Helping Homeless Individuals with Serious Mental Illness Get Disability Benefits

Yvonne Perret
Executive Director, Advocacy and Training Center

Deborah Dennis
Vice President, Policy Research Associates, Inc

Margaret Lassiter
Senior Project Associate, Policy Research Associates, Inc

Social Security and SSI disability benefits are often the main sources of stable income for people who have serious mental illness. Individuals who are homeless face particular barriers in navigating the application process. They typically lack a mailing address, transportation, and a treatment history from accepted medical sources (physicians or licensed psychologists). Improving Social Security Disability Programs for Adults Experiencing Long-term Homelessness proposes three strategies to address these barriers: (a) expand the acceptable medical sources to include professions likely to be available in publicly funded health and mental health care systems; (b) use SSA’s presumptive eligibility for SSI disability benefits for people with schizophrenia who are homeless for at least six months; and (c) modify the administrative process to accommodate homeless individuals consistent with SSA’s Homeless Plan of 2002.

Click here to download the full policy proposal developed as part of the project, Strengthening Social Security for Vulnerable Groups.

The project was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation’s Campaign for American Workers.

Increasing the Social Security Special Minimum Benefit and Updating SSI

Laura Sullivan
Research Assistant, Institute on Assets and Social Policy, Brandeis University

Tatjana Meschede
Research Director, Institute on Assets and Social Policy, Brandeis University

Thomas M. Shapiro
Director, Institute on Assets and Social Policy, Brandeis University

A special minimum benefit was added to the Social Security program in 1974, but few receive it today because it does not keep up with wage growth. Enhancing Social Security for Low-Income Workers: Coordinating an Enhanced Minimum Benefit with Social Safety Net Provisions for Seniors examines ways to update the special minimum benefit so that individuals with 30 years of work covered by Social Security would receive benefits that meet the updated poverty measure of the National Academy of Sciences, which is about 125 percent of the current official poverty threshold. It also proposes to update SSI to reflect inflation since the program began – that is, increase the asset limit for individuals from $2,000 to $6,700 and increase the general income exclusion from $20 to $89.

Click here to download the full policy proposal developed as part of the project, Strengthening Social Security for Vulnerable Groups.

The project was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation’s Campaign for American Workers.