The obvious solution is to put the food stamp applicants to work filling the staffing shortage /s

Adams has to create the staffing crisis first before he can float filling it with a private contractor that just happens to be owned by a close friend.

Unironically, there are tons of city jobs open that can lift people out of poverty and have less of a reliance on government assistance.

Imagine thinking city government is operating at peak efficiency and all it needs is more bodies.

It's expensive to give out other people's money.

Unironically that is not a substitute for giving people immediate access to the assistance that will put food on their tables.

Tale as old as time. Deliberately hamstring or destroy public services; say how bad the public services are; privatize the solution; never speak about how awful and bad the new service is because everyone ceases to care so long as it's not administered publicly.

It's wild how conservatives are correct, there is an enormous amount of waste in public spending. And then wildly incorrect about how it works. We've demolished actual public capacity to do anything, and offload everything to NGOs, non-profits, and for profit businesses.

Turns out, it's a lot more expensive to sub contract out every service imaginable than it is to simply build your own capacity to do things, something a government with as much money as New York can do very easily.

The starting pay for a clerk is 32k the equivalent of minimum wage. Clerks are likely the majority of the people processing the applications. They are treated like shit by people and managers. So they fucking quit because they can make more and deal with less shit.

I thought city pay is so low compared to NYC cost of living that you would need food aid

Sure, cause before Adams HRA worked like clockwork.

Most city workers can’t make enough to live in NYC anyway

It’s called a handout, and not a hand up.

Very depressing. Well said!

> 32k the equivalent of minimum wage

Disgusting salary for this city in this era

Thats genius lol

who said anything about "operating at peak efficiency" ? I think the idea is just to get people's applications processed, because... food.

In 2014, Obama became the first president to ever cut the budget for food stamps.

Sounds like the Florida strategy.

Perhaps, but even if they still need food aid, they would need less aid.

All jobs subsidize the welfare programs, even jobs where the employees are on welfare, because the government would have to pay out more if the employees weren’t making any money.

I've been saying this for years.

"Look at how inefficient the government is. We should look to the private sector."

They bring in an entity who more than likely is also a campaign donor. They charge rates exponentially higher for services and goods, and then find someone else to do it as cheap as possible. Most of the time, the job isn't even finished.

Let's say 10 people operating at peak efficiency can process 100 applications in an hour.

But 10 people operating at middling efficiency can only process 50 applications in an hour and 10 people operating at low efficiency can only process 25 applications in an hour.

If they're operating at low efficiency, how many people do they need to process 100 applications in an hour? Show your work.

You can increase efficiency or you can hire more people. Which choice is more cost-effective? Show your work.

🥲

Yet they top out NYPD at like 90k-100k with OT after 5 years

And leave the processors with crumbs making what someone working at Walmart makes

NYC best city in the world !!!

This is what happens when you don’t pay people what their worth and there are other options. Competition works both ways — jobs need to offer incentives for people to stay too. I think we’re dealing with employer/labor market friction. Except the people who lose in this instance are the most vulnerable. It’s sad.

It might be worth it if the benefits are gold plated. Meaning essentially free for an entire family.

It seriously took months to process my EMERGENCY food stamps, had all my paperwork in, showed up hungry to the office asking what was up and cried when the kind clerk said there was nothing to do but wait

I never said the solution was to hire more people either lol, because I'm not in the habit of making up scenarios about which i'm totally uninformed :)

But sure I can humor you; your model is bad. You're assuming there's a "make city workers more 'efficient' button" that someone can just press, and is choosing not to press lmao. If you want to "increase efficiency" there is obviously going to be some sort of input cost to doing so (training, time, hiring trainers, etc.) So the real question isn't some weird, trivial 4th grade math about filling out widget-forms, the question is if (expected value/expected cost of TRAINING) > (expected value/expected cost of HIRING).

Good luck! show your work xx

You can see the same discussion on the other NYC board. They understand this point. Learn something.

https://www.reddit.com/r/newyorkcity/comments/zquwd4/over_half_of_nycs_food_stamp_applicants_left/

I skimmed, so in good faith I'll share the (imo) important bits of your comment here:

> Well, let's start with the easy part, which is automating the form.

This is already a huge assumption, that it's "easier"/cheaper/more effective for the city to update the application process, than it is to hire more people. And that there are no additional regulatory steps other than "scan the form and put it online".

> Nobody should be doing data entry when time is of the essence.

You (correctly) observe the key factor is time. Setting aside what would be more cost effective, what do you think would be faster for the city: updating a workstream (taking the SNAP form application process and digitalizing it + whatever other steps would be required e.g. with NYS or the feds) or hiring more people to do the same work in the same way?

I'm not in the public sector, but knowing what we know about the bureaucracy of NYC, which tends to look to private-sector technocrats to implement scaled change, I'd bet that hiring more people is the faster (if not cheaper) way to get more forms processed in the short term, because those operations (the hiring, the onboarding/training, etc.) all exist already, and don't require any external intervention by e.g. some consulting firm to implement. So that's what makes more sense to me, after thinking it through.

You can already apply for SNAP online. They just don't force people to go that route.

Updating the form to be less crappy looking, which would make things easier for people filling it out and doing the data entry would be extremely easy and would speed up the inputting.

idk that sounds like we're abstracting away from the goal of increasing program coverage and application throughput. I'm assuming there's literally 0 money, but if there was money i'd say it should be spent on 1) hiring more application processors, whatever that means and 2) aggressively marketing the program in areas where SNAP currently has the highest usage. And cutting as much red tape in the process as possible though it already sounds pretty simple (just an application + an interview --> decision?)

Would they be eligible for food stamps themselves? A box of cereal is like 8 dollars. A box a week would come out to fucking 2% of their annual salary.

Where would they live? Jersey? Affordable housing is 2+ hours away by car.

Family coverage on the legacy Civil Service 'cadillac' plan is about $550 pre-tax monthly. And most providers no longer accept it because they are very tight on paying out.