Editing General Assistance (section)

{{Short description|American term for a type of welfare}}
{{More citations needed|date=September 2014}}

'''General Assistance''' (also known as '''General Relief''') is a term used in the [[United States]] to denote [[Welfare (financial aid)|welfare]] programs that benefit adults without dependents (single persons, or less commonly, childless married couples) as opposed to families with children, who receive assistance from the federal program formerly known as [[Aid to Families with Dependent Children]], and, since 1996, officially known as [[Temporary Assistance for Needy Families]].

During the [[Great Depression]], the principal welfare program known as '''Home Relief'''—established as part of the [[New Deal]]—made no distinction as to the presence or absence of children in a needy household, but in 1935 a distinct program for such households with children was spun off from the main program.

In later years, individual [[U.S. state|state]]s were given broad discretion as to how much in benefits—and indeed, ''any'' benefits—need be paid to adults without dependent children; and the trend since the 1980s has been for states to sharply curtail, and even eliminate, such aid. As of 2005, only two states—[[New Jersey]] and [[Utah]]—still paid cash welfare benefits to childless adults deemed "able-bodied" (many other states do allow such payments to be made if a disability is demonstrated). In any event, the person(s) seeking General Assistance must first apply for any other programs—state or federal—for which alternate eligibility may or may not exist; only if all such applications are denied is the applicant then permitted to receive General Assistance benefits, which usually include [[Food Stamp Program|food stamps]], and often, assistance in paying for rental housing.

In some states, General Assistance programs are not universal, and the policies of different [[County (United States)|counties]] or cities therein may differ widely. [[California]] is such a state; [[San Francisco]] once paid the most generous benefits in the state, but these were drastically reduced after [[Gavin Newsom]] was elected [[mayor]] of that city in 2003, on a controversial platform known as "[[Care Not Cash]]".

Many jurisdictions use the alternate name "General Relief", including a large number of California counties (among them [[Los Angeles County]]), as well as the states of [[Iowa]] and [[Virginia]].  [[Alaska]] calls its program "General Relief Assistance".