While there is the option of submitting a letter from a charity registered with the New York State Attorney General to confirm the applicant’s work history, this is worth only one point under the system.

Bianca Guerrero, the Fund Excluded Workers campaign coordinator at Make the Road New York, believes one way to fix this would be to offer applicants the ability to submit an employment letter they write themselves attesting to their work history, or expand the options to include other types of documentation.

“Domestic workers are going through the same thing,” says Guerrero by phone, explaining that the lack of the employer letter has been a constant problem for the most informal workers, who are not on a payroll, are not paid by direct deposit and do not have pay stubs.