need, the poorhouse is inadequate. In the short run, departments of welfare may see it as a means to reduce their budgets because they will save the initial money formerly paid as cash benefits. But, in the long view, the Sacramento poorhouse is the equivalent of jumping off a building into a safety net whose bottom is on the ground. The poorhouse is not only a violation of individual rights: it is a poor solution to the needs of poor people and eventually may enhance the skepticism of the American public about welfare programs that do not work.
The solution to Sacramento County’s financial problems does not lie in Sacramento County. California’s tax-cutting Proposition 13 and federal reductions in allocations for welfare programs, along with the high rates of unemployment in the state and in the country as a whole, are the sources of the financial problems being experienced by many counties in the United States, including those throughout California. The solutions to these problems do not lie in county programs that drive the poor people of one community to seek refuge in another. For that reason, the state and the nation cannot ignore the Bannon Street Shelter. Local communities must not be encouraged to dig through the dustbin of the Victorian past for discarded solutions to contemporary problems.
Postscript
On May 23, 1983, the Sacramento trial court refused to grant preliminary relief to the GA recipients who challenged the poorhouse requirements. The denial of a preliminary injunction dissolved the temporary restraining order that granted cash assistance to the first five plaintiffs on March 24, 1983. An appeal is planned. The case will proceed to trial in the Sacramento Superior Court by fall 1983.
Footnotes
Note: Both authors are serving as expert witnesses for the plaintiffs in the case described. Dr. Specht is representing the California Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers in the case.
From Will Carleton, “Over the Hill to the Poorhouse,” Farm Ballads (New York: Harper & Bros., 1882), pp. 51, 52, 56.
Sacramento County Board of Supervisors, Resolution No. 82–967, August 31, 1982. Exhibit “A,” Sec. 75.
Bill Soltter, “Inside book at a Modem Poorhouse,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 9, 1983, p. 1. See also Sacramento Bee, April 12. 1983, pp. 131–132. and Wall Street Journal, March 30, 1983, pp. 1–2.
Amos G. Warner, American Charities (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1894), pp. 139–140 and 142.
Carleton, “Over the Hill to the Poorhouse.”
Edwin H. Sutherland and Harvey J. Locke. Twenty Thousand Homeless Men (Chicago: J. B. Lipplncott Co., 1936; reprint, New York: Amo Press and New York Times Co., 1971).
All statements by county personnel and the plaintiffs cited here and in subsequent paragraphs, including dates and names, are sworn testimony by way of declarations that are part of the court record. See Superior Court of the State of California, in and for the County of Sacramento, Arthur Robbins et al., plaintiffs, v. County of Sacramento et al., defendants, No. 308473.
Ibid.
California Welfare and Institutions Code, 10000.
See Rosas v. Montgomery, supra, 10 Cal. App. 3d at 88.
See, for example. Steven Paul Segal. Jim Baumohl. and Elsie Johnson. “Falling Through the Cracks: Mental Disorder and Social Margin in a Young Vagrant Population.” Social Problems. 24 (February 1977). pp. 387–400.
California Welfare and Institutions Code.
Erving Goffman, Asylums (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Co., 1959); B. Bettelheim and E. Sylvester: “A Therapeutic Mileau,” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 18. (1948), pp. 191–206: R. D. King. N. V. Raynes. and J. Tizard, Patterns of Residential Care (London, England: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975): and E. Zigler and D. A. Balia, “Impact of Institutional Experience on the Behavior and Development of Retarded Persons.” American Journal of Mental Deficiencies, 82 (1977), pp. 1–11.
Steven P. Segal and E. William Moyles, “Management Style and Institutional Dependency in Sheltered Care,” Social Psychiatry. 14 (1979), pp. 159–165.
Sutherland and Locke, Twenty Thousand Homeless Men.
Ibid., p. v.
Ibid., p. 17.
Ibid., p. 146.
Ibid., p. 70–93.
Ibid., p. 92–93.
City of Santa Barbara v. Adamson (1980). 27 Cal. 3d 123.