Republican and Democratic Citywide Candidates Agree: City Policies on Hunger, Housing, and Poverty Must Change

Republican and Democratic Citywide Candidates Agree:
City Policies on Hunger, Housing, and Poverty Must Change

At a candidate forum yesterday at which they appeared, as well as in a written questionnaire, Democratic candidate for Mayor Bill Thompson; Democratic candidate for Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, Republican candidate for Public Advocate Alex Zablocki; Democratic candidate for Comptroller John Liu, and Republican candidate for Comptroller Joe Mendola all agreed that key components of City policies on hunger, homelessness, poverty, and public assistance should be changed significantly.

Republican candidate for Mayor Mike Bloomberg declined to either attend the forum or to submit a questionnaire, both of which were sponsored by the New York City Coalition against Hunger and a broad coalition of poverty, hunger, and homelessness, and labor organizations.

The Democratic and Republican candidates that did attend and submit questionnaires all agreed upon the following ways that the City should dramatically change its policies:
• Because the process of finger imaging applicants for food stamp benefits is demeaning, and because better methods are available to prevent fraud, the City should eliminate the process.
• The City should end its practice of refusing to take a federal waiver that would allow adults without children who are unemployed to continue to receive food stamp benefits as they seek work.
• The City should stop charging homeless people rent for staying in shelters.
• The City should redesign its welfare reform policies by making them less punitive and creating more effective systems to enable public assistance recipients to obtain education and job training.
• The City should expand living wage legislation to include all businesses that receive tax breaks and other subsidies from the City.

The following direct quotations for the candidates are from both the candidate forum and the questionnaire.

Republican Alex Zablocki:
“Look around us – so many people are struggling. We may not see it on the streets as we used to, but we can look at data like the use of credit cards to purchase the most basic items, such as food. Singles and families are finding it difficult to find employment or if they do, good paying jobs. They struggle, like most of us, to pay the high taxes of New York City, high rents and other costs, such as health care, housing and education. We have to work towards solutions to these problems because poverty is getting worse in our city.”

“If a corporation receives tax benefits and subsidies from taxpayers, we should have the right to demand something from those entities – in the form of jobs that provide living wages.”

“Food stamp benefits that are lost cost the City money, as these are federal dollars. We should be signing up every eligible New Yorker.”

“Families turning to a homeless shelter are there because they can’t afford to live anywhere else. This policy (of charging rent to homeless people) defies logic.”

Democrat Bill Thompson

““I have visited them (food pantries) in New York City and looked at bare shelves that didn’t even exist just a few years ago.”

“Poverty continues to escalate in the City of New York. The gap between those who are doing well and those who aren’t continues to increase and that is something the City has to focus on. We can’t continue to be a city of the rich and the poor, with the poor continuing to grow in numbers and the middle class continuing to disappear.”

“We continue to point out the disjointed nature of job training in the City, how that is tied together, how much we are not preparing people for the jobs of the future.”

“New York City being one of the few (places) that uses finger imaging (of food stamp applicants), I’d eliminate that. The process is designed to keep people away from food stamps. Other places that don’t use finger imaging have not seen an increase in fraud. I would also grant a waiver to allowed able bodied adults to continue receiving food stamps, particularly during these tough economic times. Food stamps benefit our economy. They are win-win.”

Republican Joe Mendola

“One need only be conscious of the state of our City in 2009 to know that, locally, poverty has increased over the last decade.”

“During the Bloomberg years, there has been too much focus on making the City more appealing to the rich and tourists and not enough focus on preserving the City as a welcoming haven for the vital middle and working classes which are the heart of our City.”

“Any business that receives City assistance should be required to pay its employees a ‘living wage.’”

“We need to look at food stamps not as a welfare program, but as a wage supplement program. Finger imaging is quite demeaning, quite frankly. I would not like to be subject to that, I don’t think anyone should be subject to that.”

Democrat Bill de Blasio

“Finger imaging is a very –ill conceived policy. It is very stigmatizing. I think the State of New York is now way ahead of the City of New York in eliminating this.

“If you can buy an international plane ticket online, particularly in this age of security, you should be able to apply for food stamps and other benefits online.”

“It’s common sense that homeless families, who by definition do not have adequate resources, should be able to keep as much money in their pockets as possible rather than giving it to a shelter – they should be paying rent in permanent housing not at a homeless shelter.”

Democrat John Liu

“People are losing jobs and in many cases people are losing homes as well, so hunger and poverty are becoming much more pronounced problems.”

“It was truly appalling practice of the Rudy Giuliani Administration to make it hard for people to get food stamps, not to save money, but as a social agenda. It was an awful social agenda. People are dismayed that the Bloomberg Administration is continuing the same social agenda.”