For six months I lived in an indigent housing area (about 4 years ago. We were paying two rents, and I chose to move out with my husband so we’d be together instead of apart for 7 months). It was the type of place where I couldn’t turn my back from my one year while walking because he might pick up one of the random used condoms thrown in the bushes, or pieces of abundant shattered glass.

I was in my late twenties, and the oldest mother of one child in the complex. Anyone else from his or her midtwenties up had numerous children from different relationships, and looked about 20 years older than their actual age. I don’t know of a single one of them that used a daycare facility (granted, I didn’t know everyone). Most either very fortunately lived with their mother, some other relative, or paid a friend to watch the children. The friends were usually neglectful. Our neighbor had three children, and while he was away at work he placed the five year old in charge of the two and three year olds, and they ran around the complex unsupervised all day. Their mother was at a drug rehab hospital.

I saw a baby I would guess to be around 15 months old playing at the park alone. I waited over an hour with the baby until the mother came back for it. She ignored me, picked up her child, threw it into the van, and drove away. I found out later that the mother did this frequently.

I saw a lot while living in that complex, but every single day I was absolutely astounded by the poor choices people made that put them in that situation. Why would a sixteen year old, three months after having a baby, get pregnant again? Why did the single twenty-two going on 60 year old mother with four kids, who worked at Jack in the Box, have all of those children? Somehow, I don’t think the solution is to give someone like that a check, increasing the amount in proportion to increased irresponsibility.

I don’t believe in punishing the poor for being poor, but there’s a point at which the line between helping and creating a dependent class is crossed. How do you do one without the other?
I’ve always admired the Mormon community. They have a strong community support structure, and huge families, which are almost always self-sustaining. I once lived next door to a Mormon family of 13 (eleven children). If a Mormon family endures hard financial times, their private community helps out. Mormon welfare



Could we use some of their principles to clean up our own welfare system? Would it be feasible to replace some (or all) of our programs, which currently offer no work experience and limited returns in cost to society, with programs that require productivity? Perhaps a stipend could be given (replacing or supplementing welfare payments) to recipients for their services, similar to the CCC idea, accept it might include daycare service as well. A single mother, for instance, could earn money providing hours at a daycare, as well as taking care of her own children...Or she might volunteer for an exchange program, with the number of daycare hours for her children matching the time she put in watching other's.
Perhaps incentives for privatization of such programs could be offered. Ideally, I would hope that such programs could be entirely privately funded eventually, with decreasing participation during economic booms. Work in the outside world would be more lucrative, and skills and experience gained on the job could be used to obtain future employment. What do you think? Could the Mormon example work on a larger scale?

A bit more on this, the employees in the Deseret Industries stores get a small income, health benefits, and in some locations a hot lunch every day. Some of the employees are permanent, some are there temporarily. I know a few people in each category, one is a Downs Syndrome lady and she is able to almost live on her own, so she gets looked after by her co-workers, and the other was a young family man who was unable to find work for a time and the church put him to work in the store for awhile.
Within predominantly Mormon communities it is not unlikely for non-members to get help as the members are more likely to be aware of their neighbors in need than in larger communities where the LDS Religion is in the minority.

While the Morman program sounds very good and helpful, I don't think it could realistically work on a larger scale. There are too many people who would take advantage of what's being offered. But I think it would be good for some of the ideas to be integrated into our welfare system...like being expected to work in exchange for what's being offered by the community to keep you alive. Like I heard somewhere, "If you can walk to the welfare office, you can walk to work." The welfare program and housing facilities, if I am remembering my history correctly, were created to help struggling people get back on their feet. They were only intended to be temporary, but there are numerous people nowadays who have taken advantage of these programs for generations, never trying to go out, find a job, and support their families on their own. Now, I'm not trying to bash those on welfare, but there are people who aren't on welfare, working two and three jobs, busting their butts to support their families, and just getting by, while some of those on welfare are sitting pretty, just waiting for the government to provide. That doesn't sound very fair to me, and I definately think some changes need to be made.

If you mean by the Mormon example, take people who are out of work and set up special programs for them to receive compensation for work, I guess yes if the government wants to invest in the programs. Back in the New Deal days we had the wpa and the ccc.

It seems to me there is a lot of environmental clean up and people help projects that could soak up a lot of labor. Of course nothing ultimately will work if you don't get a handle on population growth and start reversing some of our budget priorities.

Well, I was actually born and raised in Utah(mormon mecca). I lived next door to a family that had seven children, the father died and the mother had been a "home-maker" with no professional skills. I remember watching a van pull up in their driveway, a freezer was installed in her garage and I watched several months worth of meat and vegetables being unloaded into the freezer. They put her through some job training, and she was required to help can tomatoes. I thought it was an awesome display of human decency.

Now, let me tell you a different story. My uncle lived accross the street from a woman who had eleven children, which came from a total of five fathers. None of the fathers had ever lived in that house as far as my uncle could ever tell. She was on state welfare. My uncle had made a comment at church one day about her, and apparently she was a very controversial subject at that church. They started helping her when she had her third child, she refused to work at any of the places they offered to her, and she just kept getting pregnant over and over again by many different men. Now, I'm sure that the church didn't approve of all the out of marriage sex, but their real beef was that she was acting extremely irresponsibly by not working, having more and more children she can't afford to take care of, and basically just taking advantage of the church. The rest of their members pay their 10% tithing to help the 'real' needy. So, they cut her off, and she headed straight for the unemployment and welfare offices. That's where she's been ever since. Apparently there are more loopholes in the welfare system than many tend to admit to.

Now, as far as using it on a nation-wide scale. Well, it's hard to say. The mormon welfare system is unique, it's not just about helping people through hard times, it has a lot to do with helping the people in your community, your neighbor that was in the same kindergarten class you were in, the lady down the street that you've seen in church every sunday for the past 10+ years. And somehow the mormon faith is tied into it. I think it works well for them, and maybe we can take "parts" of the system and integrate them into our national welfare system, but I don't think it scales well in it's present form.