The American public responded more generously than ever before when the World Trade Center was destroyed on September 11. As of September 5, 2002, over $2.2 billion was raised, according to New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.
One unintended effect of these gifts has been controversy over their distribution among victims of the attack and their families. If the nation had applied free-market philosophy to this situation, no charitable assistance would have been necessary. Victims' involvement in the attack would be attributed to bad luck and individual choice. Employees of businesses in the trade center buildings would be seen as having chosen to take their chances in a building complex bombed by terrorists in 1993. Police officers and firefighters would be seen as having chosen dangerous careers, with extra financial rewards in return for the risks. Even airline passengers could be seen as having chosen a form of transportation in which there is little hope of survival if the vehicle suffers damage.
Fortunately, people across the nation applied a different standard to this tragedy, one of mutual aid. According to a poll by the Independent Sector taken in October 2001, about 70 percent of Americans gave blood, donated money, volunteered their time, or in some other way tried to help the victims of the attack and their families.
However, the unity expressed by these donations does not extend to how they should be used. The resulting dissension reveals the diversity of meanings attached to words like "fairness," "victim," "family," and "need".
WHO QUALIFIES AS A "VICTIM"?
It was understood at the start that "victims" were people killed or injured in the attack, and that their "families" were their wives, husbands and children. The public was also eager to see help given to workers involved in the rescue and cleanup efforts.
Other relatives of the deceased soon made their claims on assistance clear. Parents, siblings, and domestic partners were added to a broadened definition of "family". Some charities gave help to anyone financially dependent on the victim, including former wives and their children.
Because so much money was collected, charities were able to stretch the meaning of "victim" still further, to cover others harmed by direct results of the tragedy: the 70,000 people who lost their jobs, the 6,000 downtown residents who had to leave their homes, and neighboring small businesses and nonprofits whose offices were thrown into physical or functional disorder by the event.
For some purposes, the definition of the disaster itself was extended to include anthrax attacks and post 9/11 hate crimes. The Uniformed Firefighters Association extended payments from its relief fund to families of all firefighters killed in the line of duty since 1980, and in the future.
TO EACH ACCORDING TO HIS OR HER NEED?
"Fairness" is another ambiguous term; its interpretation goes to the heart of our inconsistent convictions about how people should treat one another. There are many methods for dividing up September 11 funds, and each has been championed by one or another constituency.
Distributing funds according to financial need would give more money to a family that was poor before the disaster, and less to one whose breadwinner earned a high income and maintained life insurance. According to Shawn Pattison of the Robin Hood Foundation, their September 11-related relief fund follows this principle. "Robin Hood wants to make sure no one falls through the cracks, particularly low-income people," he says. Robin Hood targets its relief efforts toward groups like immigrant communities isolated by language barriers and fear of deportation, and low-income people with mental illness. "There were Central Americans working as day laborers cleaning up the site," he explains, "and they were not given proper protective equipment. A number are quite ill now." Robin Hood supports the Latin American Workers Project, which provides health services and financial help to these victims.
Other cases inspire more disagreement as to what constitutes need. Does it include making monthly mortgage payments on a million-dollar house? Families of the victims expect donations to enable them to maintain the standard of living they had before the disaster. However, the Internal Revenue Service has explicitly barred charities from distributing money to families of victims based on their living expenses before September 11. The large nonprofits that control most of the September 11 donations have decided not only how much cash to give victims for paying bills, but also what kinds of services victims need. The major ones turned out to be mental health counseling and employment services, which are not what might be expected by viewers of news coverage of relief efforts in response to earlier man-made and natural disasters.
EQUAL SHARES FOR EQUAL DISASTER
In the most literal interpretation of a distribution of aid based on equality, you would give the same amount to each victim. This would mean giving the same amount to a person whose store was closed for a week due to roadblocks, as to a widow with young children.
A more nuanced interpretation of "equality" gives equal shares to all people in the same situation. The Uniformed Firefighters Association gave $50,000 to the family of each married firefighter who was killed, but did not initially extend this policy to beneficiaries of single firefighters. After protest by the excluded relatives, the firefighters' union gave $50,000 to domestic partners, parents and other beneficiaries of deceased unmarried firefighters. The Robin Hood fund did not distinguish between levels of need when it sent $5,000 one-time payments to each family of the victims killed on September 11. "By late November, it was clear from talking to many of our families that the money was just not getting through," says Pattison. In this situation, all families were subject to the same bureaucratic delays in releasing aid; later and larger distributions could be expected to adjust the total aid to each family according to a yardstick of need.
The September 11th Fund, a joint project of the United Way of New York City and the Fund for the City of New York, collected $501 million, more than any charity other than the Red Cross' Liberty Fund. The September 11th Fund set the value of emergency cash assistance at two levels, depending on the degree of loss. Injured survivors and victims' families would get $10,000 each; people who lost jobs or homes as a direct result of the attack received $2,500 each. The same amounts were given in a second round of cash assistance.
COMPENSATION FOR FINANCIAL LOSS: THE TORT-BASED MODEL
The court system calculates the value of human lives as it goes about its everyday business. The wrongful death of a young person counts as a greater loss than the death of a retiree, because of the years of future work that are lost. Higher salaries at the time of death mean more lost income. Higher levels of education imply the possibility of career advancement leading to higher salaries. This method of determining the amount of assistance is favored by many of the victims' families. Those whose deceased relatives would have earned the most have the greatest incentive to call for this model of assistance, and it forms one element in the federal government's calculation of awards from the Victims Compensation Fund.
Financial loss also decides the size of loans and grants being given to businesses and nonprofits in the vicinity of Ground Zero, many of whom were unable to function normally for weeks or months. The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation is offering both nonprofit and for-profit enterprises federally-funded grants and loans based on their annual revenues.
RECOGNITION OF EMOTIONAL LOSS
Most of the help being offered in recognition of emotional loss takes the form of mental health services or tangible gifts. The web site of the Twin Towers Fund "recognizes the importance of families spending time together in a fun and relaxing environment," and offers a variety of special events to the relatives of uniformed officers killed on September 11. They include sleepaway camp for children, golf camp for adults, free tickets to Mets games, sailing lessons, and sightseeing cruises from New York Waterways. Both the Uniformed Firefighters Association and the Twin Towers Fund are planning holiday parties in December for the families they serve.
MEASURING A PERSON'S VALUE TO THE COMMUNITY
The sacrifices made by police officers and firefighters inspired intense sympathy in the general public, which gives extra weight to the death of a member of these forces even in normal times. A study of 37 relief funds serving September 11 victims showed that nearly half of the cash paid directly to victims and their families went to relatives of police officers, firefighters, and court officers.
The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation is offering payments to downtown residents, implying that people who remain in the neighborhood for the long term are more valued than those who leave or have recently arrived. Their web site offers a minimum grant of $1,000 to households, within specific boundaries, whose residents who lived at their present address last September 11. At least $750 more will be given to families who commit to staying in the area for at least one year, if they have one or more children younger than 18.
WHAT DO DONORS WANT DONE?
According to Barbara Bryan, president of the New York Regional Association of Grantmakers, many charities were "overcome by the size of the generosity and by the size of the need, and all the different levels of need." At the end of October 2001, the Red Cross announced it had collected more than enough to meet the needs of the victims -- so much more that its Liberty Fund could start underwriting some of the agency's more routine costs for services to American troops on active duty; community outreach to encourage neutrality, unity and tolerance; and telecommunications equipment, computer systems and accounting services. It also intended to set aside about half of the Liberty Fund for future needs of the WTC victims or for victims of future terrorist attacks.
This plan made the Red Cross the target of a growing sense of frustration and distrust among donors, victims' families and Ground Zero workers. Chief Executive Bernadine Healy was forced to resign; the organization was questioned by the United States Congress. The Red Cross had to revise its plan, promising to give out about half of the Liberty Fund by the first anniversary of the World Trade Center attack.
The September 11th Fund chose a different route. It conducted surveys of the general public in October and November of 2001, polling both donors and non-donors to September 11-related charities. The results supported the fund's decisions to expand services to the broad range of victims described above, and to provide a variety of short-term and long-term services in addition to cash assistance.
UNDERLYING ASSUMPTIONS OF CHARITABLE DISTRIBUTION METHODS
Even with public opinion polls, it is not possible to aid disaster victims in a way that pleases everyone. Each method of dividing up disaster relief funds reflects a conviction about what makes a good society; the subject stirs up almost as much passion as the idea of the World Trade Center disaster itself.
Distributing charitable aid based on financial need implies that charity should even out economic differences between recipients. Giving equal shares to all implies that charity does not have to take into account the different situations of recipients before the event that created their shared need. Giving charitable aid in proportion to the recipient's economic loss implies that charity should honor victims' property rights by preserving the existing hierarchy of wealth. Using non-monetary aid to compensate victims for emotional losses suggests that such suffering cannot be measured and is best addressed symbolically. Basing levels of aid on the victim's value to society implies that charity's purpose is to benefit society as a whole. And leaving the decision of how to use donations up to the donor means that their right to control their money trumps the greater experience of charitable professionals in determining the best use of assistance.
Barbara Bryan believes that charities will have to change in response to the disputes over disaster relief for the victims of September 11. "You have to be very clear about what you're asking for, " she says, but she is not sure of the specific steps that will have to be taken. "People are still trying to take lessons from all of this."
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September 11th significantly altered the city's housing landscape for many New Yorkers -- from Lower Manhattan residents who evacuated their homes, to city officials who crunch budget numbers, to advocates who devote themselves to the plights of the poor.
Immediate effects of the terrorist attacks included temporary homelessness for thousands of downtown residents. Dozens still have not been able to return to apartments closest to the World Trade Center site.
Vacancy rates in the buildings closest to the site reached 45 percent, according to a study of 7000 apartments in the area by the New York Times, though they have since returned to their normal rates of just under five percent.
Other housing economic activity, including new rentals, housing starts and applications for building permits, came to a virtual standstill after the attacks.
By October, economic activity rebounded, but home insurance costs were rising and they remain high. Rents in Lower Manhattan dropped because tenants wanted out. Rents elsewhere in the city softened too as real estate brokers experienced lower demand. The loosening of the housing market had actually begun months before September 11th, but the attack seemed to accelerate the recession and its effects on housing.
"9/11 was the kick in the gut to an already weak economy," said Patrick Markee, senior policy analyst for Coalition for the Homeless. And just as a rising tide lifts all boats, a retreating one leaves many more boats stranded.
The number of homeless families had been increasing for some time before the terrorist attacks, and has risen drastically since. Currently, the city's shelter system is strained beyond its capacity, sheltering about 8,600 families and 7,500 single adults each night.
The reasons for homelessness are complex, but the economy is among the usual suspects. Between the recession and September 11th, the city has lost more than 125,000 jobs.
"Clearly that is a big reason you see more and more families and individuals becoming homeless. It's a direct result and there doesn't seem to be any let-up," said Markee.
The softening economy has eased rents for the city's more expensive apartments, but it has also contributed to fiercer competition for apartments that rent for less. New York City's vacancy rate remains low. It was last measured by the 1999 New York City Housing and Vacancy survey at 3.2 percent, and it decreases along with rents, meaning that vacancies are lowest among the most affordable apartments.
The recession is creating other unpleasant realities for housing. Both the state and city budget are facing shortfalls which will mean less money available for housing programs.
In January, Mayor Michael Bloomberg asked all city agencies to trim their budgets by 20 percent. The city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development obeyed and slashed its expense budget, although it managed to replace much of the lost funding with federal money.
This past year, "all of our housing production continued as planned," said Carol Abrams, the agency's spokesperson. The agency even instituted a new program to distribute federal rental assistance vouchers for certain eligible individuals who lost, or are at risk of losing, their housing as a result of the events of September 11th.
Still, the agency has had to refigure its plans for the coming years. In response to less available city funding for its capital expenditures, 4,630 units of affordable housing that were supposed to be added to the city's housing supply over the next five years will be delayed, if not completely lost.
Affordable housing advocates bemoan such news.
"We are in a very difficult economic climate and we understand that there have to be cuts everywhere," says Bernie Carr, executive director of the New York State Association for Affordable Housing, a trade association for the for-profit affordable housing community. "But obviously, affordable housing, especially in a difficult economy, is a very important issue."
There were some silver linings to the sad cloud that rose in Lower Manhattan last year. The Rent Guidelines Board authorized lower than usual rent increases for the city's 1 million regulated apartments. And residents of the Lower Manhattan are eligible for more than $300 million in federal subsidies meant to encourage tenants to move into and/or stay, in the area.
But for many other housing indicators, the statistics are not yet in. Will foreclosures and evictions rise as more unemployed New Yorkers can't make their monthly rent or mortgage payments? Will rent levels come down from their heyday heights? Will cuts in city programs further restrict the city's supply of affordable housing and lead to even greater problems for the city's poor?
These and many other questions won't be answered for months, or even years, until statistics are gathered and studies completed.
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He hears voices and has been diagnosed with depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and a learning disability. But these are not his only nightmares. There are also the ones he encounters in his dealings with the city's welfare agency. His welfare benefits, food stamps, and Medicaid coverage have been repeatedly cut off. Once he went to a Job Center and waited all day, four days in a row, because he couldn't find his way through the crowds and waiting lines to someone who would help him file an application.
Identified only as J.V., his story was included in a complaint filed with the federal Office for Civil Rights about the treatment by the New York City Human Resources Administration
The Americans with Disabilities Act requires state and local governments to make "reasonable modifications" of their programs to ensure that people with disabilities receive the same level of service and benefits as everybody else. This includes programs providing income support, food stamps, and Medicaid, which are disproportionately needed by disabled Americans. (Federal agencies, plus private agencies receiving federal funds, have their own law requiring similar modifications: Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act.)
MANY LOW-INCOME PEOPLE HAVE DISABILITIES
Nationwide, people with disabilities are poorer and less likely to have jobs than other Americans. A survey by the National Organization on Disability found that 72 percent of people with disabilities wanted to work, but only 29 percent were doing so. According to the Census Bureau, 46 percent of single-parent households getting public assistance in 1997 included a mother or child with a disability.
Poverty can combine with even minor disabilities to produce major barriers to employment. Employers are not required to provide personal equipment, such as artificial limbs or hearing aids; jobseekers on Medicaid may not be able to afford equipment that is good enough to enable them to work. When a mother herself has a disability, she may need extra time to get her children ready for day care and to drop them off by public transportation.
"Most of the consumers I see have more than one disability," says Placida Wilson of Bronx Independent Living Services (where I work part-time). She often accompanies consumers to hearings about their eligibility for benefits. "Depression is the most common, plus a physical disability like arthritis, heart disease, or fibromyalgia. They're poor, can't work, feeling sick, and they may also have kids, can't get child care?A person without a disability would be depressed in that situation." She pointed to a box of tissues on her desk, and another on a shelf above it. "Some of them sit down here and before I can open my mouth, they start to cry."
WHO PAYS THE BILL FOR BENEFITS?
The responsibility for people with disabilities who live in poverty is split among the federal, state and city governments, who pass it around like a hot potato. For those who can meet the stringent requirements, Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income payments are slightly higher and more secure than welfare; the city and state are eager to shift their caseload into these entirely federally-funded programs. However, it can take years for applications to be processed; not all disabilities covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act meet the Social Security definition of disability. That definition requires that applicants prove they are completely incapable of working because of a disability that either is considered fatal, or has lasted (or is expected to last) for at least a year.
States always knew that many public assistance recipients had disabilities, but it took welfare reform to motivate them to hire private agencies to help people apply for Social Security. New York is particularly eager to reclassify families in its caseload before they reach their five-year lifetime limit for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, so that the federal government will pick up the tab.
DETERMINING DISABILITY STATUS
Non-disabled welfare recipients were the first to be channeled back into the workforce by welfare reform, leaving a higher concentration of recipients with disabilities on the rolls. Yet in November 2002, the city classified only 30 percent of its public assistance caseload as ill, disabled, or caring for a family member. This figure is much lower than the Census Bureau's 46 percent of single-parent households found to have a member with a disability.
The discrepancy suggests that the city may be either not identifying the disabilities of those on its welfare rolls, or failing to provide public assistance to eligible people with disabilities. Many common physical illnesses, like diabetes, asthma, and hypertension, become disabilities for people with severe cases, yet few welfare recipients or caseworkers know that such cases are covered under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
For the past twenty years, New York City has hired HS Systems, Inc. to examine welfare applicants and recipients and determine their level of disability. This contractor plays a leading role in the complaint filed last April by Brooklyn Legal Services, MFY Legal Services, the Urban Justice Center, and the Welfare Law Center. The complaint describes people whose psychiatric symptoms were treated by HS Systems staff as deliberate violations of program requirements, causing recipients to have their benefits cut off because of their disabilities. In an article in the Village Voice, ill and disabled applicants were discovered waiting outside HS Systems offices in the snow during the winter of 2000. Since then, HS Systems has followed a court order to open additional sites and provide more room for waiting indoors.
ACCESS TO EQUAL SERVICES REQUIRES ACCOMMODATIONS
Any welfare recipient with or without disabilities may be harmed when poorly trained, overworked, and unmotivated city employees give incorrect or incomplete information, record the wrong facts in case files, or make arbitrary decisions. The damage is compounded for those who have physical disabilities that make it hard to travel to and from multiple appointments, or mental or learning disabilities that turn complex requirements into insoluble riddles. Wilson of Bronx Independent Living Services recalls a consumer who knew he had to mail a form to Social Security, and did so on time. "What he didn't understand was that he needed to fill it out and put a stamp on the envelope."
When someone tells the Human Resources Administration that he or she has a psychiatric disability, according to the April complaint, the agency does not adequately assess the disability, does not accommodate the disability when assigning a work activity, and may sanction them for behavior caused by their disabilities.
One of Wilson's cases involved a mother with schizophrenia who was summoned to HS Systems for an assessment. Her husband went with her and refused to leave her alone with the doctors, because she was acutely ill and he feared she would act inappropriately if she were alone. "He didn't understand that that was exactly what she was supposed to do," Wilson said. The doctors would not examine the woman with her husband in the room. The family was sanctioned, losing Medicaid and food stamps as well as welfare. They turned to Bronx Independent Living Services when the mother was running out of medication, she could not see a doctor without Medicaid, there was no food in their home, and the rent was due. Wilson arranged to get their case re-opened the next day, but if they had not already been her consumers, they might not have found help before the wife required hospitalization, or they lost their home.
For people with AIDS/HIV infection, the city has a special division, the HIV/AIDS Services Administration, whose caseworkers coordinate emergency housing and other public benefits for this population. The division was found in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 2000, when understaffing made clients wait too long for services. Thanks to the success of new treatments in prolonging life, the HIV/AIDS Services Administration's caseload continues to rise: in the two years leading up to November 2002, the number of HIV-positive clients rose by over ten percent. City law limits the average number of clients served by caseworkers or supervisors to 34, meaning that the division was required to hire nearly 100 new caseworkers to serve the 3,300 additional clients. Current government budget gaps jeopardize the division's ability to maintain an adequate staff-to-client ratio.
FUTURE EMPLOYMENT OPTIONS LIMITED
The city's public assistance recipients with disabilities may be getting less than their fair share of other services besides income support. Welfare-to-work programs provide employment-related services designed to help recipients move from public assistance to work. Employment-related services are rarely made available to people with disabilities Vocational training and job placement are as useful to people with disabilities as to anyone else who is unemployed and has little work history. For high school dropouts with sensory or learning disabilities, high school equivalency "GED" classes accommodating their disabilities can be the key to lifetime employment.
The federal Office for Civil Rights is still investigating the April 2002 complaint against the Human Resources Administration, according to Cary LaCheen of the Welfare Law Center. Meanwhile, there will be more cases such as M.F.B. whose claustrophobia prevents him from using elevators. He missed one appointment at HS Systems because a security guard would not let him use the stairs. He only made it to a second appointment because a different guard helped him sneak into the stairway. HS Systems found M.F.B. to be employable with limitations. One of the jobs they indicated he could perform was that of elevator operator.
Linda Ostreicher, a former budget analyst for the New York City Council, is a freelance writer and consultant to nonprofits. She is currently on the staff of Bronx Independent Living Services.