Demo

CAREY GETS WARNING
ON WELFARE BUDGET

Increasing Costs Are Threatening
Overrun of Up to $175 Million

By LINDA GREENHOUSE

State budget officials told Governor]
Carey yesterday that if welfare costs con-
tinsed to increase at the current rate,
there would be an overrun of $120 million
to $175 million in the state's welfare
‘budget for the current fiscal year.

The higher figure is more than 10 per-
ceat of the state's current welfare budget
of $1.657 billion. Either figure would be|
blow to the state’s precariously bal-
anced budget.

Governor Carey called the new pro-
jection a “very profound and disturbing
reflection of the depressed state of our|
national and regional economy.” He di-
rected his Socail Services Commission,
Philip Toia, to work with the state's coun-
ty executives to “develop a complete and
thorough range of legislative proposals”
to counteract the rising welfare bills.

Upstate Factors Cited

The Budget Division said that most of
the overrun was occurring upstate in the
‘home relief—singles” category of public
assistance, which goes mainly to people
living alone whose unemployment bere-
fits have expired.

Meanwhile, a federally financed study
by the Rand Corporation reported yester-
day that New York City's welfare families
actually received cash and other services
that lifted as many as 90 percent of them
atove the poverty level. [Page 25.]

The state's current welfare budget es-
sunes a “home relief—singles” caselord
of 100,000 recipients 2 month. But the
revised projections are for a caseload of
132,200 recipients a month by the exd
of the year.

According to the Budget Division. the
home relief caseload is rising at the rate
of 5,000 every three months in New York
City and 14,000 a month upstate,

Unlike Medicaid and Aid to Dependent

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