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SSI story: Monthly check, daily struggleBy Mike Erwin The federal minimum wage went up to $5.85 per hour in July. But even when it goes up again to $6.55 next July, a 40-hour work week at that rate will only yield a net paycheck of $1,048 per month or $12,256 a year. It’s hard to imagine anyone getting by on that little money. But for the 4 million non-elderly people with disabilities who try to survive on a monthly Supplemental Security Income (SSI) check from Social Security, a monthly income of $1,000 would be a joyous windfall. The average monthly SSI check is only $632. That’s $7,584 a year, which is almost 25 percent below the federal poverty level. A recent report titled “Priced Out,” which is published every two years by the Technical Assistance Collaborative and the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities Housing Task Force, graphically demonstrates just how mighty of a struggle it can be to get by on just SSI (http://www.tacinc.org/Pubs/PricedOut.htm). The study compares SSI monthly income to local U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) fair market rents for modestly priced rental units. The 2006 report found that national average rents rose to $715 per month for one-bedroom apartments and $633 for studio/efficiency apartments. This means that one-bedroom market rent is 113.1 percent of the average SSI check. In 1998, “Priced Out” found that rent consumed only 69 percent of an SSI check. It’s a situation that’s rapidly deteriorating. Because a safe amount to pay for housing costs is considered to be no more than 30 percent of one’s income, an SSI recipient would need to find housing with a monthly rent of around $200. That’s what Debbie Getz Belk, 44, pays for her cozy 12-foot by 70-foot mobile home in Topeka, Kansas, that she shares with three cats. ”I couldn’t fit another piece of furniture in here if I tried,” she says. Asked what her disability is, she says, “Are you ready for the list?” She says she has fibromyalgia, bipolar disorder, hydrocephalus, arthritis and the beginnings of osteoporosis. “I still walk, but I walk slow.” Getz Belk says she can’t get into public housing because she has a felony conviction for passing a bad check. “I thought the person who gave it to me was my friend,” she says. She got lucky, though, because when she needed to find a place to live last year on her $623 monthly SSI check, her personal assistant let her move into one of the three mobile homes she owns at a big discount off market rent rates. Still, Getz Belk says, after she pays about $400 a month for utilities, phones, Internet usage and trash collection, there’s almost nothing left. She gets $170 worth of food stamps every month. “And I don’t eat much,” she says. For clothing and other items, she often goes to garage sales. “And I go to Family Dollar or the Dollar Store,” she says. “I don’t shop at no damn Kmart or Wal-Mart.” Sometimes she goes out to eat, but her PA often pays. Getz Belk hopes to someday make a little extra money by selling some of the jewelry she makes. Then maybe she’ll eventually be able to come up with $1300 to buy her mobile home. “I’m struggling,” she says. “I really am. I’ve never struggled like this. But I love my home. I really do.” George Brimmage, 52, lives just south of downtown Chicago in an SRO (single-room occupancy) apartment building. An SRO is basically an efficiency apartment with a kitchenette and private bathroom. His disability is schizophrenia. “I’m all right as long as I take my medicine and I keep myself occupied,” he says. “I have to get out or I start trippin’.” That’s what got him in trouble when he lived in a nursing home. “I’ll never forget that damn nursing home,” he recalls. “They wouldn’t let me go out. I felt like I was in prison. I asked them all the time, ‘When can I go out. When can I go out?’ I wanted to follow protocol. Finally I just snapped. I said the next time somebody opens that door, I’m going out.” A kitchen worker opened the door. “I pushed her out of the way and I went out. I was ready to fight.” A male nursing home employee was dispatched to subdue Brimmage and bring him back. Brimmage was in nursing homes for two years before he moved out in 2002. He pays $177 for rent, which is a percentage based on his monthly SSI income of $623. Utilities are included in his rent, and his phone bill comes to about $25. Even so, his income is too high for him to qualify for food stamps in Illinois. So his apartment is filled with standard staples from food pantries. “I’ve got corn flakes for days,” he says. Beans and rice sometimes serve as his “emergency meals.” For clothing and other household things, he shops at thrift and dollar stores. His main mode of transportation is his bicycle. He tries to treat himself to a couple of cans of beer each day. “You have to give something up to make it,” he says. “I gave up whiskey.” Since he left the nursing home, he’s managed to save $160. But he dips into his savings often. Does he enjoy life? “I try to,” he says Edie Leemreis, 35, used to receive a monthly SSI payment of $623. But then she received one of those infamous letters from Social Security claming she’d received an overpayment and demanding reimbursement. Now, until she catches up on her overpayment, she receives only $570. Leemreis is legally blind as the result of surgery to remove a malignant brain tumor when she was 16. She lives two houses down from her childhood home in South Bend, Indiana, with her husband, Ray. They bought their house at an HUD foreclosure auction. Their monthly mortgage payment is $319. Most months, Edie’s SSI is their only income. Ray mostly puts up drywall when he works – sporadically, due to his own disabilities,. “Those are our crazy months,” Edie says with a laugh. “Those are the months we go a little wild.” These days Ray has a temp job ripping out carpet in a building where apartments are being remodeled. Otherwise, $284 a month in food stamps helps them get by. “A lot of times we rob Peter to pay Paul,” Edie says. The couple pays only a portion of some bills to be able to pay others. They do most of their shopping at Wal-Mart. What do they do for fun? “Not much,” Edie says. They go a lot to the second-run movie theater where admission is just one dollar. They rent DVDs. They saved up enough money during a run of “crazy months” when Ray worked to buy a 12-foot backyard aluminum swimming pool. But much more often than not, their money runs out before the month does. They have no savings. “Do you know how many times I’ve seen those ads in the newspaper that say ‘GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS, five hundred bucks a night’?” Edie says. “I’m tempted. And I could say the government made me do it!”’ ******************************* Mike Ervin is a member of American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today, a group that works for the civil rights of people with disabilities |
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