New York State

New York State Is Illegally Stalling on Food and Cash Aid Decisions, Lawsuit Charges

More than 53,000 New Yorkers are allegedly facing delays regarding eligibility for benefits.

Julia Rock · August 19, 2024

Detail from a fair hearing notice | Photoillustration by Neil deMause / New York Focus

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Zaineb Salem was surprised to learn in April 2022 that she was no longer eligible for the cash assistance she’d been receiving from New York state. Salem, who has two young children, was not working at the time, because she was taking care of her disabled mother and undergoing mental health treatment after leaving a relationship. She’d been receiving roughly $700 a month in rental and cash assistance since her breakup the previous fall.

That winter, a couple of family members sent Salem small sums of money to cover expenses for her mother and children. “I wasn’t advised or told that one-time gifts count as income,” she said.

That became a problem when Salem went to the Monroe County Department of Human Services to renew her benefits for the first time. After reviewing her bank statements, a caseworker informed Salem that, with the money from her family, her income was too high for her to continue qualifying.

“I tried to explain to them,” Salem recalled, that “I had put in some of [my mother’s] funds to pay for things like her bills and to pay for some of her supplies, because she couldn’t do it herself.”

Her caseworker told her that she could request what is known as a fair hearing, a formal process that allows New Yorkers to appeal to the state when their county denies them benefits. They can also opt to continue receiving benefits while waiting for a decision. Salem opted in when she filed for a hearing, because she didn’t have another source of income.

The hearing was supposed to resolve within three months, according to state law — but the decision, a rejection, didn’t come for nearly a year and a half. “That was always on the back of my mind: Where is my fair hearing?” Salem said.

As of May, about 53,000 New Yorkers were facing similar delays in their fair hearing cases — which state law requires must be resolved in 90 days for cash assistance denials and 60 days for food stamp denials — according to a class action lawsuit filed in June by the Empire Justice Center and the National Center for Law and Economic Justice. According to the groups’ analysis of state data, nearly 16,000 of those people had been waiting for more than a year. Salem is the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, filed against the state Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance, which carries out the fair hearings.

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The lawsuit alleges that the delays not only violate state and federal law, but also result in “hunger, hardship, and deprivation for thousands of low-income New Yorkers” — since about half of people awaiting fair hearings are not receiving benefits while they wait.

In many cases, that hardship was unnecessary. In 2023 and the first part of 2024, fewer than one in six fair hearings decisions upheld counties’ denial of benefits, according to the lawsuit. That means many applicants had forgone essential benefits they could have been receiving all along — and, because of the delays, for much longer than they needed to. Thousands of other applicants, like Salem, didn’t forgo benefits while they awaited a hearing, and now they owe OTDA for months of benefits after ultimately being denied.

OTDA declined to comment on the lawsuit or give an explanation for delays in fair hearing decisions.

Attorneys working with clients going through the fair hearings process say the delays at OTDA date back to the start of the pandemic, when state and federal measures transformed the public benefits and fair hearings systems. OTDA postponed some types of hearings, especially for people who were continuing to receive benefits while they waited, creating a backlog the agency later had to work through.

It’s difficult to pinpoint the cause of the delays, but their persistence years after the outset of the pandemic is “puzzling,” said Susan Antos, the lead attorney on the case and the head of the Benefits Unit at the Empire Justice Center, which represents New Yorkers in fair hearings and other parts of the public benefits system.

Fewer than one in six fair hearings decisions upheld counties’ denial of benefits, according to the lawsuit.

“We understand that things got delayed because of Covid,” said Antos. “But we don’t understand why, in July of 2024, over 50,000 people have waited more than the requisite time period.” Whatever the reason, “these are timelines the agency is required to comply with, and they have to figure out a way to do that,” said Antos.

Between October 2022 and September 2023, the state carried out roughly 80,000 fair hearings — half of the total requests they received during that time. The delays have high stakes for fair hearing applicants, who must choose whether they want to continue receiving benefits while they wait for decisions on their cases.

New Yorkers who opt out have missed bills, skipped meals, and borrowed money from family members while they waited, the lawsuit charges. Just over half of the 53,000 New Yorkers who are facing delays have gone without benefits for months or years.

But the other half who opt in, like Salem did, could be on the hook to pay back benefits if the county’s denial is upheld by the state — or if they get a job or new income that makes them ineligible while they await the hearing.

During the 16 months she spent awaiting a decision on her benefits, Salem continued to receive cash assistance, even after she became employed as a home health aide for her mother through the Medicaid program that pays for people to take care of sick or disabled relatives.

“It would be easier to be a Talmudic scholar than to understand all of this stuff.”

—Joel Berg, CEO of Hunger Free America

According to the lawsuit, Salem was not told by OTDA of her rights to stop receiving assistance — even though she had income and didn’t need it anymore — nor was she informed of the consequences of accepting the payments.

When she had initially requested the ongoing benefits, Salem said, “I wasn’t anticipating it was going to take that long to get a fair hearing.”

In September 2023, the state finally informed Salem that it was upholding Monroe County’s decision to terminate her benefits. A couple of months later, she received some more bad news. OTDA had assessed that Salem needed to pay the state back nearly $8,000 in cash assistance, including the benefits she received in the months leading up to her benefits denial and during the time she spent waiting for a decision in her fair hearing.

County social service workers deny applications for food stamps, now known as SNAP, or cash assistance for many reasons: Someone’s income is above the eligibility threshold, or they provided incomplete documentation, or they didn’t show up for a required interview. Between July 2022 and June 2023, counties across the state approved 283,000 applications for cash assistance and denied 339,000. But in many cases, those determinations are made in error, or applicants are granted less than they’re eligible for, and the state often overturns their decisions.

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County social services agencies tend to be unforgiving about missing documentation, because they are sometimes audited by the state or federal governments. That means that when a person isn’t able to successfully jump through various administrative hoops, they can be denied benefits they technically qualify for. But applicants have a chance to correct those issues in a fair hearing.

Another reason for denials is that county caseworkers sometimes make mistakes. Benefits law is extremely complicated, and county social service agencies are often understaffed and underfunded, while low pay for workers drives high turnover. The result is that overworked and sometimes inexperienced or poorly trained people are set up to fail at a complex task, according to advocates working with clients seeking public benefits.

“These programs are so ridiculously, absurdly complicated,” said Joel Berg, the CEO of Hunger Free America, a national advocacy group based in New York City. “The handbook for administering SNAP that a caseworker would use is a few hundred pages. It would be easier to be a Talmudic scholar than to understand all of this stuff.”

After her mother died this spring, Salem got a job working in the payroll department of a hospital. Her salary is barely enough to cover her and her children’s expenses, let alone thousands of dollars in overpayments.

For plaintiffs like Salem, who have been told to repay the state months or years of benefits, the lawsuit demands that OTDA not recover the payments it sent after the legally mandated fair hearing deadline. The lawsuit is also asking the court to require the state to inform people of their right to stop receiving benefits while they await a fair hearing.

“I’m paying full rent now, I’m paying for everything on my own, I don’t get any help from anyone anymore. I have to endure this for years because I won’t be able to pay it back all at once,” Salem told New York Focus. “I can’t focus on the good things that I have, like a new job, or on mourning the loss of my mom, or taking care of my disabled son.

“It’s going to be very difficult, now that I’m on my own,” she said.