New York City will soon start cutting safety net benefits to some low-income residents if they fail to meet work requirements.
The news comes from an email obtained by Gothamist, which said that the Department of Social Services in the city will resume the so-called welfare-to-work rules for cash assistance recipients on July 28.
The cash assistance program provides low-income residents with small sums of money each month to help them meet their most basic needs. In NYC, a single adult can receive $183 a month in cash assistance benefits, while a family of three, including dependent children, can receive $389 monthly.
Since the onset of the pandemic, the Social Services agency stopped requiring recipients to work, go to school, or look for jobs to enjoy the benefits. But this will soon stop, as beneficiaries must now prove they are engaged in employment-related activities, like proving they're searching for jobs or attending work training.
The email obtained by Gothamist says the decision comes from state and federal laws. But it also as the agency failed to process benefit applications and issue money to people in need on time in the vast majority of cases in recent years, according to annual reports on agency performance.
In March, the Department of Social Services told Gothamist that it had nearly cleared the backlog of food stamp and cash assistance cases.
The Department's spokesperson Neha Sharma said the agency is providing cash assistance to a "record number of New Yorkers" but had to reintroduce the work requirements to comply with state and federal mandates.
Sharma also said the agency "has taken an incredibly careful and considered approach and only recently began this process after requesting more time to avoid reinstating work-requirements in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic, recognizing that low-income New Yorkers were still reeling from its devastating economic impact."
Recipients whose cash benefits get cut off could also lose access to food stamps and even housing subsidies if they fail to meet work rules or miss appointments to reinstate the benefits, according to the email.
New Yorkers cut off from cash assistance, either because they did not comply with guidance or because of an error, will have to contact the agency to dispute the termination, and prove they were exempt from the work requirement because they are already working, caring for a family member, attending a medical appointment or for other reasons.
That will trigger a new waiting period for benefits to be restored, said Adriana Mendoza, benefits supervisor at the Urban Justice Center's Safety Net Project.
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