Older adults and individuals with disabilities who receive SSI benefits often qualify for additional benefits or live with other people who do. These benefits provide for critical needs for the individual, such as food, and to assist other family members, including children. Policies exist in a number of places to connect SSI beneficiaries to these other benefits, however gaps in these connections also exist. These gaps can occur when connections are not explicitly considered at the time programs were developed.
By taking the time now to examine how individuals experience different public benefits—from outreach to approval—policymakers can better identify reforms that will improve access to SSI and coordinated access to other federal and state benefits.
How It Works
SSI and other programs work together to ensure that low-income older adults and people with disabilities (including children with disabilities) have the income to meet their basic needs. Individuals may qualify for benefits in sequence. For example, someone may receive General Assistance or state disability insurance benefits while they are applying for SSI, then transition to receiving SSI after their application is approved. Individuals may also qualify for one benefit. For example, an adult with a low-wage job may only receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to help with food costs.
Individuals may also qualify for multiple benefits. For example, an older adult who receives SSI benefits may be raising their grandchild who receives Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) benefits that help pay for rent and other expenses. Both may also receive SNAP benefits to help purchase food. Families use this assistance to attain stability, to address emergencies when they arise, and to budget and plan for the future.
Low-income older adults and individuals with disabilities who receive SSI commonly qualify for more than one benefit. A number of pre-existing linkages help them actually receive the benefits they qualify for. These include the requirement that the Social Security Administration (SSA) help individuals in households where everyone is applying for or receiving SSI to also apply for SNAP, and the automatic enrollment of SSI beneficiaries into Medicaid in most states. These linkage rules help to cross-check everyone for eligibility, while reducing administrative complexity and cost across government agencies.
Policies to Reduce Barriers to Access
When different public benefits do not have complementary rules on the same issue, people in need are expected to manage that policy complexity, a difficult task for anyone to take on. When older adults and individuals with disabilities are experiencing challenges such as isolation, a medical emergency, or homelessness, they are even less likely to successfully manage this complexity. This leads to SSI and other benefits not reaching some individuals who are in dire need, or only reaching people after a harmful delay.
Policymakers and SSA should make connections between public benefits more inclusive and simpler. Some specific ways to improve connections include:
Increase the SSI Asset Limit
SSI’s low asset limit impoverishes seniors and people with disabilities by forcing those who have modest savings to spend them down in order to qualify for much-needed SSI benefits. It also creates problems for the households they live in. When asset limits for programs that serve the same households diverge, household members who receive public benefits with more restrictive limits cannot save money and build assets because they would lose benefits they need to live. SSI often represents the more restrictive limit in these situations. This ends up also discouraging others in the household from building assets, due to SSI rules that can deem resources from others to the person receiving SSI.
Forty-three states, the District of Columbia, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands use a SNAP policy that allows them to streamline eligibility and raise the SNAP asset limit, and 18 states have asset limits of $10,000 or more for TANF recipients. Within the SSI program, Achieving a Better Life Experience (ABLE) accounts provide a tax-advantaged savings option for individuals whose disability began before age 46 to save up to $100,000 without affecting their SSI eligibility.
In comparison, the general SSI asset limit is $2,000 for an individual and $3,000 for a couple. A low asset limit makes it impossible to save money, an important step toward financial security. A needlessly low asset limit is one of the systemic conditions that prevent many low-income individuals and households from attaining financial goals and building wealth. For example, findings suggest that less than half of Black Americans have an emergency account, which leaves them vulnerable to emergencies. SSI policies should support people’s efforts to save for these unexpected expenses, and help people keep the modest wealth they have acquired.
Increasing the general SSI asset limit to at least $10,000 for an individual and $20,000 for a couple would make the higher asset limits in adjacent programs like TANF and SNAP much more usable for households that include someone who receives SSI. Being able to save money would give households the ability to cover their expenses in the event of a health issue, housing loss, or job loss, and also help individuals receiving SSI to build equity and plan for the future.
End SSI Rules That Are Unnecessarily Restrictive and Complex, Such as Reductions Based on In-Kind Support
Income and resource rules that are not helpfully aligned with rules in other programs can discourage people from helping someone who receives SSI. For example, SSI benefits may be reduced when an individual receives certain types of housing assistance, including assistance from family or friends. This is known as in-kind support and maintenance (ISM), and the SSI program considers it to be a form of income that reduces the SSI benefit. The ISM concept is unique to SSI and does not generally exist in other public benefits programs. Everyone has a hard time understanding the ISM rules, including people receiving SSI and SSA staff.
The ISM rules make it difficult for people to receive needed help from other sources. In 2025, the national average rent was $1,465 for a one-bedroom home, as compared to the current federal SSI benefit for an eligible individual, which is $994. For older adults and people with disabilities who live below the poverty line even when they receive the maximum SSI benefit, help with rent can be the thing that keeps them housed.
Ending reductions based on ISM would give individuals the ability to make better use of their SSI benefit, make SSI less complex, and lead to fewer errors by SSA staff. It would also support the sense of community and connection that helps many people, including individuals in communities of color and LGBTQ+ communities, to build supportive networks that help them meet their needs and reach their goals.
Incremental changes help to reduce unneeded complexity, such as the 2024 changes to the ISM regulations to stop counting food as in-kind income, and to prevent reductions when individuals live with others who also have low-income or rent from a family member. These changes are helping many people who previously had their SSI benefit reduced due to in-kind support to now receive the full SSI benefit, or to qualify for some SSI.
Ending ISM would also help individuals who receive assistance from other entities. SSI has income exclusions for additional assistance from state, local, and tribal governments and nonprofits that help SSI beneficiaries to fill in gaps in their budget. However, the SSI rules that apply to this type of assistance differ from the parallel rules in programs like TANF and SNAP. This misalignment can prevent SSI beneficiaries from receiving supplementary support, due to concern about losing other essential benefits. To address this, policymakers can re-examine the relevant rules to provide consistent, full income exclusions across programs. Or policymakers can end ISM entirely and simply allow this type of assistance.
Note: Another SSI change to make assistance from other sources more effective would be to exclude state tax credits from counting as a resource for SSI for 12 months, to match the existing resource exclusion for federal tax credits. This would make tax credits provided by states to their residents more usable, by giving low-income older adults and people with disabilities more time to plan for and spend down the credit.
Finally, overly restrictive SSI rules can cause a loss of eligibility that would not occur in adjacent benefit programs. For example, under the “transfer penalty” rule, an individual who receives a resource (such as a small inheritance) can have their SSI benefit suspended for up to three years if SSA decides that they spent down the resource incorrectly.
While other programs often provide reasonable guidance to re-start benefits in these situations, meeting the evidence requirements to re-start SSI benefits before the three years have elapsed can be very difficult. For individuals who are unhoused or unable to maintain a long history of records due to their circumstances, it may be impossible. This process can be made more rational and less burdensome by ending the transfer penalty, increasing the asset limit, or accepting a wider range of evidence, thus helping people to begin receiving SSI promptly.
Make SSI Reinstatement Upon Release From Incarceration Consistent With the SSDI Rule
Rules that vary between SSA programs in a way that does not reflect real-life experience can lead to outcomes that do not make sense. For example, individuals who received disability benefits prior to incarceration can make use of rules that quickly re-connect them to benefits without needing to apply again, however the connection rule differs between Social Security disability (SSDI) and SSI disability. Someone who previously received SSDI can resume their benefit after returning to the community, while someone who previously received SSI disability can only resume their benefit if it is within 12 months of when their SSI benefit was originally suspended. After that time, individuals must submit a new application for SSI.
Changing to allow reinstatement of the SSI disability benefit without a time limit once the individual is back in the community would align the SSI rule with the SSDI rule and would also be more consistent with our understanding of disability. There is no indication that being incarcerated for more than one year improves disability and, if anything, it is more likely to worsen a disabling condition.
Restore and Extend Eligibility for Immigrants and Residents of U.S. Territories
Making more immigrants living in the U.S. and residents of U.S. territories eligible for SSI would simplify the application process and reduce gaps in support for low-income older adults and individuals with disabilities. Prior to 1996, residents who were citizens and legal immigrants alike could receive federal public benefits if they met eligibility criteria for the benefit program, and even undocumented immigrants were eligible for some public benefits.
Federal legislation enacted in 1996 and 1997 severely restricted eligibility for legal permanent residents and other non-U.S. citizens of all ages who live in the U.S., including older adults and people with disabilities. This caused many people to lose needed support, while creating complex rules across federal public benefits that made eligibility much harder to understand and administer. Also, while residents of the Northern Mariana Islands can receive SSI, residents of Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands currently cannot receive SSI.
Restoring pre-1996 standards for SSI and other federal public benefits would give more older adults and people with disabilities the support they need to live in dignity and security. Incremental expansions help to increase access, such as the 2024 restoration of eligibility for SSI and other federal public benefits to Compacts of Free Association citizens of the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau living in the U.S. Further extending eligibility to residents of Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands would provide equal access to SSI regardless of the state or territory someone lives in.
Increase Cross-Enrollment
Public benefits programs exist to help people in need, and how completely the programs reach everyone who qualifies is an important measure of quality and quality improvement. Past studies estimate that many older adults who are eligible for SSI do not actually receive it.
Using existing administrative records and data matching to cross-enroll more eligible individuals into public benefits programs could reduce application wait times and allow benefits to go out more quickly, which is a positive outcome for both individuals and government agencies. For example, Social Security retirement beneficiaries with low benefits could be more consistently cross-checked for SSI eligibility to increase their income. These and other simplifications would also make it easier for individuals to conduct business with SSA by reducing the number of situations that require them to call or come into their local Social Security office.
Reliable administrative records help SSA and other agencies to provide complete and error-free cross-enrollment, while reducing duplicative reporting. SSA and other agencies must maintain strong data privacy protections, as this creates the transparency and public trust needed to collect and develop reliable administrative records.
The backend work to make cross-benefit connections that are helpful, rational, cost-effective, and secure is often invisible to the public, but is vital for administering public benefits that serve everyone in need on the front end. These connections increase the ability of public benefits to help older adults and individuals with disabilities meet their needs and plan for the future, which in turn provides greater stability and opportunity for the communities we all live in.
