New Postings On Frustrated Claimants Blog

    My firm has started a new blog directed at Social Security disability claimants, rather than Social Security professionals. It's called For The Frustrated Social Security Disability Claimant. Here are links to some recent posts:

• Disability And Homelessness

• If You're Able To Read This, Count Your Blessings; If You're Not, Expect That Others Won't Understand Your Problem

• How Do You Give Good Public Service When Your Employees Are Really Unhappy? You Don't!

• From Social Security: Top Baby Names

• 47% Of Disabled Americans Aren't Getting The Help They Need

• On Being Disabled And Homeless In Rural America

 

 

 

It Gets Cold In Pittsburgh

     From WESA (emphasis added):

As winter homeless shelters fill around Pittsburgh, City Council may look to zoning changes to allow for legally authorized homeless encampments. A bill set to be introduced Monday would create a new zoning use called a "temporary managed community" — areas that could host homeless encampments, with support staff, heat and food.

“We know [shelters are] full right now. … it’s just heartbreaking,” said the bill's sponsor, Councilor Deb Gross. “We want to make sure that we're not the obstacle for trying to achieve a temporary managed community.” ...

But overall, Gross said, the city desperately needs to create more affordable and transitional housing options. “People cannot live in the city of Pittsburgh on a disability check,” she said. “You cannot live indoors anywhere if you are on some of the lower levels of Social Security income.” ...

    It's obvious in my law practice that inadequate SSI benefits and delayed Social Security disability benefits cause a lot of homelessness.

Homelessness Soars Among Older People

    From Yahoo Finance:

Many baby boomers across the country are now coming to terms with the hard reality that working for your entire adult life is no longer enough to guarantee you’ll have a roof over your head in your later years.

Thanks in part to a series of recessions, high housing costs and a shortage of affordable housing, older adults are now the fastest-growing segment of America’s homeless population, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal, based on data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. ...

Now, the over-50 demographic represents half of the homeless single adults in the U.S. — with no sign of their numbers slowing, leaving baby boomers (those aged 57 to 75) particularly vulnerable.

“Elderly homelessness has been rare within the contemporary homeless problem. We’ve always had very few people over 60 who’ve been homeless historically,” Culhane from the University of Pennsylvania told PBS NewsHour. ...

    I'm sure there are many reasons for this increase in homelessness among older people but the failures of Social Security's disability programs have to be a major factor. There are far, far too many disabled people in homeless shelters.

A Sad But Familiar Story

    A television station in Denver presents the now all too familiar story of a disabled person becoming homeless because of delays in processing their Social Security disability claim. Here's a quote from the claimant's attorney:

"We had to re-fax the same paperwork six times over a period of about six months," the attorney explained. "But it's not just the faxing. It's calling, 'Did you receive the fax? No, we haven't received the fax,' Even my staff, when they call into the field office, they will wait on hold for sometimes an hour — if the call is even answered at all."

    This isn't just happening in isolated cases. It happens all the time. How is this acceptable?

On Being Disabled And Homeless In Rural America

    I recently talked with a disability client who would become homeless in a few days. Actually, she already was homeless since she's been couch surfing, which is a form of homelessness, but she's about to lose even that. She lives in a rural area with no homeless shelter. There is nowhere for her to go. She has no idea what to do. She needed money immediately but I had nothing to offer. What do I tell her? Hop a bus to an unfamiliar city so she could stay in a dangerous public homeless shelter?

    While Social Security promises to speed up cases for the homeless, in the real world little preference is actually given. This client's case will take months if not years.Yes, I'll ask that her case be labeled as "dire need" but, at least where I am, that's nearly meaningless. 

    Don't sit there and smugly think that, of course, if I really tried, I could get Social Security to act on her case immediately. If you think that, you have no idea how bad things are at Social Security. Immediate help was never available to anyone not already found disabled. We are well past the days when anyone at Social Security could or would do anything to help. I'm sure this gnaws away at many Social Security employees as much as it does me.

    There's nothing unusual about her case. Being homeless in an urban areas is a terrible thing but rural homelessness may be even worse, especially since it draws so little public attention.

Homelessness And Social Security Disability

      The current issue of the Social Security Bulletin, the agency's scholarly publication, includes an article on Social Security Administration Disability Programs and Individuals Facing Homelessness. Below is a graphic from the article. Click on the image to view full size.

Social Security Disability And The Homeless Population

     From Investigating Inequities In Accessing Social Security Disability Insurance And Supplemental Security Income For Adults Experiencing Homelessness, an M.S. thesis presented by Anna Booras at Boston University:

... The primary objective of this research study was to investigate applicant and application characteristics associated with disability outcomes among patients at the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program (BHCHP) Barbara McInnis House (BMH) Medical Respite Unit and to explore the effect of advocacy in increasing access to benefits for those who qualify. ... 

It was shown that advocacy and assistance with the application process for SSI and SSDI produced an allowance rate for people experiencing or at risk of homelessness considered in this study that was almost twice the allowance rate for the homeless population in the state of Massachusetts and was significantly higher than the state general population. Despite the increase in allowance rate, the application determination times were significantly longer for the population of interest in this study as compared to the general population. ... Medical advocacy letters were found to aid in access to benefits for those with mental health primary diagnoses. ... 

In general, consultative examinations were associated with extremely lower odds of approval with only a 16.67% allowance rate overall. ...

     Programs such as Ms. Booras was investigating are great but there's not enough of them to make a dent nationally in the disabled homeless population. Private representation is critical for this population. For a long time, I've been telling colleagues who practice Social Security law that homeless clients may present some challenges but that you can win their cases and make money by helping them. This study is proof of what I have seen in my practice. My name and telephone number gets passed around at the South Wilmington Street Homeless Shelter in Raleigh, the biggest one locally. I'm happy to have the business. If you practice Social Security law, don't shy away from homeless clients.

Nice Christmas Story -- A Simple Overpayment That Wasn't The Claimant's Fault Leads To Homelessness

     How does one become homeless? I'm sure there are a million ways. One Los Angeles resident writes movingly about his rapid descent into homelessness because of a simple Social Security overpayment. It should have been easy to resolve the overpayment. He probably would have qualified for waiver of the overpayment since he's clearly poor and the overpayment wasn't his fault but no one told him the overpayment could be waived. He thought he had a repayment schedule worked out but apparently a Social Security employee didn't do what they were supposed to be so things reverted to the default mode of seizing 100% of each month's check until the overpayment is collected.

     Why is it that seizure of 100% of each month's check is the default mode for overpayments? Is that really necessary? If the claimant is confused or even a little negligent or a Social Security employee doesn't promptly do what they're supposed to do, the claimant receives no check and many become desperate immediately. Remember, overpayments are often not the claimant's fault. Even if they are the claimant's fault, the fault is usually minor. Don't conflate overpayments with fraud.

Self-Referential For Good Reason?

     Jeff Caplan at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram has written another piece on the effects of the horrible hearing backlog at Social Security. I'll give you an excerpt, even though he's quoting me, since I was stating some things that most reading this already already know but which haven't been stated in this sort of article before:

... Initially [claimants with their own stories of hardship due to the hearing backlog] who contacted the Star-Telegram, said they were hesitant to air their grievances publicly for fear it would be detrimental to their cases.

Those fears are unfounded, said prominent disability attorney Charles Hall of Raleigh, N.C. He believes the Social Security Administration follows press reports and “perhaps usually speeds up the process when a case gets reported.” ...

Hall’s advice for anyone who believes they qualify for disability benefits is to start the process immediately. Too many people, he said, are convinced they will get better and will be able to return to work.

“They view filing for Social Security disability as unpleasant and demeaning. They think of it as a one-way trip, that if they file a disability claim that they can’t ever return to work. That’s not the way it is,” Hall said. “If a claimant gets better, they can always return to work. It’s frustrating to me that many of my clients wait until they’re destitute before ever filing a claim.

“It’s bad enough if you file the claim quickly. It’s so much worse if you wait until you’re homeless.”

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/community/fort-worth/article188307729.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/community/fort-worth/article188307729.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/community/fort-worth/article188307729.html#storylink=cpy

Why So Much Homelessness?

     From The Oregonian:

Of the 4,000 people living on the streets in Multnomah County, more than half have serious mental illness and more than a third have physical disabilities.

You'd think many of these people could qualify for disability income help from the government.

The short answer is they probably could. 

The reality is the more disabled they are, the harder it is for them to pursue benefits.

This is where Mellani Calvin comes in. In April 2010, she founded the nonprofit ASSIST, which stands for "Assertive Supplemental Security Income Service Team." From a small office in Southwest Portland, the five-member staff works with indigent or homeless clients seeking to qualify for disability benefits. ...

Study On Disability Claims By Homeless Individuals

     From NC State News:

A recent study of homeless adults finds that women are at a significant disadvantage compared to men when it comes to accessing disability benefits. The study also finds that medical records are key to accessing disability benefits, which poses a problem for many homeless adults.

... This study focused on SSI and SSDI applications completed with the assistance of the SSI/SSDI Outreach, Access, and Recovery (SOAR) program, which was created by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. SOAR is designed to facilitate access to those disability benefits and primarily assists homeless and low-income adults. ...“

Prior reports found that homeless adults had only a 10-15 percent success rate when applying for disability programs without assistance. Since SOAR was implemented in 2005 and 2006, that success rate has risen to 65 percent.” ...

[W]omen were 30 percent less likely than men to have their applications approved. And applicants who were already on public assistance were 20 percent less likely to get approved.

“The most important of the critical components was the inclusion of medical records with an application,” Lowder says. “Applications with medical records were twice as likely to be approved compared to other applications.

On the other end of the spectrum, applicants who were required to get a consultative exam were two times more likely to be denied – and it took an average of 43 additional days for their applications to be processed. ...

Of Course This Can't Be Extended Because It Would Put More People On Disability Benefits And That's Always A Bad Thing

     From the Social Security Bulletin, the agency's scholarly periodical publication:

Many homeless individuals with a serious mental illness are potentially eligible for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payments, but the nature of their impairment poses obstacles to completing the SSI application process. In this article, we evaluate the Homeless with Schizophrenia Presumptive Disability (HSPD) pilot that tested whether providing support during the application process improves SSI application outcomes—such as increasing the allowance rate and shortening the time to award—in selected communities in California. Importantly, the HSPD pilot included a presumptive disability determination that provided up to 6 months of SSI payments before an award. Relative to the comparison groups chosen in the surrounding geographic areas, in an earlier period, and in the same locations, we found that the pilot intervention led to higher allowance rates at the initial adjudicative level, fewer requests for consultative examinations, and reduced time to award. ...

The allowance rate for the entire treatment group was 94 percent, ranging from 87 percent in Northern California to 97 percent in Los Angeles ...

Proving Homelessness

     Given the ridiculous hearing backlog at Social Security now -- approaching two years in much of the country -- it's crucial that homeless claimants receive the expediting that Social Security allows them. But how are we supposed to prove homelessness? You might say, "That's easy. Just get the homeless shelter to write a letter on their behalf." That's easier said than done even when we're talking about homeless shelters and most homeless people don't stay in homeless shelters. There are few homeless shelters in rural areas. Homeless shelters can be dangerous places. Most homeless people avoid them when they can. They move around between relatives and friends, never staying anywhere long. Some live in tents or shacks in the woods. How are these claimants supposed to prove their homelessness?

     At the moment, I’m asking homeless clients either to write a letter that I can send to Social Security or get someone at a homeless shelter or a relative or friend to write a letter but this doesn’t work so well. Homeless people often lack the ability to write a letter and lack people in their lives who can or will write a letter on their behalf. 

     I keep thinking there’s got to be a better way. What are other people doing? Would a form that a claimant or someone in their life could complete work?

Outreach To The Homeless Looks Successful, But ...

     The abstract of an article in the most recent issue of the Social Security Bulletin (emphasis added): 

This study uses administrative data to evaluate the outcomes of the disability applications submitted to the Social Security Administration (SSA) through the Benefits Entitlement Services Team (B.E.S.T) Demonstration Project and to determine if the project successfully increased access to Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payments and/or Disability Insurance (DI) benefits for individuals experiencing homelessness. B.E.S.T—a unique partnership between the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, SSA, and the California Disability Determination Services—was a collaborative effort to locate homeless adults and assist them in applying for SSI payments and/or DI benefits. B.E.S.T facilitated the completion of SSI and DI applications, including the compilation of all forms and medical evidence needed to submit the completed applications to SSA. The findings show that B.E.S.T contributed to increased access to disability benefits for applicants. Relative to other disability cases, the B.E.S.T cases had high allowance rates and short processing times.

     The thing that concerns me is the degree of selectivity in the B.E.S.T. program. The article indicates that B.E.S.T. applicants had a 90% rate of success! There's no way of achieving that sort of "success" in this or any other population without being incredibly selective. In a law practice setting, I'd call it wildly overselective. Considering the frequency that homeless claimants are "lost to followup", as physicians put it, B.E.S.T. couldn't have just been insisting on gold plated cases. They must have been demanding platinum plated cases.
     This begs the question of what success means when you're trying to help homeless people.