In last week's State of the City address, Mayor Bloomberg pointed with pride to the fact that despite the economic downtown, his administration has "kept the welfare rolls at historic lows." Over the past 15 years, cash assistance rolls have shrunk from 1.1 million to barely 350,000—a figure that conveys the city's commitment to "work first" policies that began under Rudy Giuliani and have continued under the current administration.

But documents released to City Limits reveal that even under the famously data-driven Bloomberg, there's much that the city can't answer about who's applying for welfare—and what happens to them when they do.

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Neil deMause
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It can't say whether more or fewer people are applying for welfare today than did three years ago. It can't say how many people who dropped their welfare applications did so because they got a job, and not because of bureaucratic hurdles. And it can't say how often its computers—without any human intervention—automatically reduced or revoked welfare benefits.

The documents were prepared by the city Human Resources Administration (HRA) following a hearing of the City Council's General Welfare Committee last September, at which HRA Commissioner Robert Doar was peppered with questions from councilmembers on obstacles to poor New Yorkers receiving public benefits, but provided few details, saying he hadn't brought specific figures with him.

Finally, an exasperated Councilmember Brad Lander said: "Are they applying or are they not applying? And if they're applying, what are we doing for them?" Replied Doar: "We will be happy to do a letter on those detailed statistics."

True to Doar's word, two detailed letters eventually arrived, responding to both Lander's questions and to a set of queries posed by General Welfare committee chair Annabel Palma, filling 13 pages with replies on everything from city job placement numbers to how many welfare recipients are approved for enrollment at CUNY schools.

But on the central questions of whether more people are applying for benefits, how many applicants the city turns down and why some people get kicked off welfare, the results were somewhat disappointing. While all questions received answers, many were incomplete or amounted to admissions that the agency didn't compile the requested information.

And though HRA officials beg to differ, an analysis of the HRA letters—and information subsequently provided directly to City Limits by the agency—leaves the undeniable impression that the city's record-keeping on services to the poor remains riddled with holes, making it difficult to determine which policies are successful and why.

Among the central questions posed to HRA, and the agency's responses:

Are more people applying for welfare since the economic downturn, and are they getting it?

This was the heart of Lander's line of questioning, and HRA dutifully provided figures: In 2009, the agency received 366,227 applications for cash assistance. For first nine months of 2010, there were 261,857 applications.

As to whether how this compares with prior years, though, HRA pleads ignorance: It wasn't until October 2008, officials say, that its decade-old Paperless Office System was set up to report application numbers, meaning the agency has no reliable record prior to that date.