Page 129 - Impact: Collected Essays on the Threat of Economic Inequality

One specific goal is to phase out the Work Experience Program (“WEP”) because it required public assistance recipients to work for no compensation in jobs that provided little or no job training or valuable job training . We intend to replace WEP with more effective and sustainable work activities . Our Employment Plan provides for a two-year WEP phase-out period . HRA has already collaborated with the City University of New York (“CUNY”) to implement a paid work-study program to phase out WEP for CUNY students who are receiving cash assistance and need to meet an HRA work requirement . As a result of this collaboration, we have phased out approximately 500 CUNY WEP slots, about 10 percent of the total number of WEP slots throughout the City .
Legal Services
The provision of legal services is an important program to address poverty and income inequality; civil legal aid, for example, was a significant initiative in the War on Poverty . At the beginning of our current fiscal year on July 1, 2014 (FY ’15), the Mayor consolidated legal services from the DHS, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (“HPD”), the Department of Youth and Community Development (“DYCD”), and the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice (“MOCJ”) and placed them under the administration of HRA in order to enhance coordination and effectiveness .
Contracted services include: anti-eviction and anti-harassment tenant protection, immigration assistance, representation of domestic violence survivors, help securing federal benefits, and other legal assistance . We are also developing a study of the unmet needs in Housing Court to evaluate what programs will be most effective in preventing homelessness .
The civil legal services programs and the $18 .8 million in associated funding in the City’s baseline budget that were consolidated at HRA in FY ’15 are as follows:
n $13 .5 million for anti-eviction legal services, which represents an increase of $7 .1 million above the previous funding levels, as part of the Mayor’s new initiatives to prevent homelessness that were announced in September; and
n $5 .3 million for legal assistance for immigrants, including legal services for survivors of domestic violence, immigrant workers, and immigrant City residents with legal needs involving citizenship and permanent residency .
During the course of this fiscal year, the Administration’s support for legal services has further increased with the development of these new programs at HRA:
n A new program that will provide access to legal assistance for community residents identified as victims of tenant harassment in order to prevent displacement, keep families and individuals in their homes, and maintain affordable housing—when fully implemented this program will fund $31 million in civil legal assistance and $5 million in HRA support services on an annual basis;
n A new program to assist children and adults with disabilities obtain federal disability benefits in place of state and local public assistance—when fully implemented this program will be funded at more than $2 million on an annual basis for Appeals Council Review and Federal Court Services; and
n A new $660,000 program in FY ’15 to support legal assistance to help New Yorkers benefit from the President’s Executive Action for immigrants .
In addition to the Administration’s commitment of resources in the baseline budget, as part of the FY ’15 budget agreement between the Mayor and the City Council, $17 .6 million in
Lessons from New York City
127