Dream deferred: the most inspired caseworker in America's most lauded welfare agency can barely do his job

Washington Monthly, Sept, 2004 by Jason DeParle

Michael thought he had seen it all, but some things hit him afresh. One seemingly demure 21-year-old always had new hairstyles and clothes. He wondered how she was getting by. One day, she burst into tears and told him; an old man was paying to kiss her between the legs. Michael was stunned to discover that another client had a terminal liver disease. He had pegged her as a malingerer until the doctor warned she had free months to live What's more, the county was threatening to drop her from Medicaid. Michael stood over the county supervisor's desk, ranting so wildly she started to call the security guard. In retrospect, Michael began to think of this period as a crazy jaunt, his SuperFep stage. "I started thinking, 'Maybe I could make a difference.'"

And then she was back: the woman without a coat. She reappeared, unscheduled one day, loud, raspy, and coatless still. He tried to act indignant about her claim that he hadn't helped. But his resolve melted in a hail of denials and her loud, sing-songy Mi-ikes. "I never said that, Mi-ike! I never told a lie about you!" She popped up in his office, talking gibberish--God is money, the Devil is deaf--but in between, her story trickled out. She was 39, with a grown daughter and a 10-year-old son. Her mother had been a church woman and her father had kept a job. Then a decade ago, she went to a party where people were smoking something new. She figured it couldn't hurt to try it. She stole, she whored, she slept in the gutter. Only her mother's death, two years ago, gave her the resolve to stop. "I lost my soul on crack, Mi-ike. I'm about business now, Mi-ike, I'm about business."

At first, Michael wasn't sure if he cared. But her stories had a morbid pull, and there was something obligating about her trust. Oddly, he started feeling half pleased when his train wreck of a client would arrive. While Michael didn't say so, she wasn't the only member of the tandem who often felt desperate about getting through the day. At one point, she brought him a crinkled sheet of greeting-card verse: "Obstacles am only what you see when you take your eye off the goal." He tacked it to his wall.

Bonding was one thing. Binding her to the scaffold of W-2 was another. In January, Michael assigned her to sort clothes at the St. Vincent dePaul Society. She never showed up. In February, she announced she was going to be a nursing assistant. She didn't follow through, but "I just didn't have the heart to cut her off," he said. In March, when she got an eviction notice, Michael grew newly concerned. Maximus had a unit to deal with evictions, but it was the same one that dealt with coats. The landlord removed her front door. It took Michael weeks, but he found a solution. A nonprofit group would pay her security deposit. In exchange, it would become her "protective payee," cashing her W-2 check, paying the landlord, and giving her whatever remained. All she had to do was to pick an apartment. SuperFep had gotten it done!

But she didn't pick an apartment. She moved to a shelter. And the next thing Michael knew, she was sitting in his boss's office, complaining that no one would help her. Michael erupted. What was she doing in a homeless shelter? Her answers didn't make sense. All the vacant houses were on the south side, she said. "I can't live on the south side, Mi-ike." She was acting so goofy it was almost enough to make him think she was back on drugs. He started to taunt her: What, are your connections on the north side? She taunted him back: I walk by my connections all day! He hadn't been serious. She wasn't still using? She wasn't still smoking crack? "Yeah, I'm smoking crack!" Earlier she had told him she had been clean for two years. "I told you what you wanted to hear."