L.A. homelessness explosion on the way.

There may not be many occasions when so-called bleeding-heart liberals and business leaders preoccupied with the bottom line would join a united chorus expressing concern and outrage at social policy, but the Board of Supervisors recently opened the door to this rarity.

It happened when the board voted, unanimously, to impose time limits on the availability of General Relief for persons who are deemed "employable."

In our current welfare reform climate, another measure such as this might seem innocuous. But don't be mistaken, this decision, which will restrict the availability of General Relief to five months a year, portends disaster not only for those who rely on welfare for simple survival, but also for businesses downtown that might see the number of visibly homeless persons there increase threefold.

To put the magnitude of the issue in context, consider the following:

More than 54,000 individuals stand to lose the (maximum) $212 per month that is loaned to them in exchange for five days a month of work, credited at minimum wage, at county workfare sites.

They are the most desperately poor among us - and often, the most handicapped as well. They suffer from severe literacy deficiencies, inadequate education or vocational training, mental and emotional barriers, and other limitations that severely handicap them in the increasingly competitive chase for a steady job. Others are recently released from prison or remain on probation, and no one is willing to hire them.

More than 18,000 of these individuals deemed employable have had to rely upon General Relief for more than 12 months because they cannot find work. The bottom line is that many of them would like to "pull themselves up by the bootstraps," but when they reach down, there is nothing left to pull.

Although 50 percent of all applicants for General Relief are homeless at the time of application, only 12 percent of all recipients remain homeless after getting the money. This is because tens of thousands of these individuals spend 90 percent or more of their $212 allotment to support housing. Typically, this involves renting a room in a singleroom-occupancy hotel in bleak places like Skid Row.

When I try to explain this, some people take the attitude that, Well, there are already thousands of homeless persons on our streets, so will it really make that big a difference? Consider this: Police estimate the homeless population at less than 10,000 persons within Los Angeles' city limits.

But homeless service providers put the estimate at about 42,000 on any given night. The discrepancy occurs because many homeless people do obtain temporary shelter and are not visibly on the streets where the police can see them - typically because of General Relief, which provides hotel vouchers in addition to cash assistance.

Accepting the police estimates, we may be looking at three to four times the number of visibly homeless persons in our city once the General Relief cuts go into effect. That's three to four times the number of panhandlers approaching potential customers.

Police who patrol Skid Row are concerned. One told us that when he expressed concerns about the impact of the welfare cuts, a supervisor told him: "Don't worry we'll give you the power to enforce new panhandling laws to keep the added numbers of homeless in line."

"But where are we supposed to put them?" he asked in exasperation. The jails are already notoriously full.

Let's assume we transfer the savings from the new General Relief cuts to build more prisons to accommodate those who may engage in aggressive panhandling as they adjust to surviving on the streets. The long-term cost of this should alarm taxpayers who ultimately will pay the bill.

It costs taxpayers more than $500 to jail an individual for a weekend, whereas we could house that person for two and a half months on General Relief for the same amount. Prison beds cost more than $20,000 a year per inmate: General Relief costs taxpayers less than $4,000 a year per recipient.

There are also the long-term costs of destroying the availability of thousands of rooms in single-room-occupancy hotels that were rehabilitated at a cost of many millions in federal, state, and local funds in order to house welfare recipients.

Moreover, once they lose their ability to pay for housing, the folks affected by these cuts will be exposed to crime and health problems on the streets that will translate into higher societal costs in the long run. The odds that an individual living on the streets will contract HIV/AIDS are estimated to be eight times those of the average person. And when Los Angeles becomes known as the homeless capital of the country, real estate values will plummet, and the middle class will pay for those losses.

Finally, the board's decision will take a toll on our collective character as a community. What message does it give to our children if in order to extricate ourselves from our country's budget deficit, we prey upon our most politically disenfranchised - our mentally ill, our desperately poor? How do we leach our children virtues like kindness in such a climate? As of father of two, that's ultimately the cost I'm most afraid of paying.

Paul Freese Jr. is an attorney with the nonprofit law firm Public Counsel. He specializes in legal issues affecting the homeless.