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THE CENTER FOR NEW YORK CITY AFFAIRS NEXT STEPS: New York City Welfare Policy After Giuliani Jump to:
As a result of these policy changes and a changing economy, there are 623,000 fewer New Yorkers on the welfare rolls today than in mid-1995. Most able-bodied adults are required to work in exchange for pubic assistance benefits in New York. In terms of administration, TANF recipients are now covered through the Family Assistance Program and must adhere to a five-year lifetime limit. Home Relief has been replaced with Safety Net Assistance (SNA) under which people can receive cash assistance for a maximum of two-years. After two-years, non-cash payments are awarded for housing and utilities. If a family or individual loses benefits because they reach the time limit, assistance can continue to be provided through SNA. New York has also significantly increased the earnings disregard for welfare recipients, and is one of the three top states in the nation for sheltering low-wage workers from taxation, thanks primarily to the state Earned Income Tax Credit passed in 1994. The divergence between programs and policy implementation in New York reflects a curious paradox. Judged solely by the variety of government services and programs funded by the city and state, New York continues to be among the more generous jurisdictions in the nation: the government provides income support, childcare, child welfare services, welfare-to-work, teen pregnancy programs, youth development programs, domestic violence programs, child support programs, access to health insurance, housing subsidies and much more. While there is not a lot of flexibility in determining the eligibility requirements of recipients, local governments do have enormous flexibility in determining service delivery. On paper, this sounds like a progressive response to welfare reform. Yet reports from academic institutions, advocacy groups and community-based organizations reveal that caseload reduction has been driven largely by government efforts to divert applicants from receiving benefits, and by hurdles established to discourage continued enrollment by those already in the system, rather than by reduced need. In other words, while New York may offer relatively generous programs, these studies describe policies that have routinely made it very difficult for families in need of assistance to gain access to the system and to benefits. Some of these studies are outlined in the accompanying resource guide. In some states, the emphasis on work has included increased access to appropriate training and education programs. In New York, applicants considered able to work must first complete a full-time job search before receiving benefits. And 70 percent of recipients required to work are sent to the Work Experience Program (WEP), where the top priority is put on 20 hours per week of usually menial labor. The city has published only one report on the success rate of individuals leaving welfare for work. The study, produced in 1998, had an extraordinarily small sample size and used survey techniques that raised serious questions about the value of its findings. That survey of 126 closed TANF cases reported that 58 percent of the respondents were supporting their families through paid employment. More recently, Community
Voices Heard (CVH), a New York City-based advocacy group opposed to
workfare and whose members are welfare recipients, surveyed 649 WEP
workers and reported that
Clearly, independent research on workfare, WEP, and work programs in general are needed to adequately assess the program's strengths and deficiencies. Such research is not immediately forthcoming, however. "Because the city has provided virtually no data on the welfare and labor market experience of work program participants and nonparticipants, meaningful evaluation of the city's work programs has not been possible," reported the New York City Independent Budget Office (Welfare Reform Revisited: Implementation in New York City, by the NYC IBO, September 1998). Two and a half years later, independent researchers have made little headway with City Hall or the administrators at the Human Resources Administration. Even so, several recent studies and reports have offered extensive suggestions for improving the city welfare and workfare systems, advocating greater access to services, relaxation of diversionary tactics at the front door to the system, and promoting targeted job training and placement. Among these is the January 1999 "Report on Implementation Issues in New York City" produced by the Task Force for Sensible Welfare Reform, the convenor of this conference. Other reports are outlined on the following pages. We hope this guide will prove useful in informing the dialogue and debate that will inevitable accompany the impending change in administrations, now only seven months away. This Resource Guide produced by Rasmia Kirmani, Fellow, and Andrew White, Director, The Center for NYC Affairs. This conference was made possible by a grant from the
New York Community Trust "Social Indicators and the Study of Inequality,"
by Marcia K. Meyers and Irwin Garfinkel (Federal Reserve Board of New
York Economic Policy Review, September 1999) This paper presents initial findings from an independent survey of 2,224 randomly selected city households. This ongoing annual survey, based at Columbia University, tracks the following indicators: individual and family assets, child outcome, living conditions, and external support. Findings include these: "Over two-thirds of poor New York families report zero or negative assets." "The odds that a poor adult is in poor health are more than eight times those of an affluent adult; his or her odds of being disabled are more than 10 times greater." More than one in 10 poor families reports inadequate food, one in four have trouble paying for utilities and the same proportion live in housing with serious problems. The authors recently released the second paper in this series. "Welfare Reform and New
York City's Low-Income Population," by Howard Chernick
and Cordelia Reimers. Prepared for a conference of the Federal Reserve
Bank of New York (November 2000).
"Immigrants and Public Benefit Programs in New York City," by Howard Chernick and Cordelia Reimers. Prepared for a conference sponsored by the International Center for Migration, Ethnicity and Citizenship, The New School (November 2000). Not yet published.
"What Do Immigrant Service Providers Say About the Impact of Recent Changes in Immigration and Welfare Laws?" By Hector Cordero-Guzman and Jose Navarro, Migration World, Volume XXVIII No. 4 (2000).
"After Welfare: A Study of Work and Benefit Use After Case Closing," The Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, August 1999. Using state welfare and employment data, the authors found that more than 71 percent of adults who left welfare in New York during the first quarter of 1997 found some work over the following year, and 60 percent of those who found work "were employed continuously." Only one in five cases returned to public assistance over the course of the one-year study period, the authors report. The report was funded by the federal government and produced in collaboration with the NYS Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance and the NYS Department of Labor. "Staff Analysis of New York State's Welfare Evaluation Report: 'After Welfare: a study of work and benefit use after case closings'," Office of New York State Comptroller Carl McCall (November 2000). Staff analysts at the state comptroller's office highlight what they describe as major flaws in the August 1999 Rockefeller Institute report (above). They point out that 1) the Institute's report failed to note that 27 percent of those adults originally surveyed returned to the welfare rolls within two months, apparently because of administrative errors in the original case closings; 2) the Institute's report defined as "continuously employed" anyone who appeared on four successive quarterly wage reports filed with the state's tax department-regardless of whether they worked only one day per quarter or full-time; and 3) neither the Institute nor the state could replicate the data set for outside review. Think Tank and Advocacy Studies "Poverty Amidst Plenty 2001: Unspent TANF Funds
and Persistent Poverty,"
"Welfare Reform in New York: A Mixed Laboratory
for Change," by Sarah F. Liebschutz (From Managing Welfare
Reform in Five States: the Challenge of Devolution, Rockefeller Institute
Press, 2000) The author writes that New York continues to offer a welfare reform policy that is generally liberal in policies and practices, tempered by recent, dramatic changes in the administration and emphasis of its programs. In general, she writes, the combination of liberal provisions in the law and changed public expectations about individual behavior seems to have been successful in moving clients off of welfare and into work. She writes that work, not welfare, is now emphasized in welfare offices throughout the state. Management challenges include overcoming an inflexible statewide computerized case tracking system, which cannot provide basic planning data about employment-related support services and job placement and retention. "Building A Ladder to Jobs and Higher Wages,"
published by The Working Group on New York City's Low-Wage Labor Market
(2000) This paper explores the ability of NYC's labor market to absorb those remaining on welfare who must transition to paid employment. Its authors and advisors include many major local think-tanks and civic organizations, who were coordinated in the effort by the Community Service Society. The authors write that although NYC's welfare rolls have declined by half since 1995, unemployment rates remain high and a growing number of New Yorkers are employed in low-wage industries. Furthermore, they report, real wages in the low-wage sector of the city's economy are down by as much as 15 percent since 1988-89. The report focuses on four key issues: creating job opportunities for low-income New Yorkers, preparing and training workers for living-wage jobs, using work as a means out of poverty, and providing a humane safety net. "Working but Poor in New York: Improving the
Economic Situation of a Hard-Working but Ignored Population,"
by Trudi Renwick, Fiscal Policy Institute (Updated July 1999) New York State had the fourth highest per capita income of any state in the nation in 1997, the author writes, yet more than three million New Yorkers-or one-sixth of the population-lived in poverty. One in four New York children lived in poverty in 1997. And a majority of poor families include at least one adult who works, often full-time. This report describes the state's working, poor families in and describes how that population has changed over time. In addition, the report suggests strategies to overcome the problem of poverty despite work. The author makes eight recommendations including improving the availability of affordable childcare, raising the minimum wage and indexing it to inflation, and expanding the federal and state Earned Income Tax Credits. "Opportunities for Change: Lessons Learned from Families who Leave Welfare," Citizens Committee for Children (January 2000). Researchers interviewed 50 families whose welfare cases had been closed, and found that nearly three-quarters had had their cases closed involuntarily. Half had not been employed since leaving the welfare rolls, primarily because they had no care for their children. Two-thirds were not receiving Food Stamps. More than half were using food pantries or soup kitchens. More than half said they had no income or received less than $100 per week when they were interviewed. "Dangerous Indifference - New York City's Failure
to Implement the Family Violence Option," by Marcellene Hearn,
Staff Attorney, NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund (2000). This study, based on interviews conducted in 1999 with welfare applicants, recipients and workers, examined implementation of the federal and state "Family Violence Option" by the NYC Human Resources Administration. The Family Violence Option is requires caseworkers to temporarily excuse welfare applicants from certain requirements-such as work, job search or child support cooperation-that could place families at risk or make it more difficult for them to leave an abusive situation. The interviewers found that more often than not the city fails to ask applicants if they are victims of domestic violence. Of those who did meet with a domestic violence liaison caseworker, only about one-third were granted waivers. "DOWNSIDE: The Human Consequences of the Giuliani
Administration's Welfare Caseload Cuts," by the Federation
of Protestant Welfare Agencies (November 2000) This report summarizes findings from a number of advocacy
and research projects to make the case that recent reductions in the
city's welfare caseload does not represent a reduction in need. The
authors urge the current Administration to re-examine and reverse these
problems. This paper provides summaries of several reports and studies
not mentioned in this conference briefing paper, and includes the names,
addresses and phone numbers of the corresponding organizations. |
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