to-work initiatives, many Income Support Centers have become Job Centers. An applicant who goes to a Job Center will be turned away the first time and sent to look for a job or other resources.92 Once applicants return to the center and prove that they have been actively seeking work, cannot find work and have no other resources, they are permitted to apply for benefits. They must comply with finger-imaging in order to begin the process. Next they are sent to a center where they must report promptly five days a week and spend the day looking for a job for 50 days (35 if they have children to take care of) before they will receive benefits. If a caseworker believes the applicant has a substance abuse problem, the applicant must undergo substance abuse assessment at a center in Long Island City. Applicants who indicate that physical or mental health problems limit their ability to work must report for examination at Health Service Systems in midtown Manhattan. The burden on city shelters: New York City's Department of Homeless Services (DHS) is the shelter provider for up to 7,584 single adults on any given night. By default, DHS shelters have become the "discharge plan" for thousands of homeless mentally ill ex-offenders. A recent survey by the Coalition for the Homeless found that one-third of a sample of men at the Atlantic Avenue Armory had gone directly to the shelter from prison.93 Obviously, adequate discharge planning for the mentally ill, including housing referral, would relieve the shelter system of a great burden. Short of finding housing for every person in need, however, easier ways exist to create some continuum of care for ex-offenders with mental illness going to DHS shelters. Currently, even when mental health workers in jails and prisons know that a soon-to-be-released inmate with mental illness is going to a city shelter, no mechanism exists to convey treatment information or to make a formal referral to that shelter....
