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If you believe that the disabled people who receive up to $944 a month in Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payments are bankrupting this country, I have good news for you. It seems as though the squatter currently occupying the White House is ready to lower the boom on these grubby little freeloaders.
According to the independent investigative newsroom ProPublica, the squatter’s henchmen are working on a rule change that would deduct the value of a disabled adult’s bedroom from their monthly SSI allotment, even if the family members with whom they live are poor enough to qualify for food stamps.
The Social Security Administration (SSA) has a silly set of rules that it calls “in-kind support and maintenance” (ISM). Under these rules, anyone who receives SSI can be docked pay if they accept in-kind support for things like rent.
So suppose that someone receiving SSI lives with a roommate but pays less than half of the rent so they can afford to live there. The SSA can deduct the difference from their already paltry monthly stipend.
As ProPublica puts it: “Month after month, staffers have to pore over microscopic changes to SSI beneficiaries’ living arrangements and family members’ incomes and assets.” And rest assured, this is an area where the agency employs ample staff.
Until recently, if an SSI recipient received food that was paid for by someone else, they had to report it to the SSA and potentially face a benefit reduction. But in 2024, the SSA changed its rules so that food is no longer counted as ISM. This allowed disabled people whose families have already established themselves to be poor by qualifying for certain other public assistance programs to avoid having to do all of the same check-ins, over and over again, to receive SSI.
The squatter's rule would undo all that by requiring SSI recipients who are living at home beyond age eighteen to pay full rent, even if the household they are a part of is poor enough to qualify for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Otherwise, the value of their bedroom as well as any income and assets their family may have could be calculated and recalculated as often as every month and deducted from their SSI payment.
This could well be the creation of another costly ISM, which would add to the administrative and financial burden of the SSA. As ProPublica points out, while SSI payments add up to five percent of all of the benefits that are distributed by the SSA, the program accounts for nearly 35 percent of the agency’s administrative budget.
This rule change would only hurt the poorest of the poor—which is something that the squatter has shown that he really likes to do whenever he gets the chance. But he has to say that he’s doing it in the name of economic justice.