Maureen Lane
Who Warrants a Penalty?
Sewell Chan's piece in the New York Times Tuesday "Number of Food Stamp Users Drops for 2nd Summer in Row" ends with New York's Mayor Bloomberg saying "You have to have a penalty if their is a requirement to work, and this penalty is one that's appropriate." That's our Mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, stating his reason for not seeking a Food Stamp waiver for New Yorkers struggling to feed themselves.
As Hunger Action Network of New York State (HANNYS) notes on their website, "The Federal Nutrition Programs are government funded food programs designed to improve the nutrition, well-being, and food security of low-income Americans. They function as a nutritional safety net for millions of low-income people." Food stamps are an important part of the nutrition programs and here in NY over 50% of the people eligible are not receiving them.
A spokesperson for Human Resources Administration, NYC welfare agency, maintained that economic conditions improved last year for low income New Yorkers.
Single people 18-60 years of age who don't have children can only receive food stamps 3 out of 36 months unless there is a waiver requested. Most big cities have waivers because of unemployment figures. Yet, as reported Tuesday, NYC's unemployment rate rose last month to 5.7%.
Hunger is real just ask any emergency food program (EFP) in this city, state or nation. Food stamps save lives and keep people healthy. Welfare agencies are continually making mistakes, people have their hours miscounted and are sanctioned wrongly and benefits are reduced or terminated erroneously. With the hullabaloo about welfare case decreases you would think we would have seen a dramatic cut in HRA mistakes. Well the students I work with at WRI have not... I guess that is another blog.
Here is the deal. Unemployment is up. Even with a minimum wage job a single person is still not able to make ends meet. Who suffers from the mayor's food stamp policy: the individual who won't get the nutrition he or she needs, the local stores that won't get the extra sales, the Emergency Food Program charity who will have to strain to take one more, and all of us in NY because, yet again, policy makers and blowhards have successfully taken our eye off the ball. The ball is poverty in NYC and reducing access to food stamps for even a small population of people is moving deeper into the problem and further from the solution.
I say we all pay a penalty but not all of us warrant it, Mr. Mayor.
Maureen Lane: Author Bio | Other Posts
Posted at 6:27 AM, Aug 31, 2006 in Welfare
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Comments
NYC's food stamp program is not only punative and illegal -- its wrong from a policy perspective.
As I understand it, screeners discourage otherwise eligble applicants. The drop reported in food stamp recipients is no puzzle to pantry and soup kitchen users because they cant get the stamps.
I'm told that a family of four could have a maximum income of 3,000 a month and be food stamp eligible at no cost to NYC. If the city would encourage access to food stamps, it would provide a substantial income boost to the working poor and significant income to NYC food stores and supermarkets.
One example of the City's intentionally lawless conduct in this regard was reported in yestereday's NY Times by Nina Bernstein,
"A federal judge yesterday ordered the city to stop illegally denying food stamps and other aid to battered immigrant women and children and to overhaul the error-plagued computer programs and training manuals that continue to lead welfare workers to turn them away.
The judge determined that high-level city policymakers had long been aware of the systemic problems, but did little or nothing to fix them until a group of battered women filed a lawsuit late last year. As a result, if the city and state continue to fight the lawsuit, the judge said, he will be highly likely to find them liable for "deliberate indifference to violations of the plaintiffs? federal and state rights."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/30/nyregion/30immigrant.html
I am concerned that Mayor's Bloomberg's Commission of Economic Opportunity (the post Labor Day report of which has been widely leaked) will ignore the harmful actions Mr. Bloomberg continues to take to make the lives of lower-income New Yorkers significantly more difficult than they need to be.
Posted by: Daniel Millstone | August 31, 2006 08:09 AM
Wow! This post hits hard.
Bloomberg seems to be almost schizophrenic on the subject of poverty alleviation. On the one hand, he has this high-profile anti-poverty commission and calls reducing poverty a major goal of his second term, on the other hand when he's faced with very common-sense policy changes like making sure food stamps are available to everyone who qualifies and (Maureen's other frequent point) facilitating access to education for welfare recipients, he falls back on this ideologically conservative rhetoric about punishing poor people to justify doing nothing.
Do you think he really believes it? And if so, why worry about fighting poverty at all -- isn't it just the penalty for not working? As long as you ignore the unemployed who would love to work if they could find jobs and the working poor who still need food stamps and other public benefits to make ends meet, this is a perfectly logical position.
Posted by: Upper Manhattanite | August 31, 2006 05:27 PM