New York State Public Assistance Case Openings by District and Month

Beginning in 2006, this dataset tracks monthly counts of approved public assistance applications across New York State's Local Social Services Districts. It provides separate totals for Family Assistance and Safety Net Assistance case openings, mirroring annual statistics published in official state reports. The data is maintained by the New York State Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance.

Use Cases

• Tracking monthly trends in welfare program uptake using Year, Month, and Total Public Assistance Case Openings.
• Comparing the prevalence of Family Assistance versus Safety Net Assistance programs across districts using the respective case opening columns.
• Analyzing seasonal or annual patterns in public assistance applications for a specific Local Social Services District using District, Month Code, and Year.
• Aggregating annual totals from monthly data for reporting or benchmarking against official annual statistical reports.

Strengths

• Provides a long-term monthly time series beginning in 2006.
• Offers granular breakdowns by Local Social Services District and by assistance program type (Family Assistance, Safety Net Assistance).
• Cross-platform presence on Socrata and Data.gov suggests official importance and accessibility.

Limitations

• Critical metadata is missing or conflicting: row counts, file sizes, and specific license information are not provided.
• The 'last updated' dates are future-dated (2026), indicating potential metadata errors or system artifacts.
• Column information is incomplete on the Data.gov source, limiting full understanding from that platform.

Provenance

Source

New York State Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance

Collection Method

Administrative records from Local Social Services Districts, compiled for reporting similar to the annual 'Statistical Report on the Operations of New York State Public Assistance Programs.'

Time Range

Beginning 2006

Freshness

Last updated dates are reported as 2026-04-11 and 2026-04-07, which are future dates and likely represent system errors; the actual freshness is unclear.

Geography

New York State, specifically Local Social Services Districts