Challenges of Welfare Reform

* “Aid Recipients Face Battle for Limited Jobs” (June 1) explains the difficulty of putting up to 700,000 welfare recipients to work. I am deeply concerned that welfare-to-work proposals will have the unintended effect of further increasing unemployment among poor and at-risk urban youth.

Our agency works with older adolescents (17- to 20-year-olds) who, in addition to being homeless, have many of the same characteristics as welfare recipients. They are poor, undereducated and lack the skills and work histories to make them competitive in the employment market. They do not, however, receive public assistance.

Proposals, as outlined by state Sen. John Vasconcellos (D-Santa Clara), that would provide employers with economic incentives to transition welfare recipients to work are needed. These proposals must be broadened, however, to include urban youth who need work to become self-sufficient. Any welfare transition plan that is not mindful of the problems faced by these adolescents will only succeed in swapping one generation of recipients for another.

FRED ALI, Exec. Director

Covenant House California

Hollywood

* Re “AFDC Check Program Opens With Long Lines,” June 2:

Please allow me the opportunity to wake up early, as I do every day, along with my wife and two children, and stand in line awhile to pick up free money I haven’t earned. Do these people really think any hard-working family living within its means could give a damn if they are “inconvenienced” one day a month? Why is it the continued policy of entitlement is allowed to breed such outrageous expectations in people in obvious need of motivation?

We would love to have more children but realize there are no handouts or free rides, isn’t that right? MICHAEL CURRY

Chatsworth