City Food-Stamp Centers Are Understaffed

   In a recent article from the Wall Street Journal, an issue is being addressed: the food-stamp distribution within New York City. Before the recession, in 2007, there was one case worker for every 549 food-stamp cases. However, by the end of 2011 that number has risen to 852 cases per case worker. Patricia Smith, the deputy commissioner of the city’s Human Resources Administration, acknowledged at a City Council hearing Tuesday that the Bloomberg administration had misjudged the role of automation in the food-stamp program. Their misjudgement has led to severe overcrowding at the city’s assistance centers. With this overcrowding taking place, the wait time for recipients has been reported to be between four to seven hours in the boroughs.

 

   As you can infer from the graph above, the number of New York City food-stamp recipients has risen by approximately a half million more people since 2009. Due to the recession and the loss of jobs in recent years, the demand for government assistance has risen dramatically. While the demand for food-stamps rose, the number of workers to aid these recipients stayed relatively the same. Therefore, the excessive load of recipients compared to workers available to aid them has resulted in slower services and longer wait times.

   Based on the situation, there are a few possible solutions to this problem. One solution would be to cut the number of recipients to the food-stamp aid, however, these people obviously, or to some degree, need the assistance and denying people help is morally wrong. The city council members questioned the finger imaging process used as being more of a delay. Thus another solution being to shorten the process of distributing food-stamps. Another solution would be to increase the supply of case workers to aid the growing number of recipients. This seems to be the best solution on terms of its marginal benefits outweighing its marginal costs. On one hand, you would cause the salary budgets of the workers to be redistributed and possibly lower wages. Also you would need to find workspace for the incoming workers. But on the other hand, not only will jobs be created, but the food-stamp dilemma would be solved. While there are other factors to be considered with this method, this method would stimulate the economy and give the recipients a faster and more efficient experience 

Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2012/01/31/city-food-stamp-centers-are-understaffed/?mod=WSJBlog&mod=WSJ_NY_NY_Blog