In order for disabled people to receive any sort of financial assistant for their housing, food, bills, medical supplies, etc., they cannot ever have more than $2,000 of resources to their name. Ever.
It doesn’t matter what it’s for.
You’re saving up for a new wheelchair?
For college?
To put a downpayment on a house?
Hell man, you just happen to budget for once in your life so that you can have some extra money in case something bad happens?
Your benefits immediately get cut off if you’re a cent over $2,000.
And, even worse, you usually end up having to pay back every dollar the government gave you that month.
So say you get $400. If they find out you’re twenty dollars over the resource limit, you have to give them all $400 back and you undergo an investigation of your funds to see if you will continue getting money.
“What if I spend the money that day?”
Doesn’t matter. In fact, from what I can tell, people who do this are actually put under investigation for fraud.
And yes, this system literally kills people.
Remember when “Guardians of the Galaxy” came out? one of Rocket Racoon’s creators, Bill Mantlo, suffered an accident in 1992 and has irreparable brain damage.
before the movie came out, Marvel gave him an exclusive preview screening. SOme people were upset because they felt if Marvel was really wanted to thank mantlo, they should have donated money to Mantlo’s family.
Bill Mantlo’s brother had to come out and explain: If Marvel gave them monetary aid, Bill Mantlo would lose his financial assistance.
That’s so utterly depressing.
disgusting
I have friends on welfare who won’t pick up a penny in the street because they’d risk the welfare they struggled to get for 10 years.
oh look another fucked up thing in this world. let’s just add it to the list. number 63858b
My brother has been on California State SSI for autism for the last 10 years, and he absolutely has to (no joke, HAS TO) spend all 720 bucks of his SSI every month, because if he puts it in the bank he risks losing his SSI altogether.
Sometimes, at the end of the month, he has no idea what to do with his money because the whole month went by and he still has 400-ish bucks in his account, and he fucking panics because he doesn’t want to get anywhere near 2,000.
And here’s the funnest part of the story!
One day he did a huge commission on Second Life and wound up earning 1500 bucks off of it, and he told the guy to donate it 500 bucks at a time over 3 months. The guy didn’t want to, and just donated all 1500, which put my brother at 2,036 bucks.
The state IMMEDIATELY (I’m talking less than an hour) called him up to tell him over the phone that they were canceling his SSI, because they noticed he had gone over the 2,000 buck threshold. He had to tell them that someone had made a charitable donation to him and that this was not a common occurrence in any way shape or form, and upon not believing him, my mother had to call to talk to them as his legal caretaker and say basically the same thing until they called off the cancellation of his SSI money.
He also had to cancel his renter’s assistance because it put him to 1,062 a month, so if he went 30 days without spending any money they’d cancel his SSI altogether. Like, none of us in the family have any fucking clue why that regulation is in place and it’s the stupidest shit in human history.
Please, legal side of Tumblr, tell me what positive reasoning this law has?
Happy 4th of July everyone! This is what the “nation of opportunity” looks like.
I’m curious though, if this counts towards money in your paypal as well? Like, i know there are ways to get donations/payments through paypal, and you could send yourself money from your paypal to your bank (I have to do it when i get paid by clients/commissions i do). Are they able to track your paypal at all? Could you technically hoard money in your paypal? Are you allowed to have more than one bank account, or is that considered fraudulant behavior? (I know when my Grandpa, who was illiterate, came into our care, he had a bank account attached to his name, but since his relatives no longer wanted to care for him, we had to get “power of attourney”, to handle all of his financial shit, and my mum was on SSI and had her name on two bank accounts because of that, but i don’t remember if it affected her SSI or not??)
Good Question.
And this is also why a lot of disabled people don’t work. Because if they got a paycheck, they’d lose their SSI.
(”But!” I hear you say, “If they got a paycheck, they wouldn’t need SSI!”)
Ah, but then they’d also lose the insurance that pays for their medical equipment and medication, and personal care attendants that help them bathe and dress and eat, etc.
An entry-level job might allow you to have more than 2,000 in the bank after a few months (and the government could only take back what you owe in taxes, and not the whole thing), but it’s not going to pay for all the other things you need to stay alive and not die in a puddle of your own filth.
And if you’ve been disabled since childhood, you therefore can’t afford to ever get an entry-level job. … And good luck getting a salary in the upper range of five-figures, that you’d need to afford for paying for all those needs out of pocket, if you’ve never had that entry level job to begin with.
But, no: disabled people who have some skills but are not employed are just cheats and scroungers… Right. [/sarcasm]
(This, BTW, is also why we need single-payer health care, a living wage minimum, and a universal basic income, so corporations can’t jack up the prices of healthcare beyond the finances of 99% of the nation’s populace.)
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 