By DAVID FIRESTONE
Published: April 20, 1995
A day after touting the success of tough new eligibility rules for New York’s welfare program providing benefits to childless, able-bodied adults, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said yesterday that he actually favors abolishing the program altogether.
The Home Relief program, created in 1931 by Franklin D. Roosevelt when he was the Governor, now provides benefits to about 245,000 childless city residents who are able-bodied or whose disability does not qualify them for benefits under larger Federal programs. The city and the state share the cost of the $1.9 billion program, which provides an average benefit of $325 a month, or $3,900 a year.
The Mayor has mentioned his dislike of the welfare program before, but rarely, if ever, as bluntly as he put it yesterday, when he said “yes” when asked whether he believes it should be phased out.
Speaking at a City Hall news conference, the Mayor did acknowledge that the State Constitution may prohibit total elimination of the program. Article XVII of the Constitution says the state and its subdivisions shall provide for the “aid, care and support of the needy” as determined by the State Legislature. Even if that hurdle could be crossed, the Democratic-controlled State Assembly is not likely to agree to scrap the program.
Because of those obstacles, Mr. Giuliani said he wanted to narrow time limits on Home Relief benefits as an interim step toward total elimination. As he proposed last October, employable people on the program would be limited to 90 days of benefits, after which they would be cut off and not allowed to reapply for two years. The Republican Governor, George E. Pataki, and the Republican-led State Senate have agreed to a 60-day time limit, and the disagreement will not be settled until the Legislature passes a budget for the current fiscal year. Thus, those applicants who successfully struggle through the new eligibility requirements hailed by the Republican Mayor on Tuesday and who agree to work for their benefits would be removed from the welfare rolls 60 or 90 days later if the the Republican proposals become law.
For opponents of the Republican plans, the tightly controlled time limits undermine the Mayor’s assertions that tough new eligibility rules are restricting welfare to the truly needy. If recipients are truly needy and are working for their benefits, they say, then why put them back on the street after a few weeks?
“The Mayor is congratulating himself for being tough and forcing these able-bodied people to jump through hoops and give something back to the city, and that’s fine,” said Stephen DiBrienza, head of the City Council’s General Welfare Committee. “But what happens on the 61st or the 91st day? They get cut off, and go right back on the street. And then what do you do with them?”
He said those taken off the welfare rolls — who would also lose their Medicaid benefits — would eventually become an even bigger drain to the taxpayers if they go to live in city homeless shelters or seek medical assistance at public hospitals.
Anne Erickson, legislative coordinator for the Greater Upstate Law Project, a lobbying group for poor people, said she was counting on the courts to uphold Home Relief against those who would kill it. She is relying on the constitutional provision as legal bedrock. “I don’t think they will ever be successful in eliminating Home Relief,” she said, “and I hope these attempts to circumvent the Constitution and trash the system with time limits will not be successful either. Where do they think those people are going to go?”
Only New York, New Jersey and Alaska still offer welfare programs for the able-bodied, and New York’s is by far the largest and most expensive. Marion Nichols, a researcher at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, said several states that did offer such programs have either eliminated them, as Michigan did in 1991, or have cut them back, as have Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.
Pennsylvania, she said, now offers welfare to able-bodied recipients for 2 out of 24 months. That program is similar to the Mayor’s proposal.
Those who support the Mayor’s and the Governor’s plans say they want to build incentives into the system to push able-bodied recipients back into the work force. Richard Schwartz, a senior aide to the Mayor and a leading architect of his welfare plan, said those recipients who were not employable would not have their benefits cut off by a time limit.
“We’re supportive of helping an individual out for a limited period of time while they reorganize their lives and find a job,” he said yesterday. “The time limit is a very reasonable, practical step necessary to help these people find a life.”
He said a large number of benefit recipients in the city’s Home Relief workfare program, which began in January, have found private jobs and left the program, but he said he did not have exact numbers. The city plans to work with the private sector to set up a “job bank” of private jobs for those whose benefits would be cut off after 90 days, he said.
He noted that the proposed cutoff would not apply to those considered unemployable by reason of age or medical condition. According to state figures, just over half of the city residents on Home Relief are considered unemployable.
Asked yesterday what would happen to the truly needy if Home Relief were eliminated, the Mayor said he hoped to learn the answers to that from the city’s current experience with workfare. He seemed to leave open the possibility that a part of the program could be saved if it only serves those who do not qualify for any other program, like Aid to Families With Dependent Children, for families, or Supplemental Security Income, for the disabled.
“If in fact there are people that are going to fall through the cracks because either they’re disabled or they want to work but just can’t, then I think that would offer a lot of political support for continuing the program for just those people,” Mr. Giuliani said.
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/20/nyregion/mayor-favors-phasing-out-home-relief.html?scp=68&sq=workfare&st=nyt
Posted on June 17, 2010 by WP
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