A program to help the most vulnerable Americans keeps them in poverty instead

This episode explores the challenges of the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program, which despite aiming to assist America's most vulnerable, paradoxically maintains their poverty due to outdated regulations.

1. SSI has not adequately updated its policies to reflect current economic realities, trapping beneficiaries in poverty.
2. Beneficiaries often face bureaucratic challenges and penalties due to minor financial discrepancies or misunderstandings.
3. The $2,000 asset limit, unchanged since 1989, prevents SSI recipients from saving, directly contradicting financial prudence.
4. Efforts to reform SSI, including raising the asset limit, have stalled due to budgetary concerns despite bipartisan support.
5. The program's flaws are systemic, leading to decreased applications and increased disenchantment among potential and current recipients.

1. Introduction to the SSI’s Dilemma

A broad overview of how SSI, intended as a supportive program, fails its beneficiaries. Key issues include outdated financial limits and bureaucratic inefficiencies. Juana Summers: "SSI was meant to help some of the country's most vulnerable people. But with out-of-date rules, how much is it harming the people it's designed to help?"

2. Personal Stories from SSI Recipients

Details personal experiences of SSI recipients facing hardships due to strict asset limitations and administrative errors. Kathleen Romig: "That $2,000 limit hasn't been changed since 1989."

3. Policy Analysis and Legislative Stalemate

Explores legislative efforts and the bureaucratic resistance to changing SSI’s outdated rules. Juana Summers: "The government shouldn't punish people for wanting to do the right thing and save money by taking away the benefits they rely on to live."

1. Stay informed about SSI asset limits and reporting requirements to avoid penalties.
2. Engage with community legal services for support when facing unjust SSI claims or penalties.
3. Advocate for policy changes by contacting legislators to support reforms in SSI.
4. Monitor financial assets rigorously to remain within SSI’s stringent limits.
5. Participate in forums and support groups for SSI recipients to share information and strategies.

Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, is designed to provide monthly checks for low income, disabled and elderly Americans. But outdated rules trap recipients in poverty.

People

Valerie Smith, Kathleen Romig

Content Warnings:

None

Juana Summers
Having a child with disabilities can be life altering. It was for Valerie Smith. Her son was born with spina bifida. A portion of his spinal cord was exposed. When I had Cortez, I said, lord, if you allow Cortes to live, I'll do whatever I have to do to help him to live, you know, to take care of him and to help him to live.

Doctors were not optimistic about Cortez pulling through. The baby stayed in the neonatal ICU for a month, and he lived. And they were saying that he wasn't even supposed to live as long as he's living now. For 29 years, Smith has been her son's caregiver seven days a week, and she's had help from a government program run by Social Security supplemental Security income, or SSi. Smith receives a monthly SSI check she uses for food and medical supplies and rent on a first floor subsidized townhouse in Baltimore with a ramp for her son's wheelchair.

Ssi made her son eligible for Medicaid, and it allowed her to care for him at home. More than 7 million people receive SSI benefits. It should be one of the nation's most successful anti poverty programs. But an NPR investigation found that it is full of problems like outdated eligibility rules. Deborah Wagner, a lawyer at Cornell University's Institute on Employment and Disability studies, SSI I would say the only thing that's true about that name is it's supplemental.

People who live on SSI are not living a secure existence. In order to qualify for SSI, an individual can't have more than $2,000 in cash or other assets. That limit hasn't changed since 1989, and families like Valerie Smith and Cortez goods must report anytime there's a change in the recipient's income. Social Security once sent Smith's son an extra SSI check by mistake. Smith noticed the mistake right away and paid it back.

I handed them the money order, two money orders that total $841. That day, the Social Security worker handed her receipts for the money orders. But two years later, the agency keeps sending her notices, telling her she owes them money, even though she submitted the receipts to prove that the money was paid back. And now they're taking money out. My son's check, $120 a month.

It's money Smith and her son need, and it's a common story. Social Security says that in 2023, one out of every six people who rely on SSI were charged for mistakes, mistakes either made by the recipient or Social Security staff. Consider this. SSI was meant to help some of the country's most vulnerable people. But with out of date rules, how much is it harming the people it's designed to help?

After the break, NPR's Joseph Shapiro reports on the struggles faced by some recipients.

From NPR, I'm Juana Summers.

Joseph Shapiro
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Juana Summers
What's in your wallet terms? Apply. See capital one.com for details. This message comes from NPR sponsor Britbox Streaming, a new season of the original crime thriller Blue Lights, a harrowing, nuanced portrayal of policing in the turbulent streets of modern Belfast. Blue lights streaming@britbox.com NPR.

It'S consider this from NPR. When it was introduced in 1972, it was a bold, innovative idea, a government program that would provide monthly checks for low income, disabled and elderly Americans to help pay for rent, food and other expenses. But our reporting found that today SSI traps people in poverty instead. NPR investigative correspondent Joe Shapiro reports on the holes in this safety net. One of the biggest traps is supplemental security income's limit on how much you can own.

Kathleen Romig
$2,000. That's it. If you have a dollar more than that in savings or possessions other than one car or your own home, you get kicked off the program. That $2,000 limit, it hasn't been changed since 1989.

It's pretty hard to stay under that $2,000 limit on assets, which was clear on a visit to the Terry funeral home. It's been a fixture in West Philadelphia serving generations of black families. Amen. And today, as one funeral service ends, Karen Williams has come to tell the funeral director about a problem. How are you?

Juana Summers
God bless. She's been trying to do the responsible thing and save money to pay for her own funeral one day. But that federal assistance program says she can't. Yeah, right. We see that all the time.

Kathleen Romig
Gregory Burrell, the funeral home director, is familiar with the problem. And unfortunately, people don't know any better. And they're stressing and these insurance policies are considered assets that's what got Karen. Williams in the trouble with the federal government. Williams is disabled.

She doesn't work for income. She depends upon SSi. People who get SSI are required to report everything they own to Social Security, which runs the program, and let the agency monitor their bank accounts and collect income data. Williams reported her checking account. She didn't know her life insurance policy counted.

She bought it so her kids wouldn't need to pay for her burial to use after she died. She didn't know the policy had a modest cash value, that she could turn it in for $1,900. I would have definitely went by the rules. I didn't know I was breaking them. Until the day in 2019 when she got a letter from Social Security telling her, you need to come to our office.

That's where a staffer told her Social Security found records of that insurance policy, plus the couple hundred dollars she'd saved in the bank. As a result, she'd gone over the asset limit by $160 and had been for the last two years. They come to me several years later and say, oh, you owe $20,000. That's right. For going $160 over the limit.

She now owed $20,385 because Social Security was counting all the SSI checks had sent her in the two years she'd been over the limit and demanding all of that money back, even though Social Security only discovered the problem now and she had 30 days to pay it back, which was impossible. She's poor. She depends upon SSI, an assistance program that said she couldn't save more than the $2,000 asset limit. The impact of it is just cruel. Kathleen Romig recently went to work as a senior advisor to the commissioner of Social Security.

She works on making programs like SSI more fair to children. When we interviewed her last year, she wasn't speaking for Social Security. She worked at a Washington think tank, the center on Budget and Policy Priorities, where she wrote about raising the asset limit or ending it altogether because it stops people from saving. We know that saving is good. We know that we can use savings to invest in things that can make people's lives better, like, for example, education or safe and stable housing.

Juana Summers
We know that saving is necessary for that. And yet we're prohibiting some of the poorest, most vulnerable people from doing just that. That $2,000 asset limit traps people on SSI in poverty, some seven and a half million people rely on SSI. SSI is stuck in the past. It's hardly been changed over 50 years.

Kathleen Romig
Like that asset limit. Since SSI started in 1972. It's been increased just once. If the resource limit in SSI had been updated simply for inflation over the last 50 years, it would be $10,000 now. Last year, a group of democratic and republican lawmakers led by Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, introduced legislation to increase the limit to $10,000.

Juana Summers
The government shouldn't punish people for wanting to do the right thing and save money by taking away the benefits they rely on to live. But the bill stalled, largely because of cost. We heard of dozens of cases from SSI recipients and their lawyers, of people disabled, eligible, and in need who were denied SSI or cut off of SSI benefits because they went over that low $2,000 asset limit. A New York man told us about going to the Social Security office and being denied because he owned a worthless timeshare in the Poconos. That's what he.

I was told by my caseworker there, don't even, because you still have the timeshare, you're ineligible. Period. Have a nice day. Peter Belletti tried to sell it without success because he owned it with his ex wife. But to Social Security, it was an asset that put him over that $2,000 limit on how much he could own.

Kathleen Romig
Another man told us he wanted to move from an unsafe and run down apartment. But when he saved up for the deposit and rent on a new place, Social Security said he was over the asset limit and would get kicked off SSI. An immigrant mother co signed a car loan for her son and then lost her SSI, even though she never uses the car. A Virginia Holocaust survivor received a reparations check from Germany and was told improperly. It turned out that he couldn't keep the check and his SSI two back at the funeral home.

Juana Summers
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me to lie down. Gregory Burrell, the funeral director, and Karen Williams talk of how past generations of black families had little access to saving. But their parents and grandparents put aside money to pay for their funerals, and. Every week or two weeks, whenever the insurance guy came, he would mark the book and take the money out with the little book.

That brings back memories. Yeah, it was probably fifty cents a week, but they had it. For Karen Williams, it was embarrassing when she lost her SSI checks. She got by with help from her children and friends. She found a lawyer at community Legal Services in Philadelphia who helped her challenge the big bill she got from SSI.

Kathleen Romig
Recently, Social Security put her back on SSI and conceded it made a mistake. And would waive the money she owed, but then still deducted thousands of dollars from her checks. She's still fighting SSI. It's really tiresome. I am so, so through with this, and I can believe that a lot of people just give up.

She's correct. The system is filled with mistakes, and Social Security's own numbers show that fewer and fewer people are even applying for those monthly supplemental security income benefits. Joseph Shapiro, NPR News this episode was. Produced by Erica Ryan and Graham Smith. It was edited by Jeanette woods and Robert Little.

Juana Summers
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