The state Office of Temporary Disability Assistance (OTDA) says access to SNAP has improved through such reforms as a new website and less burdensome face-to-face interview requirements. And city officials count an 88 percent increase in enrollees from 2002, when Mayor Bloomberg took office, to this June.
But advocates at the New York City Coalition Against Hunger (NYCCAH) say the “SNAP gap” – the number of eligible households signed up versus not enrolled – is increasing. According to NYCCAH, there were still at least 70,000 fewer people receiving food stamps in the city in May 2009 than at the peak in March of 1995. “It is deceptive to cite data from only when Bloomberg became mayor,” said Joel Berg, NYCCAH’s executive director, because the number had dipped so low before 2001.
Among those who are eligible but unenrolled, advocates say, are those deterred by the finger-imaging requirement (fingerprinting done by digital means) and those whose benefits were eliminated in the recent “marriage purge.”
Carlos Robles falls into the latter category. A mentally ill SRO resident whose monthly income is comprised of $653 in disability benefits and $515 in wages from his job in a grocery store, Robles also received $84 in monthly SNAP benefits through this June. According to the Office of Administrative Hearings, Robles was cut off for misstating his marital status, which had resulted in an “overissuance of $0” in benefits. As HRA acknowledges, Robles’ marital status did not affect his benefit amount, because the question about household size was answered correctly. (He never lived with his spouse in the course of their 18-month marriage.)
“They’re going after people for a misstatement even if it has nothing to do with eligibility,” says Tara Crean, the Urban Justice Center attorney who filed a class action complaint against OTDA and the city Human Resources Administration (HRA) on behalf of Robles and others in similar situations. Marital status, the complaint argues, has no bearing on eligibility and thus the “marriage purge” is “arbitrarily [denying] financially eligible individuals of food stamps to which they are entitled.” At least 18 states don’t even ask for marital status.
Though city representatives would not comment on a matter related to pending litigation, Lawrence Mead, professor of public policy at NYU and former consultant on welfare to Mayor Rudy Giuliani, surmised that the city could be checking marital status because it may affect other benefits, if not actually the SNAP benefit amount. “This seems to me to be a legitimate argument,” Mead said.
All plaintiffs in the Urban Justice Center’s case were legally married at the time that the paperwork in question was submitted. Their forms mistakenly indicated they were single, but their benefit amount was not impacted by the error. According to Jaclyn Kessel, a spokeswoman for the Urban Justice Center, some couldn’t afford a divorce but considered themselves single, others suffered from mental illness, and still others had failed to spot their social worker’s mistake.
The Urban Justice Center says HRA began matching SNAP documents against City Clerk marriage records in 2005, but because of the lag between clients’ recertification and cut-off, the effects of the new policy have only recently become apparent. In the year and a half between Jan. 1, 2008 and June 1, 2009, there were 329 hearings on “intentional program violations” due to marital status in New York City. Since SNAP beneficiaries can waive their right to a hearing, this may be an undercount of affected households.
