NYC says food stamps and cash aid backlog is nearly gone after record delays

The Adams administration announced on Monday that it has nearly cleared the backlog of pending food stamp and cash aid cases, after more than a year of record-slow processing times and mounting outcry from beneficiaries and advocates.

Officials with the city Department of Social Services, the agency that oversees public benefits programs, said they have processed more than 600,000 applications since the summer by hiring 1,000 workers, investing in technology and making it easier to use online services.

The turnaround on processing cases within 30 days, as required under federal and state laws, is a major boon for New Yorkers grappling with an affordability crisis who were waiting more than a month for extra aid to buy groceries, pay rent or cover other necessities.

“We acted with urgency to address historic increases in the volume of applications, deploying all agency resources and doubling down on efforts to process a significantly higher number of applications over a very short period of time,” DSS Commissioner Molly Wasow Park said in a statement.

The improvements also meet a federal court order stemming from a class-action lawsuit filed by the nonprofit Legal Aid Society and New York Legal Assistance Group in January 2023 over the delays. The agreement reached with the court last summer mandated fixes due this month.

The Legal Aid Society said it was pleased the city corrected the backlog, but would continue to hold officials accountable for any more delays. “We await further details from the city on how the backlog was reduced to ensure that any eligible household received the benefits entitled to them by the law,” the nonprofit said in a statement.

Abby Biberman, associate director of the New York Legal Assistance Group’s public benefits unit, said she’s still concerned clients aren’t getting through on the phone to complete their required interviews and are getting their cases denied.

“We have seen this in other data produced, where there was an increase in the number of cases for failure to complete the interview, but you wouldn’t know it from the numbers the administration is providing here. We are continuing to explore the phone interview and other barriers to accessing benefits as we litigate the rest of the case,” she said.

DSS officials said the backlog of public benefit cases peaked at more than 50,000 in July, with 46,000 pending cash assistance applications and 4,000 applications for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits, which supplement food purchases. The number of cash assistance applications have been slashed by 97% and SNAP cases by 90%, officials added.

There’s still a backlog of more than 400 SNAP and 1,100 cash assistance cases.

For months, agency officials blamed the extra long wait times on a historic number of applications as well as employee attrition and retirements that left an understaffed department to manage the surge in cases.

Earlier this year, the preliminary Mayor’s Management Report, an annual city report card, showed dismal processing times for cases, with only 14% of cash assistance applicants processed within the required 30 days.

DSS officials said the report captured the peak of cases and that, since then, staff have worked to get a state waiver to help keep people on benefits and improved online services. Over 90% of people now apply for their benefits online, according to the city.

Officials also said that the spike in applications was not due to people applying more than once or a surge in denials, as reported by City Limits.

About 1.7 million New Yorkers receive SNAP benefits and more than 500,000 receive cash assistance, according to official data.

This story was updated to include a statement from The Legal Aid Society and the New York Legal Assistance Group.