Tracey Gronniger: Hello everyone. Welcome to today’s webinar about overpayments in-kind support and operational impacts. We are excited to talk to you all today about what’s been going on with SSA and happy to take some questions as well. Next slide, please. Before we get started, I wanted to do a few logistics of the webinar. Everyone is on mute, but you can use the questions function if you have any substantive questions or questions about technical difficulties. If you’re having any problems with the webinar, you can also send an email to Trainings@JusticeInAging.org. And you’ll also be able to find this training and past trainings by going through our resource library going to JusticeInAging.org/resource-library. And we will also have a recording of this posted to Justice in Aging’s Vimeo page. And also you will be receiving the slides later in a few days after the webinar. If you need to enable closed captions, you can do that by selecting CC from the Zoom control panel.
Next slide, please. So for those of you who are not familiar with our organization, Justice in Aging is a national organization. We use law to fight senior poverty, and we are focused on affordable healthcare, economic security, including housing affordability, and also access to the courts. We have been around since 1972, and our efforts are really focused on fighting for people who have historically been marginalized and excluded from justice, including women, people of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, and people with limited English proficiency.
Next slide. We also have as part of our commitment to justice, the belief that in order to ensure that we all have access to justice, we have to make sure that there is no discrimination, that we, regardless of race, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, et cetera, are able to access what we need to age with dignity. And so we push for policies that ensure that those experiencing the greatest barriers to economic security, healthcare, and housing can exercise their rights and fully access the services and programs that they do need. Next slide, please.
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So I am going to start us off and then I will turn it over to Trinh for a little while. I am Tracey Gronniger, by the way, the Managing Director of Economic Security and Housing. I wanted to talk about today just start us off with what’s been going on inside the Social Security Administration in 2025, and really just talk in broad strokes about how 2025 has really brought some major operational changes that affect how older adults and people with disabilities access benefits. This year, we’ve seen the impact of really big forces colliding, including inadequate funding, policy decisions that can be somewhat harmful, and a dramatic loss of staff.
In terms of the staffing, SSA has seen more than a 12% drop in staffing in just this year, which translates into around 7,000 employees. This is a really sudden contraction of the workforce at a time when there are more people turning to the agency for help with increasingly complex needs. We’ve also seen, as a result of that, a loss of expertise. So as part of the shedding of SSA staff through layoffs and attrition, we are seeing that staff used to have decades of experience and are now trying to learn and navigate the complexities of Social Security policy with a lot less of that knowledge. And that has been very difficult for advocates and for customers who are trying to understand what they’re eligible for, make sure that their benefits are maintained and really access the services of SSA.
On top of the staffing loss, SSA made structural decisions that also reduced their capacity even further. So far, we’ve seen the reduction of the number of regional offices from 10 down to four, and these were offices that would take the more complex issues you could bring it up the chain and have them deal with that. We’ve also seen the closing of a research office and an office that had been dedicated to trying to guide modernization of the agency responsibly. We’re hearing as a result that customer service is really taking a hit. We’re hearing that people are waiting on hold for hours, that field offices are turning people away because they don’t have appointments, that appointments can be weeks or months off, and people are really experiencing significant delays getting information or having their problems or issues resolved.
We think that this is something that is not necessarily something that every single office sees. It is something that really depends on where people are located. And so we’ve heard some people are not experiencing these same issues, and others are really having a really big burden put upon them because they are just seeing so many delays and having so much trouble getting into see someone at SSA.
One of the ways that we have heard that SSA is trying to respond to some of these challenges is through increased use of technology. And technology, I would say, can be effective. And I think that it is really important that we do try to use technology to augment what individuals are able to do, but I think we also need to recognize that there are significant proportion populations of people who for various reasons are less able to engage online. And this can be older adults who don’t have computers or use of the internet, people who are homeless or don’t have a place that they can go to go online, people who have disabilities or other illnesses that make it harder for them to use online services. There are significant portions of people that are just not going to be able to use online services in the same way.
And so I think that as we look at the needs of the populations that SSA serves, we definitely need to make sure that we’re not leaving people behind. And just one minor example of that is that SSA recently implemented an AI bot. And when it first came out, it really led to people being unable to access the phone lines because the bot couldn’t understand what people were saying or it wasn’t able to transfer people to the correct staffer to address their problems. And this barrier really was unnecessary because it was something that could have been planned for in advance. There was a period of testing that could have taken place. There were a lot of ways that you can try to implement technology that takes into account how people might use a service. And so we’re trying to both marry the technology and also the needs of the populations.
So I think that that is something that as we go forward, we will have to really watch out for. I put here in the resources a National Academy of Social Insurance Report that is about how to use technology responsibly and some of the ways that technology can be beneficial, but also some of the risks that it poses, including risks of inaccessibility and equity issues. So I think that I’ll stop there and just say that we really have to ensure that our policies and procedures are serving the people that we want them to serve.
And that’s something that we’re going to just have to keep looking to and thinking about as SSA continues to make changes to its operations over the next couple of years. I’m going to now… Oh, next slide, please. I’m going to turn it over to Trinh to talk about some policy changes that we’ve seen in the past few years.
Trinh Phan: Okay, great. Hi, my name is Trinh Phan. I’m the Director of State Income Security at Justice in Aging. And now I’m going to rewind the clock to 2024 to share some of the positive changes that happened then, which have been helping people who are dealing with overpayments and who are dealing with the very complicated SSI rules around in-kind income. Things take a while to settle into place and make it into everyday use, so even though these changes happened last year, they are still very current for advocates. We’ll start with the in-kind support rule changes. The Social Security Administration finalized three SSI rules that are reducing barriers and expanding access to SSI. These rules went into effect on September 30th, 2024. So today is the one-year, two-month, and 10-day anniversary of the changes. And in that time, they have been changing in-kind support and maintenance determinations for the better.
To step back a bit, in-kind support and maintenance or ISM is where SSA will count certain types of assistance as income for SSI purposes and will reduce the SSI benefit by up to one third if they determine someone is getting this in-kind help. To figure out if there is a reduction, SSA has to go through a complicated evaluation and ask for a lot of detailed information from the individual. ISM is really complicated, and these 2024 changes are very helpful because they make ISM simpler. ISM is still not easy to understand, but it’s a bit easier now. And these changes are also helping more older adults and individuals with disabilities to qualify for SSI and receive the full benefit, and that’s putting much needed money back into people’s pockets.
The first change is that food no longer counts as income that reduces the SSI benefit. Before, in-kind support was defined as food or shelter, someone else provided or paid for, and now in-kind support is shelter only, not food. Before, when food was counted, there had been exclusions for things like SNAP benefits or food that you get from a food bank or food pantry, but any food that did not have a specific exclusion could count as income. For example, food from family or friends or other people you live with. It was really invasive to have to ask people about this, and it made people who receive SSI worry about accepting food, which is not good. Thankfully now, food, regardless of the source, won’t count against your SSI benefit. If you live with roommates, SSA won’t ask exactly how the household grocery bills are being split, and if a family member or friend buys you lunch, that’s fine.
Second, SSA made a change to a specific situation where someone who receives SSI as a renter and their landlord is their parent or their adult child. In this situation, SSA will reduce the SSI benefit if they think the landlord is subsidizing the rent because of that specific family relationship. This puts people in a difficult situation, especially people who live in areas with higher housing costs where they are really just trying to rent a room to their parent or child who receives SSI so that that person is not unhoused. The simplification that happened here is that if the person pays rent to their parent or child that is equal to or greater than a set amount, then SSA will not reduce the SSI benefit. That said amount is tied to a special SSI concept called the presumed maximum value or PMV, which is one-third of the SSI federal benefit rate plus $20. That comes out to $342.33 for an SSI individual in 2025. And in 2026, that will go up to $351.33. This helps people keep their full benefit when their family member is just trying to help them have a place to live that they can afford, again, so long as they’re paying rent of at least that PMB amount.
The third change is both the most complex of the three, and it is also the most important, in that it helps a large number of people to not have their SSI benefit reduced because of in-kind support. This change is about low-income public assistance households. The basic idea behind the public assistance household rule is that for households where everyone is low income, there’s no need to do an extensive evaluation to figure out who is providing in-kind support to whom within that household. SSA will just leave these households to manage their monthly expenses internally and will not reduce the SSI benefit due to in-kind support from other household members. This is very helpful because a lot of times people manage their internal finances in a way that makes sense for their household, but it doesn’t fit well into the ISM evaluation rules. Trying to actually follow the ISM rules can feel like you’re doing really complicated taxes. That’s hard for everyone, including low-income seniors and people with disabilities who receive SSI. And so it’s much simpler to just leave it to these low-income households to figure out who does what and who pays what.
SSA made two changes to the public assistance household rule. First, they added Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP benefits, also known as food stamps, as a public assistance benefit. Moving back a bit, public assistance benefit has a specific meaning in SSI. It means one of a certain number of public assistance programs, which include, among other benefits, SSI, temporary assistance for needy families, general assistance, state and local government assistance, Veterans Administration benefits based on need, or now SNAP. So now receiving SNAP can qualify a household for this rule. Second, a public assistance household is now one where at least one other household member receives a public assistance benefit. The prior rule required that it be everyone in the household. These two changes are great and allow many more people to use the rule.
Here’s an example of how this plays out. You might have a low income household where if you were just looking at their income, the whole household would definitely qualify for a public assistance benefit. SNAP, for example. But one household member does not receive SNAP. Maybe they’re a college student, but they don’t quite meet all the requirements for college students to receive SNAP. Maybe their specific immigration status makes them not eligible, or maybe they don’t want to apply because they are not comfortable receiving a public benefit for themself. In any case, you have a low income household where some people do receive SNAP, but one person does not. And before, these houses could not use this rule. Now with the change, these low income houses can use the rule because now you just need to show that at least one other household member receives a public assistance benefit.
The public assistance household rule change is helping a lot of people. And for advocates, I think it changes what ISM work looks like. Now, when you see someone with an ISM reduction, ask yourself if the new role solves the problem. Does this person fit into the new role or can you change something so that they fit into the new role? This is a great opportunity to screen people to make sure they aren’t missing out on benefits that can help them, because that might also allow them to use this rule. For example, older adults are very under-enrolled in SNAP. Only 30% of older adults who qualify for SNAP are actually enrolled. If there’s an older adult in a household who isn’t receiving SNAP, it’s always good to be screening for that anyways. And now there’s an additional SSI-related reason to make sure that everyone who qualifies for SNAP and other benefits knows about the programs and how to apply for them.
There’s a link on this slide to a new resource that we just released last week on the basics of the in-kind support rules. The changes I just described are part of the broader ISM universe, and this new resource describes what that whole ISM universe looks like now at a basic three to four-page level. We hope this is a helpful guide and reminder of the ISM rules and the recent changes.
Now, heading over to overpayment policy changes. SSA made a number of changes in 2024 to reduce the burden of SSI and Social Security overpayments. Generally speaking, what these changes did is to broaden the pool of people who have access to options to deal with an overpayment. People theoretically always have options to deal with an overpayment, but asking for an appeal waiver can be too difficult to manage, especially if you don’t have someone helping you, and many people end up not actually benefiting from these options. So SSA made a number of improvements to automatic and lower barrier options, and because these options are easy to use or just happening automatically, that means many more people are actually benefiting from them.
The first change was about payment plans. SSA has a simplified process to request a payment plan over a longer period of time, and they increased the payment time period for the simplified process, so now you can use it to request a payment plan of up to five years. Previously, this had been three years. SSA also made a change to allow more small dollar overpayments to be waived through a simplified process. What is considered small under this rule used to be $1,000 and SSA increased that to $2,000. So if you have an overpayment that is basically a month or two of benefits, you might be able to get waived under this simple process.
And also for someone who’s requesting that an overpayment be waived, one of the things that SSA will look at is fault. People have always found it very difficult to understand the specific ways SSA looks at fault in these overpayment cases. So here, SSA worked to make things more rational and provide a more neutral and fair approach in assessing the circumstances around overpayments that recognizes how complicated overpayments are for anyone to understand, and especially for low-income seniors and people with disabilities. And finally, there was a change in 2024 where SSA began providing a more reasonable default withholding for certain beneficiaries who before were having their full monthly check withheld.
Stepping back a bit, if you have an overpayment and you are currently receiving SSI, SSA will automatically withhold 10% of your monthly check to start collecting on the overpayment. That’s SSI. In contrast, if you are currently receiving Social Security retirement, disability, or survivor’s benefits, then what SSA would do before was to automatically withhold your entire check to start collecting on the overpayment, and that of course would cause very understandable chaos for the person. In 2024, SSA decreased the default automatic withholding to 10% of the check for these beneficiaries. And again, this change affects people currently receiving retirement, disability or survivor’s benefits. If you currently receive SSI, automatic withholding was always at 10% and nothing changed there. But for the people who were affected, 10% was a much more reasonable default withholding amount, and it kept people from dropping into immediate crisis.
And then in 2025, we saw two changes to that first returning to 100% of full withholding starting March 27th, then going to 50% withholding starting April 25th. 50% default withholding for retirement, disability and survivors benefits or overpayments is where we are now, and that is better than withholding the entire check. However, people typically do depend on that monthly check for basic things like paying their rent. And so that means that even 50% of the check is not manageable for many seniors and people with disabilities in that regard. Hopefully in time, we will see SSA bring that down some more, and we will see more changes that make overpayments more understandable and less burdensome to seniors and people with disabilities. And now for the next slide, I’ll pass it back to Tracey.
Tracey Gronniger: Thanks, Trinh. I wanted to take a moment to talk about some potential role changes that we saw that would have really fundamentally altered who qualifies for disability benefits. So I’m going to talk about specifically something you all may have heard of called the Mega-Reg, which would have changed how SSA considered age and education when determining eligibility for disability benefits. And then I’m going to turn it back over to Trent to talk about a proposed rule that we are still expecting to see and are hoping to really push back on. The Mega-Reg was a rule, like I said, that would have made eligibility for disability benefits made the regulation change so that age and education were less important and less of a factor in determining disability. The result of this proposal would have been an overall reduction in the eligibility of new applicants by about 20% overall. And for older adults in particular, it would have been a reduction of up to 30% for people over age 50.
This translated into over a million people losing eligibility based on just changing the factors for how you determine who qualifies as disabled. And really for older workers in particular, it would’ve been especially harmful because for people who worked in particularly physical jobs such as nursing or construction or other jobs that required a lot of physical activity, they would’ve had to basically scrape by and wait to receive early retirement benefits rather than receiving disability, which is something that many people rely on, especially as they’re getting older and changes are happening and they’re experiencing the onset of different conditions. For people who accept, who take early retirement, the actual benefit that they receive is about 30% less than what they would have received if they had qualified for disability. And so this really would’ve had a very negative and harmful impact on, like I said, over a million people.
Now, I talk about this because this is actually one of the highlights or a positive story that we have to tell for 2025 because there was strong advocacy from aging and disability organizations among others. There was public education from experts and from researchers, in particular, a report from the Urban Institute that talked about the impact of this proposal, and then also lots of media coverage that really highlighted the impact on older workers. And because of this, SSA ended up scrapping this proposal and announcing that they were not going to move forward with these changes and that therefore we won’t see older workers who are losing access to disability benefits simply because SSA decided to change its policy. And I really wanted to take the moment to talk about that because it shows how with public pressure and really paying attention to particular issues, we can sometimes have a really important impact and help the people who really need it the most.
And I know that there’s a lot that is happening that we are all really frustrated by, but I think it would be negligent of us to not take just a moment to really celebrate that we were able to stop this rule. And now that’s the good news. I’m going to turn it over back to Trinh to talk for a moment about some work that’s still left to be done in terms of SSA policies and regulations.
Trinh Phan: Okay. So on the less good news end, and just briefly, another area that SSA has flagged is the public assistance household rule. This rule was finalized last year and SSA has indicated that they want to rescind it. As I mentioned earlier, this rule is incredibly helpful. Once fully implemented, it’s estimated that it will help nearly 400,000 people to receive the full SSI benefit or to qualify for some SSI. This change is making a huge difference in these frustrating, confusing, and sometimes impossible ISM situations, and it is removing ISM reductions for many older adults and individuals with disabilities. It’s worth being aware of the possibility of the rule being rescinded while also keeping in mind that we do not know if that will move forward or not. It’s also worth keeping in mind that the new and better rule is in effect right now. And one thing we can do is to make sure people know about it because the more people who know about the rule, the more people who can benefit. Another bonus of outreach is that it helps people to understand the value of the rule and what is at stake if the rule is rescinded.
And now onto the next slide, the-
Tracey Gronniger: I think we’re already-
Trinh Phan: Yeah, we’re switching it up and talking about the SSI asset limit. In particular, an upcoming change that will help many people to save money above the very low SSI asset limit. And that is increased to the eligibility age for ABLE accounts. To start from the beginning, the Achieving a Better Life Experience or ABLE Act allows people whose disability began before a specific age to open ABLE accounts and save up to $100,000 in those accounts without affecting eligibility for SSI and without affecting eligibility for most other federal public benefits as well. But since this presentation is for people working with SSI and Social Security, the most relevant aspect is that significant protection from the SSI asset limit.
The history of this change is that in 2022, the end-of-year appropriations bill included a provision to increase that specific disability onset age from before age 26 to before age 46, with this change becoming effective in 2026. That was in 2022, and now 2026 is finally upon us. It is estimated that this change will make six million more people eligible for ABLE accounts, including a million veterans. The six million newly eligible people are not all receiving SSI, but there are definitely a lot of SSI recipients in the mix. What this means is that starting in 2026, so that’s next month, there is a change to the age threshold to open an ABLE account. Right now, the threshold is that the person’s disability had to have begun before age 26 to open an ABLE account. And starting in January, people whose disability began before age 46 can open ABLE accounts.
That’s really great news. Many more people will be able to use this option now, including likely some of your clients. ABLE accounts have been around for a decade now. They can be really helpful when people have an SSI resource issue because of a small inheritance or other unexpected resource, and you are trying to figure out a way for them to hold onto that resource and the protection that resource represents to them. And now when you consider options, think about if the person’s disability began before the age of 46, making them eligible to save that money in an ABLE account. You can show that disability began before age 46 by showing that you receive Social Security Disability benefits or SSI based on disability, or by having your doctor sign a disability certificate stating that you have a permanent disability that causes marked or severe functional limitations and which began before age 46.
So what are ABLE accounts exactly? At a pretty basic level, an ABLE account is just an additional savings account you can open up to save money into, and you can use money in that account to pay for things you need. So if you already have a bank account now, you would have your regular bank account, and then also the ABLE Savings account. There are rules about how much money you and other people can put into that ABLE account each year. The contribution limit is fairly high, especially compared to how the regular SSI asset limit is. But for example, the basic contribution limit this year is $19,000. And then in 2026, it goes up to $20,000. On top of that, if someone works and doesn’t contribute to an employer-sponsored retirement plan, they can contribute an additional chunk above that. You can have up to $100,000 in the ABLE account and still keep your SSI.
You can use the money in the account for things that improve the quality of life for the individual, what they call qualified disability expenses. The rules around what is a qualified disability expense are fairly reasonable. For example, you can use it to pay for food or shelter expenses, like using it to pay your rent and utilities. You open up an ABLE account with an ABLE plan. ABLE plans have to be set up by a state. Most all of the states offer ABLE funds, so chances are your state has one. It can be a good idea to look at your state plan first to see if it offers incentives or protections for in state residents. For example, a number of state plans provide protection against Medicaid payback, which can be an important consideration.
If your state does not have a plan, many ABLE plans also accept out of-state residents. Many plans also include investment options. If you want to invest the money in the account and investments that are offered by that ABLE plan, you can choose to do so, and any earnings from the account are tax-free if you use them to pay for a qualified disability expense. Now is a great time to learn more about ABLE accounts, even if up to now you haven’t seen many people who are ABLE eligible. Going forward, that might change because so many more people will now be eligible. For example, with an estimated one million veterans with disabilities becoming eligible, veteran-serving organizations are a new outreach area, but a good number of eligible veterans might have already come to you as a service provider in another area. For example, if you serve people who are unhoused, including disabled veterans. So now ABLE accounts are something for you to know about just because suddenly a good number of the people you already work with could now open one of these accounts.
I think the first step is just making sure people know what ABLE accounts are. The ABLE National Resource Center website has a lot of basic information as well as detailed information. There’s also an ABLE Today website that’s www.ABLEtoday.org. It’s run by the National Association of State Treasurers, which is a good resource because it is the state treasurers who are managing the state ABLE programs. That can be a good place to find general information as well. You could also try reaching out to a contact at your state ABLE plan to see what help they can offer with outreach and education. Now is a great time for everyone to be thinking about outreach to make sure all the people who newly qualify have the information and support they need to decide if an ABLE account makes sense for them.
So in conclusion, this is a great new option starting next year that can relieve the harshness of the low SSI asset limit and help people to save money, pay for what they need and plan for the future. Again, so long as they’re in that specific category of people whose disability began before the age of 46. I’ll pass it back to Tracey.
Tracey Gronniger: Thanks, Trinh. I wanted to talk about a proposal, a bill that would address something that ABLE is not currently able to affect. The problem with ABLE in some situations is, to Trinh’s point, people may not be covered. Also, there’s a level of complexity to having to take steps proactively to create an account. And for some people, those steps can be really prohibitive and difficult. One thing that we would like to see is just a broadening automatically and categorically of the people who are able to save in order to meet their needs. The SSI Savings Penalty Elimination Act is a proposal that we have been advocating for, and that actually currently has bipartisan support in Congress, in both the House and the Senate. And it would raise the asset limit for all SSI recipients to $10,000 for an individual and $20,000 for a couple. And it does not, as you can tell, go as high as ABLE in terms of the amount that people can put away, but it does significantly raise the current limits.
The current limits haven’t been changed since 1989. So you can imagine how much more that was for people over 35 years ago, how much more it was for them to be able to save and to be able to use for whatever emergencies or other expenses came up. The bill would also adjust the asset limit amount for inflation annually. So we wouldn’t end up in the position that we’re in now where it has been a few decades and the amount isn’t changing and is losing its ability to help people put aside a significant amount of money. There are a lot of reasons that I think this bill makes sense and why it has bipartisan support. One of them is just that we want to allow people, low income, people with disabilities, older adults, to be able to be prepared and make their own sound financial decision so that when something comes up like a home repair or a car repair or just the expenses of life, they have some kind of cushion that they can go to so that they’re not in constant economic peril. The goal here is for people to have something so that they can save money and not fear losing their benefits.
The other reason that I think the proposal makes sense is because there’s also an administrative burden that is on SSA to track monthly expenses and really keep this kind of microscopic eye on people’s monthly finances that isn’t actually helpful and can cause a lot of overpayments and errors that are taxing to the agency unnecessarily. And we see that they are already burdened by other things. This is something that I think we could do that would help the agency and would help SSI recipients and their families to be able to have a little more stability. So to the extent that you are able and interested, when you talk to people in Congress, or if you are writing letters or talking about ways to improve the SSI program, this is one way that you can suggest that would really make a difference and create a little bit more breathing room for people who are receiving SSI and are also trying to save some money. So next slide.
All right. I think we are at the questions portion and we’re going to try to get through some questions. We also saw there are a fair number of detailed scenarios in the questions that we received, and I want to use this opportunity to plug our case consultation service. So if you email Info@JusticeInAging.org with specific questions, we can try to put you in touch with Trinh or me or someone else or someone who can address specific questions. We’re going to try and keep it a little more general for these questions, but hopefully that will still be helpful. I’m going to start… Let’s see, a lot of these questions are for Trinh, so I’m going to just start throwing some of them out. Oh, this one is a simple one. It was, what was the 2026 amount of PMV?
Trinh Phan: The 2026 amount for the PMV is $351.33 for an SSI individual.
Tracey Gronniger: Another ISM question. Does the ISM rule for rent being over the PMV only apply if they are renting to a parent or child, or could it apply to a brother, sister, or even a friend?
Trinh Phan: Yeah, I think it really applies to that parent or child landlord. And the reason why is because it was only that specific relationship that had this extra burdensome role. So if you were renting from anybody else, your grandparent, your brother or sister, any random person, you would just run through the regular ISM rental liability rules, and it would be fine. So it’s not going to get any worse in any of other places. What that changed it is just to make that one specific situation that had this extra burdensome rule, less hard. So you’re renting from a parent or a child, you can make sure to look at that rule so you understand how Social Security’s going to look at it and what you can do to make sure you’re paying what you need to also be able to keep your full benefit.
Tracey Gronniger: And I think this is the last ISM question. If your organization has a fund to help clients with emergency situations like car repairs, tows, paying electricity bills, back rent, giving Visa gift cards for people to use as they please, does that count as in-kind support?
Trinh Phan: There’s actually a specific exclusion for assistance from nonprofits. And so if you’re a nonprofit and you’re providing assistance, so in the complicated ISM universe is exclusions and things that don’t count. So you’re looking at for the support and maintenance assistance exclusion in their roles. It excludes help from nonprofits for a pretty broad range of assistance. So take a look at that. And I think a lot of what you mentioned with mentioning the question should be covered by [inaudible 00:45:18].
Tracey Gronniger: And that’s something that’s included… That’s something we can add to the resources that we send out later also.
Trinh Phan: Yeah. Tracey, there are also a number of questions about how advocates should deal with customer service issues due to changes at SSA, any recommendations on what to do when someone at the field office is not responding to… Social Security field office isn’t responding to letters or calls on an issue you’re trying to help a client with. Do you have any tips for that?
Tracey Gronniger: Yeah, this is something honestly that we have been hearing a lot of recently. The delays are intense. The ability of the staff to engage has been really short-circuited. One of the things that we have heard that can be helpful is going through the regional communications directors. So now there’s information about regional communications directors who can try to help you address your concerns. And I can’t guarantee that this is going to be the be all, end all answer, but it is another avenue that you can try to get almost like an escalation of your issue. That’s a place that you should definitely reach out. I think another thing is that advocates have really just said that it takes so much more time and energy to get through and talk to people, but that it makes a difference because the advocates are informed and they know what the rules are supposed to be.
And as I mentioned, people are now, at SSA, overworked. The staff is not necessarily working in an area that they have as much experience in. And so you will have a vast range of people and capacity and time and energy and knowledge. And so your work as an advocate is so critical. You may be the one who’s informing the SSA staffer about a particular rule or telling them about something that has happened that would affect how they’re operating. And that’s a really important role that you can play and something that we are really interested in hearing about. So as you’re having those kinds of issues, telling us what you’re experiencing can be really helpful because we do take that information and we use it in our advocacy to talk about why SSA needs more funding, why they should be focused on making sure that their staff is trained on particular issues, why they can’t simply rely on technology to answer all of their problems.
And so I guess my answer is sort of try persistence, regional communications directors telling us about what issues you’re facing, trying to escalate in those ways can be helpful and they can be something that might be effective, but we hear you in terms of the challenges that you’re facing right now and it is really difficult.
Trinh Phan: Yeah. And there are also a couple of questions about the new regional office structure, what the new regional offices are and so forth.
Tracey Gronniger: So there are people who cover various regional offices. And so in the link that I sent, you’ll see that the regional offices, the offices are broken out into particular areas, but the people that you reach out to may be the same. And so there’s a lot of discussion in SSA that is coming out about how they can structure the workload so that some of the capacity for under-resourced areas can be assisted with other areas that have more capacity. And so they’re doing a lot of restructuring within the agency, which can make it a little difficult for people externally to see exactly how they’re fixing or changing or trying to cover the work. But to the extent that you can use this information, for example, reaching out to the regional communications director who is covering the Midwest region, that’s something that you can do to try to get assistance.
Let’s see. Oh, here’s a question about SNAP and it asks, could you say, what is the source for the 30% of people who are older using SNAP?
Trinh Phan: That was from a 2024 report by the National Council on Aging that was developed with the Urban Institute, and I’ll put that in the chat. I’ll put a link to that in the chat.
Tracey Gronniger: Oh, someone asked, this is kind of a nice broad question. Just explaining the public assistance household rule, how it is helpful, what it is. I guess a little more background to explain why we would like that rule to stay the same.
Trinh Phan: Okay. So what it is? So what the change was. Oh, so there are two changes. One is it added SNAP as a public assistance benefit, and two, it changed it, so instead of having to have all members of the household receive one of the public assistance benefits, you just need to have at least one household member. And both of those are really significant expansions because SNAP, you have a lot more people who maybe they don’t receive SSI or TANF, but they do receive SNAP, and so that brings more households in. And then the second one, it also helps expand it because of all those situations where not everyone is receiving it for a lot of really good reasons, even though they’re definitely still low income. And so you’re able to bring in those households that are definitely, they’re low income, they have just this weird structural issue where they’re not able to all receive SNAP, for example.
I think with the new changes in HR1, we’ll see more of those where you have more households where you have a household member losing SNAP because of one of those changes in HR1. So we’ll see more of these uneven households where it’s a low-income household, everyone qualifies, everyone needs help with assistance, but only certain people actually are receiving that assistance. So I think it’s a really significant change because many more people will have the public assistance rule be applicable to them, meaning they can avoid an ISM reduction. And then even in particular going forward, just it’s a really important stability for these households to know that they can hold onto their full SSI benefit.
Tracey Gronniger: Yeah. I’m going to switch it up. I think we have time for at least one more question. Sorry, it’s hard to read the questions and get the gist. This one is about, is the $19,000/$20,000 annual contribution limit for ABLE accounts for each individual who contributes to an ABLE account or for everyone who might be contributing to the person’s ABLE account?
Trinh Phan: That 19,000 or 20,000 is for total. So the contributions that are coming from you as the account holder, from the other people in the household, or just from family or friends, not from each person. But in addition to the 19,000 or 20,000, if you’re working, you can also potentially contribute a chunk above that. So I think there’s some planning around if you’re thinking about contribution limits and approaching them, if there’s some way to figure out the best way to do the contributions to maximize contributions in a year.
Tracey Gronniger: I think that is the most I can do with the questions that I see. We will go through and look at the other questions, and we’re going to send out materials so that you have more information about these various policies and what we’ve been working on, but we really want to thank you all for participating today. It’s been really helpful to see your questions and comments, and we hope that we can come back and do this again and really keep you informed about what’s going on at SSA as things are changing. So thank you all for joining, and I hope you all have a really great holiday.
