What Kind of Sense Is This?

The County of Los Angeles, in another example of social and fiscal myopia, is using every ounce of its considerable legal muscle to fight a lawsuit that alleges that it has unfairly denied general relief benefits of $312 a month per person to the homeless.

A key argument advanced by public interest, city and private pro bono attorneys is that the county’s general relief application procedures are so complicated, so decisively Byzantine that a Superior Court judge in 1986 called the application procedures “a massive bureaucracy . . . I don’t understand some of the forms myself.”

Although the county has since taken some steps to identify homeless applicants who need special assistance, such as the homeless who appear to be obviously mentally ill, county procedures are still too lax to identify and help the many who slip through the bureaucratic cracks. As described by homeless advocate Rabbi Margaret Holub, the county imposes unreasonable demands on already desperate people in order to qualify for general relief.

They must fill out applications that are complex and several pages long. They must make additional trips to other agencies to gather eligibility information. If a homeless person did not have a Social Security card, for example, he would have to go to the federal office, get a receipt for applying for the Social Security card and then place the receipt in the severely overworked county caseworker’s hands. The county will not accept the receipt by mail.

Those homeless who are able to work are properly required to complete job searches. But “completion” means that the homeless person must fill out a form from the Employment Development Department that lists 20 addresses, telephone numbers and signatures from potential employers. If this form and a required Employment Development Department card are turned in either late or incomplete, the applicant is cut off from all aid for two months.

The county sees no need to further adjust any of these or other procedures. In fact, the county is shamelessly defending the status quo, to the tune of more than $360,000 in private lawyers’ fees drawn from taxpayer money originally intended to pay for social services.

The county says it is fighting the case as a matter of principle. Any principle undergirding this lawsuit--an expensive legal fight that costs more than it would to change the procedures--eludes even the most gifted rationalization.