Timothy Laraway, 57, has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and anxiety. As a destitute person in Los Angeles County, he’s entitled to get a subsistence benefit of $221 per month from the state’s General Relief (GR) system.
But Laraway’s best efforts to obtain that meager aid ran afoul of a complicated, stressful, exhausting bureaucratic process that stymies huge numbers of Angelenos with psychological issues from accessing GR, a new lawsuit alleges.
The suit accuses Los Angeles County of making it too difficult for people with mental health issues to apply for a program called General Relief (GR), which is supposed to provide a $221 monthly stipend to all eligible Californians. It is technically available only to those with less than $50 in liquid assets and monthly income of less than $221.
But in practice, the suit says, even that meager subsistence benefit is far out of reach for tens of thousands of people who need it most. Social anxiety is a common symptom of various mental health disorders. People suffering from it “are frequently discouraged from applying for GR, or give up during the application process, because it requires spending many hours (or even days) in a DPSS office, which is typically crowded, noisy, and chaotic,” the suit says.
“Each year, thousands of indigent residents of Los Angeles County are unable to secure GR benefits…due to their mental disabilities,” the lawsuit alleges. While advocates estimate that about 40 percent of all homeless people in the area have some form of mental health challenge, the County’s system only flags about 16 percent of GR applicants as “Needs Special Assistance.”
Even when someone with mental challenges does manage to survive the psychological meatgrinder of the application process, they won’t necessarily get help.
Laraway was rejected twice from GR by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services (DPSS), according to the suit. After dealing with a line to get into the building, a security checkpoint, another line to receive an application, and hours of paperwork and waiting amid the lobby hubbub, Laraway was referred for an off-site medical assessment to verify his diagnoses of post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, and bi-polar disorder.
The first time, he missed that followup appointment because a caseworker wouldn’t write down the time and location for him even though he says he has trouble remembering things. He again missed the appointment on his second go around eight months later.
It wasn’t until someone from the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles went with him to help with the process on his third attempt that he was able to sign up, according to a suit filed Wednesday by that organization and two others on behalf of Laraway and all mentally disabled indigents in the county. Despite ultimately being found eligible for GR, he was never given back benefits to make up for the 16 months that passed between his first attempt to apply and his successful one.
If the DPSS made the application available online, the organizations suing say, many of the procedural problems that keep people like Laraway from getting assistance they’re entitled to would melt away. The lawsuit asks a federal judge to order that the county start making real, practical accomodations for the mentally ill population they’re supposed to serve. It also notes that even the 16 percent of successful applicants the system tags as needing special help often have their benefits unjustly revoked months later because the county’s current rules expect them to recover from their disabilities in a matter of months.
The groups suing L.A. County argue that the complexities of the GR application system not only deny aid to people with mental health issues, but divert scarce organizational resources for the non-profit groups that end up trying to help those people navigate the system. They only filed suit after efforts to negotiate reforms with the county broke down, a Legal Aid Foundation lawyer told the Los Angeles Times. The county is declining to comment thusfar, the paper said.