From Salon:
After two months of sleeping in the Salvation Army Center of Hope homeless shelter, Margaret Davis has had no luck finding an apartment she can afford.
The 55-year-old grandmother receives about $750 a month from the federal government. She's trying to live on just $50 cash and $150 in food stamps each month so she can save enough for a place to call home.
Davis is homeless even though she receives funds from the Supplemental Security Income program, a hard-to-get federal benefit that was created nearly 50 years ago to lift out of poverty Americans who are older, blind, or disabled.
Davis' job options are limited because she gets dialysis treatment three times a week for kidney failure. As she prepared to spend another night in the crowded shelter, she checked her phone to see whether a doctor wanted her to have her left leg amputated. ...
Falling into homelessness is not a new issue for people who receive supplemental income from the Social Security Administration. But moving recipients out of shelters, crime-ridden motels, and tent encampments and into stable housing has been getting harder, according to nonprofit attorneys, advocates for people with disabilities, and academic researchers. ...
"We are trapping people in a place where dignity is out of reach," said Rebecca Vallas, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a progressive think tank that conducts research on economic equity. "The program started with good intentions," she said. "It is hard for me to see this as anything but willful neglect." ...
She's living in Los Angeles. A regular tract home goes for a million dollars there so of course she can't afford rent. It's either section 8 or move more inland to something a lot cheaper.
ReplyDeleteFor one thing, you’re just wrong about where they live. Second, all cities are unaffordable on SSI nowadays thanks to casino capitalism and property hoarding. Third, living further outside the city is unaffordable on SSI because it requires owning and maintaining a reliable automobile. So bugger off with your judgmental fox-news bull**** about how poor people just make bad choices.
DeleteAnger needs to be directed to the US Federal representatives in Congress, whose laws SSA has to follow. You want things to change, it's gotta be done by law. That means the people who make the laws. Because anything done by regulation of executive action is so easily reversible as to be a waste of time.
ReplyDeleteThe Salon article says she lives in Charlotte and that the average rent there is $1500 a month.
ReplyDeleteIt is North Carolina, not LA. https://khn.org/news/article/ssi-disability-program-poverty-homeless/view/republish/
ReplyDeleteCharlotte, Los Angeles…wherever…if rent is that high for a one bedroom it’s time to move.
ReplyDeleteAre there programs to help homeless or those in poverty relocate to more affordable areas?
If not, this could be a great opportunity to start a local program that could make a real impact on people’s lives!
Let us just be blunt.
ReplyDeleteA full federal SSI check is $841. There is nowhere in the country that SSI recipients can afford to rent a safe decent pace. SSI recipients are consigned to destitution.
So enough about telling them to pick up and move.
A little more compassion and less heartlessness, please.
Compassion is all well and good, but I am not paying any more in taxes for it.
ReplyDeleteShould SSI be as much as what a working individual makes? Should they also get free medical care? Should they get free or reduced rent all off the back of the taxpayer who is scrambling to pay the same level of rent and have gas money to get to work to pay for the SSI person? That working person still has to pay the full amount for utilities, prescriptions, maybe even child care while they are at work. They pay taxes, and healthcare insurance premiums.
There are people who get SSI benefits that worked and paid into system so please stop the BS. SSI needs to change to help not distroy lifes.
Delete@12:17: You sure don’t sound like someone with compassion for the less fortunate. And who says you need to pay taxes for the government to be able to provide all of its citizens with a middle class subsistence?
Delete12:17…I wonder how ‘much more’ your share of the taxes would be. Probably negligible.
DeleteThere used to be more housing available for low income people. Now all I see being built is McMansions.
ReplyDeleteIt is welfare, it is supposed to be brutal. The goal isnt to pay everyone, it is to encourage work.
ReplyDeleteSSA and SSI are NOT universal income programs. If you want universal income, then you need to get the money from somewhere else. This is not the program for that.
@8:50, the goal of SSI is to pay people who CANNOT work enough that they can meet their bare minimum needs. This article is about how SSI is insufficient to meet those needs.
ReplyDeleteYou can’t have SSI be that without instituting a universal basic income for everyone.
DeleteThe cost of living (even bare minimum) is so different from state to state or city to city. If you don’t account for those differences, you get back to moving to a place you can actually afford.
Why is she only receiving $750? SSI full benefit is $841. $841 is tough to live on in the city, but curious as to why she isn't receiving the full benefit.
ReplyDeletePoverty has been with humans since the first groups banded together. Someone got the back strap, somebody got the scraps. There is no cure for poverty, someone will always have more than others.
ReplyDeleteSection 8 housing is a more valuable benefit compared to SSI. $841 per month will not pay for rent in vast majority of areas in the US. In NY, SSI recipients can do alright with section 8, SNAP, ACP/LIFLINE, and medicaid. Those not on section 8 basically have to live with family or find some other housing subsidy. Many of my clients have a difficult time navigating all these programs.
ReplyDelete@8:20 "poverty's always been a problem so why bother trying to address it" okay
ReplyDelete