Social Security Benefits
Social Security runs a program called Supplemental Security Income (“SSI”) for disabled people who don’t qualify for other kinds of disability benefits. SSI benefits are difficult to qualify for—getting them routinely takes two or more years. Once qualified, a person receives $943 per month. In turn, they have to comply with extraordinarily complicated rules. For example, a single person cannot have more than $2000 in assets, which includes things like land, bank accounts, or even life insurance policies that can be cashed out.
To enforce these rules, Social Security uses computer systems that review property and bank records. People, particularly those with common names, are accused of owning property actually owned by someone else with the same name. Or, people who are listed on a family member’s checking account as someone who would be paid on the death of the account holder are accused of actually owning the account and all the money in it.
When Social Security makes the accusation, it often cuts off benefits right away. The person then doesn’t have any way to pay rent or buy food and, getting so little money from SSI each month, has no savings to rely on. Clearing up the accusation is difficult because the person has to prove they do not own something that a computer system says they own.
Multiple clients came to me with these problems. In one case, we worked for weeks to get property records from another state and other supporting evidence that my client was not the property owner. In another, we had to beg an ex-spouse who had been abusive to my client to go to the bank and get a statement that my client did not actually own the account. These cases took weeks to resolve, with the clients having little to eat and enduring threats of eviction. By the time my clients got their benefits restarted, they had to pay late fees on rent.
While we eventually got their benefits restored, Social Security did not fix its systems. In fact, a report by Justice in Aging and the National Consumer Law Center notes how widespread the problems are. The individual successes are vital, but systemic change is still needed.