Beneficiaries who cannot afford basic living costs such as rent are not necessarily entitled to extra assistance through a special benefit, says the Department of Work and Income.
Responding to claims that tens of thousands of beneficiaries and low-income earners are being denied correct entitlements, national commissioner Ray Smith said yesterdaythat the special benefit was not supposed to meet basic costs such as rent.
He told Parliament's social services select committee that the accommodation supplement was the benefit covering housing costs.
"And it has limits on it - it doesn't meet all the accommodation costs," he said.
That was a decision made by Parliament, and an issue for it to address if necessary.
"The special benefit is not designed to top up high accommodation costs. That would contravene or undermine the accommodation supplement."
The special benefit was a short-term discretionary response to someone suffering hardship caused by special circumstances.
"If, for example, it's claimed that 150,000 people have accommodation costs so high that it makes it difficult for them to manage on a benefit, what we have to establish is ... is there something that sets one aside from the other.
"That's the intention of the special benefit - to say, 'What is special or unusual about the circumstance that gives rise to paying a special benefit'."
Mr Smith's appearance before the select committee followed a claim by the People's Centre and Downtown Ministry that 175,000 poor households are missing out on an average of $1100 a year in welfare entitlements because Work and Income is not telling them what they should be getting.
He told the MPs that the department accepted that the number of people receiving a special benefit had fallen over the past five years, but there had been a corresponding increase in other types of assistance.
Accommodation supplement payments alone had risen from about $42 million a month in July 1995 to more than $70 million a month now.
In 1995, the combined cost of special benefits, the special needs grant, the accommodation supplement and the disability allowance was $850 million. In 1999, it was $1.2 billion.
