BY MAURICE WILLIAMS
New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani proudly announced at a news conference April 18 that nearly 60 percent of applicants to the city's Home Relief program were rejected during the first three months of the year, thanks to a tough new screening process. The mayor added that the new measures also cut the total number of people applying for benefits by 27 percent from last year.

The new process, which is being used only in the Home Relief program for childless able-bodied adults, forces applicants to undergo abusive interviews to determine their identity, medical situation, personal resources, and living situation.

Only 7,658 applications have been accepted so far this year, compared with 19,450 during the same period last year, Giuliani pointed out. The city rejected 10,151 people out of 17,809 applicants for Home Relief benefits - a rate of 57 percent.

Many of the applicants are not told why their appeals are rejected. City officials claim people are giving improper addresses, Social Security numbers, or they fail to reveal other income. Many of those who were rejected because of bad addresses were homeless and could not provide an address, said Liz Krueger, associate director of the Community Food Resource Center.

"They may have been unable to document your residence, but it doesn't mean you lied about it," she told the New York Times. "It means they couldn't find the house or they rang the doorbell twice and you weren't there, or the manager didn't know you because you weren't on the lease."

Krueger said the new process has been made "so complex to apply that it's sort of like setting up a New York City mara thon." People are now forced to go to several offices over a 45-day period to fill out forms and to be interviewed.

Johnny Howell commented on the insulting treatment he received during his interview with a welfare official. "The dude asked me a lot personal questions, like how did you become homeless, and how do you clean yourself." Howell said his application was denied, but he was not given a reason why.

Another applicant, Mildred Williams, said she was rejected because "an investigator stopped by when I wasn't home" and "was not invited in." Williams, who was out looking for work that day, was told that "the people who answered the door were uncooperative."

Giuliani is threatening to remove thousands of people from the current Home Relief rolls in a crackdown projected for later this year. Calling welfare "a very user-friendly system," the mayor said benefits had become too easy to get. "It was a system saying, please come and take the money," he said.

New York governor George Pataki attended Giuliani's news conference and said he hoped to apply the same program statewide and eventually expand it for those who receive Aid to Families with Dependent Children.

While there have been almost daily assaults on welfare policies from big-business politicians under the guise of budget cutting, in reality, the $1.2 billion in welfare spending proposed by Pataki represents just 3.7 percent of the state budget. Medicaid, however, at nearly $6 billion represents almost 19 percent of Pataki's budget.

Medicaid, which provides health coverage to workers with low incomes, the disabled, and the elderly, is the most costly of the means-tested benefits. An article in the Financial Times April 21 noted that many politicians have "shown little willingness to tackle the more costly parts of the welfare system such as Medicaid."

"As for the runaway costs of social security pensions and Medicare, the twin pillars of the middle class welfare state, reform of these is not even on the agenda," the article complained.

Meanwhile, in a harbinger of the future, protesters almost drowned out Giuliani's voice as they chanted outside city hall during his news conference. Windows in the room were shut to keep out the roar of the demonstrators.  
 
 
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