A history of racism explains why so many poor N.J. residents don’t get welfare, report says

NJ State House with capitol dome. TT Michael Mancuso | For NJ.comTT Michael Mancuso | For NJ.com

Only 16 of every 100 New Jersey families living in poverty are getting help under the program once known as welfare, and the reason for that is rooted in racism, a progressive research group says.

A new report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said the entire Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program — the welfare overhaul passed by Democratic President Bill Clinton and a Republican Congress three decades ago — played on the racist stereotypes of welfare moms who just had children to get a bigger check and Blacks living off the taxpayers’ dime.

Toward that end, there were caps on benefits going to families, stringent work requirements, and a five-year limit on getting help even though child care and jobs were scarce in minority communities.

“Race is really a key driver here,” said Ife Floyd, a co-author of the report. “Those narratives are really critical in persuading policymakers to tell a story that these Black and brown people have a lot of kids, they’re lazy and they’re just living off the dole. That’s what was being peddled.”

The report found racism seeped into welfare programs across the country as states received carte blanche to shape them they way they saw fit with little federal oversight or regulation.

The disparities varied state by state. In California, the ratio of families receiving the cash assistance was 70 per 100 in poverty, best in the nation. The worst were Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, with just four families receiving help for every 100 living in poverty.

New Jersey ranked 29th nationally, putting it on a par with Tennessee, Nebraska and Florida and behind neighbors New York, Pennsylvania and Connecticut.

“It’s not surprising to me that New Jersey would essentially behave, when it comes to (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families), like a southern state,” said Christopher Hayes, an urban historian at Rutgers University’s School of Management and Labor Relations. “Poor people don’t have a very effective lobby. Poor people aren’t going to put together a super PAC because they’re poor. So there’s really no one to advocate to them.”

“When you’re able to say welfare is a Trenton or Newark or a Camden issue, you don’t have to say it’s Black people,” Hayes said. “Everyone in New Jersey knows what it means.”

New Jersey pioneered a “family cap” law — so named because the sponsors intended to discourage women on public assistance from having additional children. President Bill Clinton included the concept in the landmark welfare reform legislation he enacted in 1996, which allowed other states to adopt a similar law.

Under the New Jersey law, the state did not raise the benefits when mothers receiving assistance had more children. At the time, it amounted to $64 a month.

The law was signed by Democratic Gov. Jim Florio and sponsored by a prominent Black lawmaker. Backers said the measures, which included job training, would allow welfare recipients to reduce their dependency on subsidies and gain more control over their lives.

“We want to rebuild New Jersey’s families and replace the hopelessness of welfare dependency with the hope of self-reliance,” Florio said while signing the bill in 1992.

Advocates at the time sharply criticized the Clinton-era reforms in New Jersey and other states. And studies have shown the law had little impact on pregnancy and abortion rates. Family advocates in New Jersey say 20,000 children were born to families on welfare since while the law was in effect.

“They targeted black women, they targeted unmarried mothers,” Floyd said. “They need to somehow be penalized or else they’re just going to have more kids. Instead of actually deterring women from having children, because women do not base reproductive decisions on that little bump in benefits, what we see instead are children being harmed.”

Gov. Phil Murphy and the current legislature repealed the family cap in 2020, reduced the work requirements, and boosted payments to $559 a month for a family of three, though it’s still well below the poverty line.

“New Jersey’s income assistance program is a valuable tool in supporting families,” said Tom Hester, a spokesman for the state Department of Human Services. “New Jersey has been cited as a national model for repealing the punitive so-called family cap that hurt families by denying children the resources they needed.

“We have also worked during the pandemic to help families maintain assistance, while the new state budget increases cash assistance to TANF families by increasing the child support pass through payments for families with two or more children,” he said.

But the payments come out to $6,708 a year, less than one-third of the federal poverty line of $20,598. And because housing and other necessities are so expensive in the Garden State, the true poverty line is really $70,372, Legal Services of New Jersey’s Poverty Research Institute.

Many poor people don’t even bother trying applying for the payments, Hayes said.

“It’s quite a hassle,” Hayes said. “It’s not worth it, the amount of money that you get for the hassle that you go through. They are not going to be interested in further submitting themselves to mistreatment.”

Another problem is that New Jersey’s program was designed to get people off welfare, but not help them find permanent jobs, said Brittany Holom-Trundy, a senor policy analyst with New Jersey Policy Perspective, a progressive research group.

“People will get placed into positions that don’t really help them prepare for a long term job,” she said. “Other states have been much better in making education and job training options much more applicable to people’s needs, getting people the support they need for long term jobs.”

“We don’t have a great track record in being the most progressive state for the TANF program,” Holom-Trundy said.

And many residents don’t know about it. The state does not do a good job of reaching out to poor residents and letting them know what help is available, she said.

“There are people who never get enrolled,” she said. “They don’t know that they’re eligible.”

Hester said the state wants to help make sure that those entitled to the payments get help.

“We consistently work to ensure all eligible families apply for this assistance, and urge residents to visit njhelps.org to apply for this assistance, along with food assistance and health insurance.”

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Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him at @JDSalant.

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