Parks says although not everyone in a successful Project Zero site gets off welfare, even those who lose cash assistance are often far from being able to meet their families needs. It s enough for her to lose cash assistance, but it might not pay her rent. Parks says jobs people obtain with the help of Project Zero can cause them to lose not only cash assistance, but also some of their food stamps, the option of fully subsidized day care, and the utility shutoff protection they ve had through the state. She says some people leave welfare to face no heat or electricity and hundreds of dollars in past-due utility bills. After the past few years of state and federal policies weeding people off of welfare, there is also concern that those who remain on welfare, swept out of the public radar, will be caught in an endless cycle of job-seeking futility.
People left now are much harder to serve.
They don t have skills. It s not enough just to say, Go find a job. They need more than that. He says some welfare recipients are experiencing such great barriers to employment, such as homelessness or mental illness, that employers continually refuse to hire them, yet the state keeps sending them back to be rejected. Jennifer Bagwell is a Metro Times staff writer.