Yesterday
In-Home Supportive Services as we know it began in 1969. The average person in need of IHSS was sent to a nursing home. Nursing homes were crowded, expensive, and more abusive than they are today (though abuse is abuse, and can’t be channeled into the “good ol’ days” or the ”bad ol’ days”) people liked the idea of living in their own homes, freer to do what they wanted instead of what nursing home staff thought was “good for them”.
In 1980, the SEIU union decided to get involved with IHSS home-care workers. Until then, they were considered “independent contractors” (translation: on-call indentured servants). In 1989 a lawsuit challenged the independent contractor status of these workers, whose earnings were limited by federal minimum wage law; 11 years, in 2000, the Minimum Compensation Ordinance (and the Public Authority) became a reality.
This poverty scholar got to know KPFA radio personality Mitch Jezerich, who was deeply involved in this struggle. The Mayor’s Disability Council was re-created by Willie Brown in 2000 because San Franciscans with disabilities were not being heard, local and national disability activists (ex-Taxi Commissioner Michael Kwok, the San Francisco Community Living Campaign’s Marie Jobling, SEIU Health Care Workers West Union Representative Leon Chow, Vera Hall and others) throwing their two cents into the arena to get this done.
San Francisco home care workers became unionized in Calfornia first. This poverty scholar was honored to be involved in the struggle, feeling like a real citizen for the first time. SEIU Local 250’s Home Care Division was born in 2000 with a 98% Yes vote.
Planning For Elders, Senior Action Network (SAN), and the Independent Living Resource Center are some of the other groups involved in the fight to keep people in their own homes instead of more taxpayers money being spent on nursing homes.
Today
This elder poverty scholar has written before of the Governor’s lies re In-Home Support Services fraud, which he has characterized as being perpetrated by 30% of people using IHSS. The truth is actually 1-2% (bookkeeping errors. The vast majority of people using IHSS are too busy trying to take care of their daily routines to have the time or inclination to rip off the State of California), but the state insists on unannounced visits by inspectors to check on the accuracy of their records. The inspectors also fingerprint the people on their caseloads, an indignity people who apply for GA, PAES, and foodstamps in San Francisco continue to endure.
IHSS workers wages, which are $11 an hour (no vacation pay!), are under threat of being dropped to the state minimum wage, fortunately higher than the federal joke. This elder poverty scholar was an IHSS worker for 20 years, starting at $2 an hour. Thornton Kimes grew up in Sherman, TX, occasionally thinking about getting a fast-food job at the Sonic drive-in…for $2 an hour.
The Governor has threatened to eliminate the program altogether in his new budget proposal, along with CalWORKS and other things. Prisons have a higher priority in the Governor’s mind, though he would like to turn the state prison system over to private corporations to save money and, perhaps, be the guy who saved future Governors from ever having to commute any prisoner’s sentence. Too bad he can’t conceive of commuting the sentences of folks who will lose their freedom if his current threat to destroy IHSS actually succeeds.