THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, January 18, 1997 TAG: 9701180535
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY NANCY LEWIS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 56 lines
Asking residents of public housing to volunteer 20 hours a year to their communities will give them an edge when it comes to adjusting to welfare reform, the deputy U.S. secretary of health and human resources said Friday.
Scott C. Oostdyk called Norfolk's new social-lease clause for public-housing tenants ``a great start'' and said he knew of no other municipality that had taken that step.
The controversial social lease passed Monday by the city's housing authority will get welfare recipients ``used to the idea'' of donating their time, something they'll be doing ``a lot more'' of if they don't have jobs come the first of next year, Oostdyk said.
He made his comments as he prepared to address a crowd of about 150 people Friday at the grand opening of Goodwill Industries of Hampton Roads' new Career Resource Center on Tidewater Drive.
On Oct. 1, some 8,000 Hampton Roads residents will be told to get a job within 90 days or work 20 hours a week for no pay to keep their welfare benefits in place. In the interim, they will have to make 30 job-search contacts a week, Oostdyk said. Work done for free to keep welfare payments coming in lieu of a regular job might include helping schoolteachers or doing office tasks in social services departments, he said.
Those who find paying jobs will be able to collect welfare payments in addition to their paychecks, up to the poverty level, for two years. They will have day-care, transportation and medical costs paid for three years.
Gainfully employed or not, after two years payments stop.
But folks moving off welfare or onto workfare will get a hand up from organizations like Goodwill, said Oostdyk, touting the project as a prime example of public-private partnerships that he hopes will include more and more businesses.
Goodwill's new learning center is in a building just south of its Tidewater Drive thrift store near downtown. The four classrooms and five offices comprise 12,000 square feet where work-readiness and computer classes for both economically disadvantaged and disabled people will be held.
Funding for the program comes, in part, from the state in fee-service payments. It will cost $30,000 to get the learning center up and running.
Statewide, where reforms have already been implemented, only 5 percent of welfare recipients have resorted to ``community work experience,'' the term used for the free work in exchange for welfare checks, Oostdyk said.
The help that community organizations like Goodwill offer will make a difference when it comes to welfare reform, he said.
``You don't say to people just go out there and make it'' because ``fear is the enemy.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo by RICHARD L. DUNSTON/The Virginian-Pilot
Scott Oostdyk, deputy U.S. secretary of Health and Human Resources,
tells the grand opening of Goodwill Industries' Career Resource
Center of the need for assisting welfare reform.
KEYWORDS: PUBLIC HOUSING VOLUNTEER SOCIAL LEASE COMMUNITY
SERVICE