Public Assistance and Social Welfare

Welfare Policy Today
Signed into law in 1996 by then President Bill Clinton, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) represents the most sweeping transformation of our nation's welfare system since the 1960s. As expressed by President Clinton when he signed the Act into law, its overarching purpose is to "end welfare as we know it." In its focus on personal responsibility, the welfare reform act is designed to level the notion that public assistance is an entitlement. Indeed, reform efforts boil down to trying to make life more difficult for those poor families and individuals who dare to "depend" on public assistance for financial support. This approach to reform stands in sharp contrast to one that regards welfare as a potentially critical financial resource provided to families whose economic choices are heavily constrained by the operation of the labor market, by social welfare policy, and by the gendered division of labor which assigns to women the main share of unpaid work in the home.1

Under the PRWORA, legal, documented immigrants are not eligible for food stamps, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) until they have resided in the U.S. for five years or until they become citizens. In New York State, immigrants with legal permanent resident status are eligible for the above forms of assistance if and only if they have resided in the U.S. for at least five years. Immigrants enjoying refugee or asylee status are immediately eligible for these forms of assistance. In addition, you do not have to be a legal resident of the United State to apply for others in your household. However, you must document your income, resources, and expenses. Undocumented or illegal immigrants are not eligible for these kinds of federal or state public assistance.2

The poverty thresholds used by the U.S. Census Bureau to determine if families and individuals are living in poverty do not vary geographically. Cost of living, however, varies quite drastically from region to region. A family of four that includes two children below the age of 18 is considered to be living below the poverty line if their collective yearly income is less than $18,600. The thresholds are used mainly for statistical purposes-for instance, preparing estimates of the number of Americans in poverty each year.

The poverty guidelines are another version of the federal poverty measure. The poverty guidelines are a simplification of the poverty thresholds for use for administrative purposes-for instance, determining financial eligibility for certain federal programs including Head Start, the Food Stamp program, and the Children's Health Insurance Program. For a family of four that includes two children below the age of 18 the poverty guideline is a collective yearly income of $18,850. The poverty guidelines likewise do not vary geographically to include cost of living variations.

In general, however, cash public assistance programs such as Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) do not use the poverty thresholds or the poverty guidelines to determine eligibility. Instead, each state sets income eligibility requirements to better serve residents. In New York State the yearly collective income needed to qualify for TANF is $37,700 or a monthly income of $3,142 for a family of four.

When Rudolph Giuliani was sworn into office as Mayor of New York City, he pledged to "end welfare by the end of the century completely." By 1997, a year after passage of PRWORA, 400,000 names had been dropped from the nation's largest welfare rolls. Families that had once been considered eligible were now rejected. Being added to the rolls requires tons of paperwork and numerous, overlapping appointments at welfare centers all over the city. Caseworkers in some sectors of human services have been formally renamed Fraud Investigators and charged with double checking applications. It often takes a family or individual several months before securing a public assistance package and receiving their first check and/or benefits package.3

Former Public Advocate Mark Green has described the administration of welfare in New York City under the PRWORA as "filled with hurdles…designed to trip up the poor, such as requiring repeated appointments with eligibility screeners and job search counselors, often at different addresses and even before an application for welfare has been approved." In the end, active welfare participants are required to maneuver through a maze of complicated measures only to be given benefit allowances that do not adequately cover their food and housing needs. In addition, according to some experts, many recipients are neither treated with respect nor properly informed of their options.4

The new welfare policy takes as its point of departure the notion that in order to receive public assistance, some work activity must be performed in exchange. Colloquially known as "workfare," this policy builds upon the long-standing assumption in American history that "handouts" encourage dependence, idleness, and demoralization of the poor. To receive public assistance, a person must work at least 35 hours a week. President George W. Bush is currently seeking to up the requirement to 40 hours. In urban areas like New York City, people in need are handed brooms or shovels. Laborers do not receive wages per se, but a package of benefits. Thousands of the city's poorest citizens clean parks, sweep streets, and scrub municipal floors. No airports, murals, or roads are ever constructed.5

In New York City, "workfare" is called the Work Experience Program or WEP. WEP jobs offer no sick leave, no wages, and no job protection, because they are not really jobs. Failure to follow the program's myriad rules could mean loss of benefits. Indeed, just one missed workday can be enough to land you in trouble. Case workers are pressured to move as many recipients into work activities as they can per month.6

When critics complained that WEP jobs rarely, if ever, led to permanent employment, Mayor Giuliani didn't argue. Instead he responded that the point was not to train people for a real job, but to instill a work ethic for all those on the dole, who had been stuck in a cycle of dependency. Indeed, Giuliani has been quoted as saying, "…the best way out of dependency is not education, but work."7

Overall, less than 6% of WEP participants move on to more remunerative employment. Lack of emphasis on education ranks high among the multiple reasons that account for this failure. Over 75% of New York City's major employers require at least two years of college for entry level positions. WEP participants are much more likely to be terminated from their program (and thus from receipt of public assistance) for noncompliance than they are to become employed. Only 1.6% of WEP participants found "real" jobs at their assignment sites. Indeed, over eight times the number of welfare recipients were terminated from public assistance as moved from workfare to employment.8

However, there is another option. Recipients of public assistance in New York who are assessed as medically able to work and whose barriers to employment, such as child care, have been addressed are required to engage in a full-time job search focused on obtaining unsubsidized employment. In March 1998, the New York City Human Resources Administration began converting welfare offices into Job Centers. According to the city, all eligible applicants who enter a Job Center are assisted in exploring and pursuing alternatives to welfare. Job Centers provide on-site access to job search and placement services, childcare information, vocational, educational, and training services. The nearest Job Center to the Lower East Side is located at 2322 Third Avenue. But while officials claim that access to higher education is available, experts agree that the way the system is structured makes juggling classes, study time, workfare, and childcare extremely difficult if not impossible.9

For recipients who do move from public assistance to steady employment through WEP job programs or other means, salaries on average are not sufficient to achieve "self sufficiency," or "upward mobility." Typical salaries range from minimum wage to roughly $7.00 per hour. For those continuing on workfare, many labor at municipal service jobs in exchange for cash benefits that would equal a quarter of the pay on the regular labor market.10

Considered among the most generous, New York's welfare grant is $577 a month for a three member family. This falls under TANF or Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. If eligible, a single mother can also receive aid for subsidized child care and, if homeless, a family can receive temporary housing in a city shelter. In addition, a family needs to apply for food stamps. But you have to work for foodstamps as well. A recipient can only get foodstamps 3 out of every 36 months if not engaged in some form of work activity.11

The word "work activity" is used because one can count hours spent in vocational training or matriculating towards a two-year associates degree as part of their required 35-hour total. No time-credit is given for pursuing a four-year bachelor's degree. Under the new welfare policy, single mothers seeking higher education were called upon to comply with work activity mandates, attend classes, study, and raise children. In addition, women in four-year degree programs are not eligible for childcare assistance.12

Individuals and families can also qualify for Section 8 housing vouchers. Under Section 8, the government pays about 70% of the fair-market rent for a 1-4 bedroom apartment in which the landlord agrees to participate, while the tenant is responsible for the remaining 30%. The Bush administration has proposed reducing the value of subsidized housing vouchers given to poor residents in New York City next year, with even bigger cuts planned for some urban areas in New England. The proposal is based on a disputed new formula that averages higher rents in big cities with those in suburban areas, which tend to have lower costs. The proposals could have a "significantly detrimental impact" in some areas by forcing poor families to pay hundreds of extra dollars per month in rent. The changes would affect almost 110,000 families who participate in the Section 8 program in New York City.13

Parents with dependent children under the age of 13 are eligible for subsidized child care if they are in an approved work-related activity, such as WEP, job search, training/education, or substance abuse treatment; or employed and their public assistance case is still open. Subsidized child care will pay for Child Care Centers, Group Family Child Care, Registered Family Care, Family Child Care through a Network, Informal Child Care, from a neighbor, friend, or relative, After School Programs, and Summer Camps.14

The new welfare policy also instituted the first strict time limits on the availability of public assistance. According the PRWORA, families were only eligible for 5 years of public assistance during their lifetime, and single adults were only eligible for 2 years of public assistance during their lifetime. This is a total lifetime limit, meaning if a single mother avails herself of public assistance for two years and then obtains an unsubsidized, remunerative job, she only has 3 more years of public assistance available to her if she loses her job.15

The most pessimistic and perhaps most accurate view of the design, implementation, and administration of New York City's welfare program, is that it aims to reduce welfare rolls, while assuring an ample supply of workers for the city's low-level, low-wage jobs. Restricting access to education and especially to higher education, the regulations and their administration guarantee a steady supply of such workers and limit the possibility of competition for higher-paying, higher status jobs. Indeed, welfare reform nationwide has helped create a class of working poor who rely on multiple jobs, soup kitchens, food pantries, and shelters to secure a minimal standard of living.16