Millions of New Yorkers rely on Federal, State, and City public benefits to stay out of poverty and to feed and house their families. More than 20% of New York City’s 8.5 million people live in poverty, and more than 45 percent live in near poverty.
While enrollment in benefits reduces the poverty rate citywide, many New Yorkers are still not signing up for the benefits that they may be entitled to. Navigating all of the available options is often confusing and difficult due to the complex requirements regarding eligibility.
The Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity is developing the NYC Benefits Screening API, an open API (application programming interface) that enables anyone to create new types of benefits screening tools and to enable bulk, programmatic benefits screening with household composition information (household members, income, expenses, etc.)
Learn about how it works, how it can support benefits outreach work, and to imagine new ways to bridge the benefits enrollment gap.
Sign up for launch news and early access:
https://bit.ly/screening_api