San Diego's outrageous law against the poor

San Diego County’s Project 100% requires anyone applying for California’s welfare program, CalWORKs, to agree to an unscheduled home inspection as part of the application process. Investigators look for evidence that verifies eligibility, like children’s clothing for someone claiming to be a single mom, or signs that the applicant’s been untruthful — like men’s clothing in the single-mom applicant’s home.

On Tuesday the ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties filed a lawsuit arguing the program disproportionately targets women and people of color, who make up a majority of CalWORKs applicants, and violates California’s anti-discrimination laws.

“The bottom line is that (Project 100%) forces only the poor to open their doors to county investigators,” said ACLU staff attorney Jonathan Markovitz. “It does this to people who are not suspected of any wrongdoing whatsoever.”

Project 100%, which has been around for three decades, is unique to San Diego County. Los Angeles County tried a similar program, but ended it after finding it ineffective.

[...]

In the past, to counter that criticism, the county touted the program’s success, repeatedly claiming home inspections saved taxpayer millions of dollars and that a quarter of all CalWORKs applicants who’d received preliminary approval were actually ineligible for benefits.

But a little-known 2014 study found serious flaws with the way the county was coding its data. The study, written by Hilda Chan, who at the time was an attorney and advocate working with San Diego-based Supportive Parents Information Network, found actual fraud was much lower.

[...]

“They were totally inflating their numbers,” Chan said in an interview. “They were counting all denials as fraud. They were counting all [application] withdrawals as fraud.”

[...]

The ACLU argues the home inspections also place an undue burden on applicants, who aren’t told when an investigator will show up.

“Applicants miss doctors appointments, cancel job interviews. It’s really a perverse irony of the program,” Markovitz said. “They feel incredible levels of stress and anxiety. They feel like they’re under house arrest.”

  Voice of San Diego

Which, of course, in effect, they are.  Surely this amounts to unreasonable search and is unconstitutional.