Staying Fit
Andy Markowitz,
A change in how the Social Security Administration (SSA) determines Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits could boost monthly payments for hundreds of thousands of economically vulnerable older adults and people with disabilities.
Advocates for reforming SSI, which aids low-income people who are 65 and older, blind or have a disability, say the change could also significantly reduce bureaucratic burdens for both beneficiaries and SSA staff.
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The new rule amends Social Security’s treatment of in-kind support and maintenance, or ISM. As currently defined, ISM is food or shelter costs fully or partially covered for you by someone other than a spouse you live with. The SSA considers this a form of income, and income is a key factor in determining eligibility and payment levels for SSI.
Those rules have been in place since Congress established the SSI program in 1972 and placed it under Social Security’s purview. But starting Sept. 30, the SSA will omit food from the in-kind calculation and, by extension, from its definition of income.
“A vital part of our mission is helping people access crucial benefits, including SSI,” SSA Commissioner Martin O’Malley said in a March 27 statement. “Simplifying our policies is a common-sense solution that reduces the burden on the public and agency staff and helps promote equity by removing barriers to accessing payments.”
The rule change could mean bigger payments for some of the nearly 800,000 people whose SSI benefits are reduced by as much as a third because they get help from friends or relatives to pay for basic needs. It will add an estimated 26,000 people who would not qualify under the old ISM rules to the SSI rolls through 2033, according to the final version of the rule, published March 27 in the Federal Register.
It could also simplify a particularly onerous element of SSI administration that requires Social Security workers to spend time and resources delving into the details of millions of current and potential beneficiaries’ living arrangements.
“When you consider that the [SSI] benefit itself is below the poverty level, applying a one-third reduction on it because of ISM is a hardship for the beneficiaries,” says Jack Smalligan, a senior policy fellow at the Urban Institute’s Income and Benefits Policy Center. “And it’s also very expensive for SSA to administer this.”
The SSA projects that the new rule will increase outlays for SSI benefits by $1.6 billion and reduce the agency’s administrative costs by $26 million through 2033.