Exclusive | Nearly 800,000 New Yorkers collected welfare checks last fiscal year most in decades
New York City shelled out cash assistance to 787,400 residents last fiscal year — the most welfare checks it’s issued in at least two decades, dating back to the Giuliani administration.While taxpayers have already been socked with a more than $5.5 billion tab the past two years to provide shelter and other services for a mass influx of migrants, they’ve also had to separately deal with a surge in New Yorkers seeking handouts.Mayor Adams budgeted $2.46 billion in federal, state and city funds for cash assistance payments during the fiscal year that ended June 30 after previously budgeting $1.99 billion in Fiscal Year 2023, and $1.57 billion in Fiscal Year 2022.The biweekly checks — $91.50 for single adults and $144.50 for households of three — are supposed to pay for utilities, rent, clothing and other necessities.The number of New Yorkers who received welfare checks last fiscal year is 19.1% more than the 660,800 recipients in fiscal 2023, according to the annual Mayor’s Management Report.In August alone, 569,981 New Yorkers pocketed the handouts — a 16.5% increase from the same period a year earlier, and the most the Big Apple has seen in a single month since parts of 2000, a Post examination of city records shows. It’s also 48.2% higher than the monthly welfare rolls Adams inherited when he took office in 2022.The city’s Department of Social Services attributes the huge hike to an “unprecedented” challenge of trying to help New Yorkers get back on their feet after many — especially people of color — were hit hard in the pocket during the pandemic.The agency insists the migrant crisis isn’t driving the rapid rise in welfare checks.While it estimates that roughly 2% of current cash assistance recipients are “non-citizens” – about 11,200 people — the city claims only “a very small percentage” them are illegal border crossers who’ve arrived since spring 2022.
In March, the agency estimated 1.3% of that month’s 535,184 ...