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showed no interest in pursuing the matter. Contrary to City Hall press releases, the Legal Services Division showed the same reluctance to track down missing fathers of welfare children.

These cases typify the casual fraud and belligerency of welfare clients, but they also point up the fantastic craving of welfarites for their checks and the difficulty of getting them off the rolls. Welfare has become a social right as unchallengeable as the right to life itself. Such fraud was actively assisted by the mayor’s aides. Pro-welfare organizations, like Mobilization for Youth and the West Side Community Alliance, constantly put pressure on the city to give illegal grants to bitterly vociferous clients. Lindsay’s appointed political officials, especially Jule Sugarman and his associates at the Human Resources Administration (which governs the city welfare system), usually buckled and ordered the money handed out. In one case, a welfarite decided he wanted an apartment for which the rent was far in excess of normal public assistance levels. Rather than waste time with the welfare department, the man opened a small bank account and purposely bounced $450 worth of checks for the rent, security, and broker’s fee needed to secure the accommodations. While the various defrauded parties considered legal action against him, antipoverty agencies pressured city administrators to help him out, and I was finally ordered to issue welfare funds to cover the bogus checks.

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showed no interest in pursuing the matter. Contrary to City Hall press releases, the Legal Services Division showed the same reluctance to track down missing fathers of welfare children.

These cases typify the casual fraud and belligerency of welfare clients, but they also point up the fantastic craving of welfarites for their checks and the difficulty of getting them off the rolls. Welfare has become a social right as unchallengeable as the right to life itself. Such fraud was actively assisted by the mayor’s aides. Pro-welfare organizations, like Mobilization for Youth and the West Side Community Alliance, constantly put pressure on the city to give illegal grants to bitterly vociferous clients. Lindsay’s appointed political officials, especially Jule Sugarman and his associates at the Human Resources Administration (which governs the city welfare system), usually buckled and ordered the money handed out. In one case, a welfarite decided he wanted an apartment for which the rent was far in excess of normal public assistance levels. Rather than waste time with the welfare department, the man opened a small bank account and purposely bounced $450 worth of checks for the rent, security, and broker’s fee needed to secure the accommodations. While the various defrauded parties considered legal action against him, antipoverty agencies pressured city administrators to help him out, and I was finally ordered to issue welfare funds to cover the bogus checks.