Work requirement: I still haven’t got to the bottom of this & apologize for

the delay. “Homeless” embraces at least four categories of relief

applicant, with different regulations governing each. I am pretty clear, at

any rate, that what the Elizabethans called “sturdy beggars” can get most of

their $395 (all but $36 of it) without doing any work at all, and such work

requirement as may exist involves nothing more than some nominal

broom-pushing. Sample reader e-mail with a useful link: “Mr. Derbyshire:

There is no requirement that a person work in order to recieve general

assistance funds in San Francisco. Please see this article from the San

Francisco Chronicle, which dicusses Judge Quidachay’s ruling in some depth.

In particular: ‘The homeless population in San Francisco is

divided into four categories for purposes of cash grants: the elderly, the

disabled who have applied for federal Social Security Income, people in job

training programs, and able- bodied people who refuse to join an employment

program and don’t qualify for any other state or federal aid. The city

planned to use its savings from the cash-grant slashes of Prop. N to provide

shelter and food for all the homeless. But a court ruling last Thursday

invalidated the part of Prop. N that cuts payments to able-bodied adults who

refuse to join work programs. This group of residents — numbering about

1,400 in San Francisco — will continue to receive their full cash grants.

The part of Prop. N that was left intact slashes payments to the elderly,

the disabled and the homeless who who joined work programs — that’s a total

of about 1,600 people.’”