Transforming Welfare and Expanding Opportunity
By Mayor Rudy Giuliani
Last week, I was proud to open the Coney Island Job Center, marking
the completion of the City's historic effort to convert all welfare
offices into job centers, where individuals and Human Resources Administration
(HRA) staff now focus intensively on employment.
When we developed the City's landmark welfare reform program in 1994,
over 1.1 million people were on welfare - nearly one in seven New
Yorkers. We understood that a transition to self-sufficiency could
not be accomplished without an underlying change in philosophy. By
converting welfare offices into job centers, we have helped to restore
work and the work ethic to the central role they once occupied in
our city.
We now have 27 job centers throughout the city, along with three
other specialty job centers that seek to help refugees, homeless single
individuals, and people in drug treatment programs. The purpose of
the centers is to provide welfare applicants and recipients with meaningful
opportunities to avoid dependency through employment and job-related
activities.
All eligible applicants who enter a job center are immediately assisted
in exploring and pursuing alternatives to welfare and are initially
engaged in a full-time job search focused on obtaining unsubsidized
employment. Job centers provide on-site access to job search and placement
services, child-care information, and vocational and educational training.
By emphasizing job placement and substance-abuse treatment, we have
brought the welfare rolls down more than anyone had anticipated. As
of June, the number of New Yorkers on welfare was down to 497,113,
a drop of 57.2 percent from the peak of 1,160,593 in March 1995.
This is the first time since July 1966 that New York City has had
less than 500,000 people on public assistance. It is a milestone worth
celebrating. There are now 663,480 fewer people on welfare now than
there were just over six years ago. This is a figure larger than the
populations of all but 15 cities in the nation, and more than the
populations of Alaska, North Dakota, Wyoming or Vermont.
Last year, HRA surpassed its goal of 100,000 job placements by achieving
133,000 jobs. HRA accomplished this goal through many initiatives,
among the most important of which was the initiation of strictly performance-based
job placement contracts.
Under this fundamental reform, HRA's employment placement contractors,
including both for-profit and non-profit entities, are paid on the
basis of actual job placements and job retention. The annual number
of placements made through these performance-based contacts presently
exceeds 15,500 jobs.
In addition, HRA has expanded its effort to enroll all eligible participants
in public health insurance programs by reaching out to working individuals
and families who are not eligible for welfare but who may be eligible
for health insurance.
In the job centers, eligibility for public health insurance programs
is determined by a Medicaid worker based upon the welfare application
and direct follow-up with the applicant. Last month, the Medical Assistance
Program began reviewing all closed welfare cases to determine if the
participants are eligible for health insurance.
Instead of looking to add another person to the welfare rolls, job
centers do everything possible to add another person to the workforce,
to give people real independence in their own lives. And in the process,
we're restoring the work ethic to the center of city life and transforming
New York City from the former welfare capital of the world to the
work capital of the world.
