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The Poor Are Not Better Off


 One week before the 2004 Republican National Convention, the Bush Administration announced that the nationwide caseload for federal welfare benefits dropped by three percent during 2003. Several days later, the United States Census Bureau reported that during the same year, 1.3 million Americans slipped into poverty. Now one in eight Americans is officially living in poverty, the third year of increases in a row. Here in New York City, poverty did not increase significantly, but it is not decreasing despite indications that the economy is improving.

What the changes mean for New York City

Between 2001 and 2004, over 140,000 New Yorkers stopped receiving benefits under the city’s Family Assistance program, which supports children and parents living together, generally in households headed by a single mother. Yet the overall count of welfare recipients is rising again, driven by “Safety Net Assistance,” a state program providing income assistance to adults without children, children living apart from relatives, and families who have reached the five-year limit for federal welfare benefits.

Since 2001, over 130,000 children and adults have been transferred into the Safety Net Assistance program because of the federal time limit. The fastest growing group on Safety Net Assistance is children living without adult relatives. Over the past three years, the number of recipients in this category rose from about 1,400 to nearly 13,000.

It’s Not the Economy!

Since the city is officially out of its recent economic recession, an optimist might assume that families are leaving welfare because more adults are working. In August 2004, the city’s unemployment rate hit its lowest point since September 2001. More single mothers are working: over 62 percent in 2003 compared to 59 percent in 2000. Among New Yorkers less than 25 years old, the share of women with jobs is now higher than that of men (and women are the ones who head most families on welfare.)

Despite these improvements, nearly one in three New York City children lives in poverty. Nationwide, only 17 percent of children are poor. (The poverty line is currently $15,670 a year for a mother with two children.) Black and Latino New Yorkers are more than twice as likely to be poor as white New Yorkers.

Meanwhile, local prices have risen by an annual rate of 3.5 precent over the first seven months of 2004. The costs of housing and food, the major expenses for low-income families, are going up even faster. The number of people declaring bankruptcy rose 50 percent more sharply in New York City than in the United States as a whole in 2003.

What Happens To People Who Leave Welfare?

A number of researchers have tried to discover what exactly is happening to people who leave welfare. The Urban Institute found that over 40 percent of former welfare recipients who lived with children had jobs in 2002. Another eight percent had a partner who was working, and seven percent had recently worked. Over one in four recipients were back on welfare, and four percent had begun receiving Supplemental Security Income, a benefit for low-income people with disabilities. That left 14 percent who were considered “disconnected” from the welfare system, defined as not working, nor living with an employed person, nor receiving cash assistance.

Among a sample of New York State families who left welfare in 1999, nearly three-fourths were unemployed when the Rockefeller Institute surveyed them 18 months to two years later. Of these, one in four was back on welfare, one in five was receiving federal disability benefits, one in six had a partner who worked, and a few received veteran’s benefits, unemployment insurance, and/or worker’s compensation. Other income sources were earnings from children aged 16 or more, gifts and loans from families and friends, and child support payments. Most families patched together two or more of these income streams to survive. More than half the members of the sample were getting federal food assistance, and nearly half lived in public or other subsidized housing.

Four percent of welfare leavers without jobs reported having no income, and used none of the in-kind supports used by others. It is possible that the survey undercounted such individuals, who can be hard to reach, if they have begun living on the street; turned to crime as a source of income; gone to jail, a hospital, or a mental institution; or left New York City.

The fragile financial balance of the families surveyed, even those with multiple income supports, led to frequent crises. At least a third were unable to pay gas, electric and/or telephone bills and had their service disconnected. One in five families was evicted or threatened with eviction. Many turned to food pantries and private charities, and one in twenty had to enter a homeless shelter.

Rejections on the Rise

Recently, the city’s Independent Budget Office reported that applications for welfare were more likely to be rejected in 2003, when the job losses were at their worst, than in 2001, when the recession had just begun. During the same period, job placements for welfare recipients dropped by a third, and applications for benefits rose. The Independent Budget Office estimates that if the city had kept its rejection rate down to the 2001 level, an additional 25,000 cases would have been opened in 2003.

When new mothers in 20 United States cities were surveyed, it turned out that nearly half of those who were eligible for welfare benefits did not receive them during their baby’s first year. During the recession year of 2001, less than half of all eligible families received welfare benefits; before welfare reform, about 80 percent of such families were getting assistance.

Food stamp use is widespread and growing

Food stamps are more widely used than welfare, because more people are eligible under their higher income limits. A Cornell University researcher has estimated that 40 percent of all Americans will use food stamps at some point during their working-age years. The risk varies with race and educational level: an African-American woman without a high school diploma has a 90 percent chance of using food stamps, while at the other extreme, a white male college graduate has only a 37 percent chance of using food stamps.

There are over a million people on food stamps in New York City, with another 700,000 believed to be eligible. After years of shrinking the list of food stamp recipients, by making it difficult to apply for assistance, and easy to be cut off by mistake, the city has succeeded in raising enrollment for the past two years. The state is making its own efforts to help qualified residents receive benefits. New York was the first state to automatically continue food stamp benefits to people leaving welfare, for a transitional period that now lasts five months. The state has also announced its intention to automatically mail food stamp benefit cards to all recipients of Supplemental Security Income, whose income is by definition low enough to entitle them to food assistance.

Linda Ostreicher, a former budget analyst for the New York City Council, is a freelance writer and consultant to nonprofits.

A Ban On Welfare Advocates At Welfare Centers


A group of Brooklyn community activists has lost its six-year legal battle for access to the waiting rooms of welfare offices, now known as Job Centers. The group's staff attorneys and volunteers had sought to provide information, literature and translations, as well as to act as advocates for welfare recipients and claimants at the centers.

The group, Make The Road By Walking which was founded in 1997, describes itself as a membership-led organization whose hundreds of members are primarily low-income Latino and African-American residents primarily of Bushwick, Brooklyn. Make The Road (its name comes from the saying "We make the road by walking.") engages in community organizing, offers training, and provides services.

In the case of Make The Road by Walking, Inc. v Turner, the federal courts have upheld New York City's ban on the presence of advocacy organizations such as Make the Road by Walking and the Legal Aid Society in welfare waiting rooms. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals, the federal court just below the Supreme Court of the United States, in a unanimous opinion by Judge Ralph K. Winter, affirmed the lower court's dismissal of claims of First Amendment and other constitutional violations.

In 1998, Make The Road By Walking requested access to the Job Center waiting rooms "to assist, inform, and represent claimants." The Job Centers are the division of the Human Resources Administration (HRA) that dispenses benefits, including welfare, Medicaid and food stamps. The city responded in writing that, "HRA declines to grant the access you seek, other than for the purpose of providing representation to a specific applicant or recipient."

After being denied access to the waiting rooms except to those who had previously been retained and were on the premises to represent a specific client, the organization filed the federal lawsuit in The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York on the legal grounds of the First Amendment, due process and equal protection. Judge Allen G. Schwartz dismissed the major claim, granting summary judgment to the city. (Judge Schwartz, who has since died, was, prior to his appointment to the federal bench, New York City's Corporation Counsel during the Koch administration.) He found that the city's policy would prevent overcrowding, and disruption in the waiting rooms, and would protect welfare claimants from becoming confused, and was therefore reasonable and concluded that there were no First Amendment or other constitutional violations.

All parties agreed that the speech of Make The Road By Walking is protected by the First Amendment. "However, notwithstanding that freedom of _expression... is a fundamental right, essential to our democratic society and accorded great weight by our courts, nothing in the Constitution requires the Government freely to grant access to all who wish to exercise their right to free speech on every type of Government property without regard to the nature of the property or to the disruption that might be caused by the speaker's activities."

For First Amendment purposes welfare offices are not public in the way that streets and parks are. While they are public in the sense that anyone can walk in, visitors not there on "official business" will be asked to leave. Judge Winter found that Make the Road By Walking was not there on official business as defined by the City and that the government had never intended to open the Job Centers to the public. Therefore, the waiting rooms are nonpublic.

In determining that the centers are nonpublic, the appeals court opinion draws on the legal history of welfare advocacy in welfare centers (including references to some fights that broke out when welfare applicants did not receive the benefits the advocates told them they were entitled to), during the 1970s and 1980s, when access was permitted, as well as Supreme Court decisions in the areas of free speech and solicitations in other venues such as airports and army bases. The court concluded that government intent was key, and that "the use of HRA premises shall be limited to the transaction of official business and such other activities as may be specifically authorized by the HRA ... . Distribution of written material is limited to releases issued or sponsored by HRA... . HRA defines its official business and 'limits third party access to Centers and their waiting rooms to those individuals who are part of the transaction of HRA's official business.'"

The Court of Appeals has now determined that the centers are not public because the government does not intend them to be public, that the restrictions on speech in a non public forum are reasonable, that the presence by Make The Road By Walking was not for "official business" even if its business was welfare rights, and that the organization's staff might cause "vulnerable claimants" to feel confused and exploited. With this decision, Make The Road by Walking has reached the end of this road.

No information was available about an appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States. Make The Road By Walking was represented by The Brennan Center for Justice, The Welfare Center, New York Legal Assistance Group and White & Case. The City was represented by Corporation Counsel.

Emily Jane Goodman is a New York State Supreme Court Justice

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Disabled Poor: Shut In, Out of Pocket


Many low-income people with disabilities never have a chance to apply for Medicaid, food stamps, or income assistance because they literally cannot go to all the offices required.

The Human Resources Administration has a policy to remedy this situation: Caseworkers can visit applicants and clients at home.

However, when investigators from the Welfare Law Center visited welfare offices, its report (In PDF Format) reveals, the staff at only about half of the offices suggested home visits for a hypothetical applicant with a disability.

The center's researchers went to Job Centers in all five boroughs, asking the person at the information desk in the waiting room for information for a friend who had no food or money, and needed to apply for benefits but was unable to come in person because of severe depression.

Workers at four of the 30 Job Centers flatly denied that home visits were available, and those at ten other Job Centers required persistent prompting before they said home visits were possible. At two of those ten centers, workers could not give any information about how to get a home visit -- not even a phone number to call for more information.

These findings are especially disappointing because in March 2003, the Human Resources Administration introduced a new policy meant to meet its legal obligation to accommodate people with disabilities. It suggests changes in the way appointments are made, such as scheduling them to avoid conflicts with medical and mental health appointments, and rescheduling when there are disability-related reasons.

However, the policy does not require agency staff to let the public know that home visits are available, and to offer visits to people who do not explicitly ask for them, no matter how visible and severe their disability. Nor does the policy stop agency staff from continuing to send notices ordering clients to come in person to a Job Center, even after they have proved that they cannot.

"Many people are sanctioned for not showing up for one appointment," Cary LaCheen explains. When someone misses an appointment, the agency notifies them that they have 10 days to come into the welfare office and explain why they missed the appointment. This doesn't help people who can't come to the office at all, LaCheen points out.

The investigators reported that most people who succeed in getting home visits already have an advocate who knows they are available. Most who were found to need home visits still were summoned to appointments at the Job Centers, and if they missed one, were told that their case would be closed. Phoning a Job Center to change an appointment or request a home visit is not always an option: at six of 24 centers called by the researchers, the line went unanswered or was busy. At another six centers, callers reached a voicemail message, and either the mailbox was full, or their message was never answered.

Even when researchers were told that home visits are available, agency workers asked for medical proof of need before or during the first home visit. The Human Resources Administration has no uniform standards about what documentation is needed, and when. Some people with disabilities are never able to get benefits because they can't get a doctor to provide proof of their disability until they have Medicaid, or because they are unable to travel to a doctor's office.

People with mental illness face an additional obstacle. At four of the centers visited, researchers were told that although their "friend" was too depressed to come to the Job Center, he or she couldn't get a home visit, implying that depression was not a real disability. This contradicted the new agency policy, which specifically changed the term "disabled" to the more inclusive "physically or mentally disabled."

"Some states and counties have great policies and practices and have shown results," says Cary LaCheen. In Pennsylvania, for example, "they have to contract with community organizations to do outreach, go to people's homes and find out what's needed to bring them into compliance." By contrast, LaCheen says, New York City's practices are still "pushing people with disabilities out of the system."

CUTS FOR 27,000 FAMILIES

New York State quietly began taking a chunk out of welfare benefits to households in which a member receives Supplemental Security Income, a federal program for the elderly and people with disabilities. Even though laws governing benefits for such families have not changed in the past seven years, this year the governor employed mathematical sleight-of-hand to change the way the state calculates the size of benefit checks. [see No Breaks For Low Income New Yorkers]

As a result, the state will keep $9 million that would otherwise go to these low-income families. This works out to some of the poorest people in the state losing up to 17 percent of their already skimpy monthly income so that the State of New York can save less than one ten-thousandth of its annual budget.

- Advocates were hoping that the State Legislature would act to change existing law in time to ward off actual cuts to welfare checks. Like other crucial issues, this one was a bargaining chip in the negotiations that usually take place between the governor and the leaders of the State Senate and Assembly before a budget is passed.

Unfortunately, New York State outdid itself this year, and passed its latest budget ever, after extending last year's budget twelve times. Nearly two-thirds of state funds were spent before the actual budget went up for a vote. In the race to reach a deal on the budget plus all other legislation during one week in August, the little $9 million cut to welfare was left intact, affecting the pockets of 27,000 families.

There is disagreement as to whether state law permits the governor's changed method of calculating benefits. "Our organization and other organizations are definitely exploring potential litigation," said Kristin Brown of the Greater Upstate Law Project. "We're looking for possible plaintiffs." Linda Ostreicher, a former budget analyst for the New York City Council, is a freelance writer and consultant to nonprofits. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



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