New Medicaid Work Rules Will Hit Thousands of Families in Williamsburg; City Sending Workers Into Neighborhoods to Stop It

By Williamsburg 365 Staff

New federal work rules for Medicaid start Jan. 1. In Chasidic Williamsburg, where families are large and many households live on modest incomes, the changes will reach thousands of homes.

Census data shows that Medicaid and similar low-income health plans are common across the neighborhood, from the Chasidic blocks to nearby public housing like Marcy Houses and Tompkins Houses. In both, the share of people covered is well above the Brooklyn average.

Many of those covered are children. But tens of thousands of working-age adults in Williamsburg and Greenpoint also rely on Medicaid. Not all of them will be affected by the new rules, but they are the group the requirements target.

The city says as many as 900,000 New Yorkers could lose their coverage under the new rules. On Oct. 19, Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the city Health Department launched a $3 million outreach team to help. It is called the Health and Affordability Resource Team, or HART. Its community health workers will go into neighborhoods to help people keep their benefits.

The city has not said which neighborhoods HART will visit. Its announcement said only that the team “targets key neighborhoods.” In August, Health Commissioner Dr. Alister Martin told Healthbeat he was particularly concerned about the South Bronx, East Harlem and Brownsville.

Brooklyn already has more people on Medicaid than any other county in the state. The state counted more than 1.1 million members in the borough in August. In Community District 1, which covers Williamsburg and Greenpoint, about four in ten residents have Medicaid or another public plan for low-income people.

The new rules come from the budget law Congress passed in 2025. Adults ages 19 to 64 in Medicaid’s expansion group must show 80 hours a month of work, school, job training or community service. Earning at least $580 a month also counts.

Adults will also have to renew their coverage every six months instead of once a year. People already on Medicaid will face the work rules starting with renewals in March 2027, according to the city Health Department.

There are many exemptions. Parents and caregivers of a child 13 or younger do not have to meet the rule. Neither do pregnant women, women who were pregnant in the past year, or people with disabilities or serious health problems.

That matters in a community of large families. A parent with a young child at home is exempt. But based on the rules, many adults on Medicaid may not be. They include young married couples, yeshiva students 18 and older who are not married, and parents whose youngest child is 14 or older.

Full-time Torah study is a big open question. The federal rules say school counts only at a college, a career or technical program, a high school or a high school equivalency program. Yeshivas and kollels are not named. The state’s online guide does not mention religious study.

Volunteer work may help some people. Unpaid community service counts if it is done through a program run by a government agency or a nonprofit.

“HART will help New Yorkers navigate these changes, keep the benefits they rely on and get the support they need,” Mamdani said when he announced the team.