New York City paid cash aid to 787,400 residents in the past fiscal year — the largest number of welfare checks issued in at least two decades, dating back to the Giuliani administration.

While taxpayers have already been billed more than $5.5 billion over the past two years to provide shelter and other services to a massive influx of migrants, they have also separately faced an increase of the number of New Yorkers seeking help.

Mayor Adams budgeted $2.46 billion in federal, state and municipal funds for cash assistance payments in the fiscal year ended June 30, after budgeting $1.99 billion for the fiscal year 2023 and $1.57 billion for fiscal 2022.

The biweekly checks — $91.50 for single adults and $144.50 for three-person households — are supposed to pay for utilities, rent, clothing and other necessities.

The number of New Yorkers who received welfare checks in the last fiscal year is 19.1% higher than the 660,800 recipients in fiscal 2023, according to the mayor’s annual management report.

In August alone, 569,981 New Yorkers pocketed the donations – a 16.5% increase from the same period a year earlier, and the largest number the Big Apple has seen in a single month since part of 2000, according to a post review of city records.

It’s also 48.2% more than the monthly welfare benefits Adams inherited when he took office in 2022.

The city’s Department of Human Services attributes the huge spike to an “unprecedented” challenge of trying to help New Yorkers get back on their feet after many — particularly people of color — were hit hard for the pandemic.

The agency insists that the migrant crisis is not behind the rapid increase in social benefits.

Although it estimates that about 2% of current cash aid recipients are “non-citizens” – or about 11,200 people – the city says that only “a very small percentage” of them are cross-border commuters. illegal arrivals since spring 2022.

In March, the agency estimated that 1.3% of that month’s 535,184 beneficiaries were noncitizens, or nearly 7,000.

However, as The Post reported in February, thousands of migrants who don’t qualify for typical welfare are still receiving monthly checks totaling hundreds of dollars after the state Office of Temporary Assistance and disability has modified the eligibility rules of its “Safety Net Assistance” program. include non-citizens with pending applications for legal asylum status.

Similar to welfare, SNA has historically provided cash payments to needy New Yorkers who do not qualify for conventional public assistance, including single adults, couples without children, and families of abusers. alcohol and drugs.

“Migrants may not be behind the increase in cash aid, but there is still a clear parallel here,” said Stephen Eide, a senior fellow at the conservative think tank Manhattan Institute which follows public assistance.

“Both on welfare and migrant housing spending, the city has relied primarily on two extremely expensive expansions of benefits. I don’t know which is worse: strategically deciding that more people should get welfare, or accidentally authorizing an increase that erases two decades of progress in reducing dependency.

When Rudy Giuliani became mayor in 1994, he inherited a social crisis, and the number of New Yorkers receiving monthly cash assistance soared to a record 1,160,593 by the time he implemented implemented a series of reforms in March 1995.

He made getting recipients back to work a priority – particularly those who preferred collecting checks rather than clocking in at a job – and encouraged welfare reform initiatives like his work experience program, in where many beneficiaries helped clean city parks and streets and answered phones at city offices. exchange for temporary assistance.

That number dropped to 497,100 by mid-2001, the final year of Giuliani’s term, and the downward spiral continued under his successor, Michael Bloomberg. In December 2013, Bloomberg’s final month in office, 346,398 New Yorkers received unemployment checks.

In May 2014, under the leadership of then-Mayor Bill de Blasio, the city’s monthly number fell to 336,403 – its lowest level since the early 1960s. However, the number of monthly recipients increased to 384,523 by the time de Blasio left office at the end of 2021, thanks in part to policies he implemented to simplify the application process and economic strains related to the pandemic.

DSS spokesman Nicholas Jacobelli said the Adams administration “has connected a record number of New Yorkers to cash assistance in accordance with state and federal regulations, which include the recent reinstatement of mandatory work requirements that were suspended during and immediately after the pandemic. to support New York City’s recovery.

“The agency remains committed. . . connect them to key employment support measures, so they can achieve self-sufficiency,” he added.