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City to dead: Drop dead!
The Bloomberg administration is using red tape to make it harder for groups to access taxpayer money intended to bury the dead with dignity, sources told The Post.
Burial in a mass grave is what awaits the penniless, as long as the city continues to raise the bar for securing $900-per-interment grants offered by the Human Resources Administration’s Burial Claims Unit. And the end result, sources said, is that more deceased New Yorkers will wind up on Hart Island — home to the city’s 101-acre potter’s field, where bodies are buried in trenches — instead of in dignified graves in religious cemeteries.
Nonprofits like the Hebrew Free Burial Association or Society of St. Vincent de Paul apply for grant money on behalf of a family — a long-standing practice that HRA has turned into a labyrinthine process, sources said.
The agency has suddenly begun forcing applicants to navigate a dead man’s curve, demanding much more documentation.
In one instance, a source said, a man died alone in his apartment, decomposing for weeks before his body was found. One of the groups stepped in and tried to have him buried, but the city refused to cough up any dough because the organization waited more than 60 days to apply for grant money — only because it took that long to have his putrefied remains identified.
The department under which HRA’s burial unit operates was recently shifted from being under the Office of Constituent and Community Affairs to its Family Independence Administration.
The result? More bureaucracy.
“It used to be easy to discern the chain of command. But now they are nameless and faceless people,” said a source.
The person said a call was received this week from an HRA staffer saying that the group could no longer petition the city for burial money on behalf of a family — and can now only do so if there are no surviving relatives.
“But most families are ill-equipped to deal with the bureaucracy,” noted the source.
Insiders said the bureaucratic shell game is all about the city’s bottom line.
“It’s cheaper to pay for burial in a city cemetery,” said a source, who said it costs the city about $600 for a potter’s-field burial.
The city denies that the bureaucracy has changed any of the rules governing the program.
“Nothing has changed, the process is the same as before,” said HRA spokeswoman Carmen Boon.