THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 6, 1996 TAG: 9610040029
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: MARGARET EDDS
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: 78 lines
Scott Oostdyk is no Johnny-come-lately to the woes of urban America.
As a teen-ager, he coordinated a street program in the South Bronx. As a Princeton undergraduate, he founded an exchange program between East Harlem kids and his college peers. And as an attorney with one of Virginia's premier law firms, he has spent literally thousands of hours mentoring poor families, working in the Gilpin Court public-housing project and representing needy individuals in court.
Now the 36-year-old commercial-litigation lawyer has a new challenge - making Virginia's far-reaching welfare-to-work reform take root and flourish.
As welfare reform takes effect nationally this month, many of those with hands-on experience with the poor fear it will lead to catastrophe. The interest of reformers too often seems more in saving dollars than saving the poor.
But Virginians should find comfort in one fact: The man in charge here takes a back seat to no one in his personal investment in helping the poor help themselves. For years, he has put time, muscle and soul where his mouth is. And he has reached a different conclusion from the critics.
``We cannot conquer poverty,'' says Oostdyk, who since May has been a deputy secretary for Health and Human Resources, charged with overseeing welfare reform. ``But people can conquer their poverty. . . . There are tremendous survival instincts (among the poor), and I am betting they will make most people fight for the dignity of their families.''
Oostdyk does not argue that the carrot-and-stick approach now being tested in Virginia and the nation is the ultimate answer for all time and for everyone. In sum, the reforms demand work; allow women temporarily to collect both welfare checks and take-home pay, plus benefits such as child care; and then after a time cut off public assistance altogether.
The beauty of the reforms, says Oostdyk, is that they ``put dynamite under the logjam'' that exists at the bottom of the economic ladder. After decades of dependence on government to insulate against destitution, the nation has no way to gauge how many people truly cannot make it on thier own, he says.
Oostdyk quotes Washington-Post columnist William Raspberry in explaining his view: ``Welfare reform will be great for some and not so great for others, but we have got to do it because we don't know what the true level of societal need is. This flushes it out to ground zero.''
Such views have been honed during a lifetime of involvement with the poor. Oostdyk's grandfather was a Dutch emigre who made millions on the docks of New York. His father is a social worker who early on involved his children in New York's street scene. Along with a group of Reagan-era individualists, including Texas businessman Bunker Hunt and former Dallas Cowboys owner Clint Murchison, the senior Oostdyk founded a church-based, anti-poverty group known as Strategies to Elevate People (STEP).
A square-jawed, rosy-cheeked father of three, Oostdyk quips that he is probably the only attorney at McGuire, Woods, Battle & Boothe taught to tie his shoes by a heroin addict. His unusual roots have given him access to both the very wealthy and the very poor, and the experience convinces him that private solutions to poverty are ultimately more hopeful than public ones.
One thing Oostdyk knows for sure is that welfare reform is unlikely to work unless critics of the system - from employers, to church laity to average Joes - do as he has done: roll up their sleeves and lend a hand.
To that end, he sees a major part of his job as educational. As Hampton Roads prepares to fully enter the welfare-reform program in 1998, he recommends several steps.
First, organizations and individuals who want to help should call up the local director of social services and find out how they can.
Second, business executives should make plans to hire welfare recipients and should offer to link up their human resources staffs with local social-services departments.
Third, churches should seriously consider offering space for day-care centers for welfare moms. And they should think about becoming involved in foster care - an even more pressing need than help with welfare reform, he said.
At this early stage, ``my posture is to be overly enthusiastic, (to say) everything is possible,'' said Oostdyk.
On the brink of cataclysmic change, that optimism is comforting. Even more hopeful is the fact that, at least with Oostdyk, the cheer is grounded not in theory or think tanks, but life. MEMO: Ms. Edds is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot. by CNB