Joseph Shapiro
speaker
255 appearances
8 recordings
2 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard 26 Jul
Joseph Shapiro’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 7 in all, peaking in Dec 2025 with 4.
Appearances
Joseph Shapiro, NPR News.
When a parent dies, Social Security pays survivor benefits to dependent children.
But for kids in foster care, it's common for states to cash those checks as reimbursement for foster care.
Now, in a letter to governors, the Department of Health and Human Services says that practice is wrong, that the checks belong to the child.
An NPR investigation in 2020 showed when a child leaves foster care, that money matters.
It can pay for college, a car, or a place to live.
Since then, 10 states have started passing the checks to foster youth.
The HHS letter says all states should follow.
Joseph Shapiro, NPR News.
Karen Williams couldn't work because of a disability. She was struggling to pay for her everyday expenses. But she was proud of how she managed the little money she did have.
But it wasn't enough. One of her health care providers told her about this program called SSI. So she applied. And the monthly benefit, she got several hundred dollars a month, was a relief. It made her life better. It helped her get by, at least for a while. Then the program turned into her nightmare.
SSI is run by the Social Security Administration. It provides financial assistance in the form of a monthly check, mostly to adults with physical disabilities or they're blind or they have mental health disabilities. Some checks go to disabled children and also to people 65 and older who are very poor.
Yes, those SSI checks, those are lifelines to some of the poorest people in this country. And this year, the average SSI check is about $700 a month. The money helps people pay for everyday expenses, food, rent, medical costs, and it qualifies them in most states for health insurance through Medicaid.
Yes, so a forgotten safety net because SSI was this bold and innovative program when it was created back in 1972. And this may be surprising, but the idea started with President Richard Nixon. He proposed replacing the existing federal welfare system with a guaranteed basic income to impoverished Americans. They'd get monthly vouchers and they could spend the money how they wanted.
And Nixon got support on the right and from some on the left. But in the end, his plan failed. Just one part survived, a monthly check to poor, disabled, and elderly people. It was an easier case to make because these were considered among the most so-called deserving of the poor. And that's how SSI was created. But in 52 years, the program has been largely forgotten by lawmakers and policymakers.
Its rules are frozen in place at standards from 40 to 50 years ago.
So here's the biggest problem that I found. To be on SSI, there's a limit on how much money you can have or how much you can own. It's called the asset limit. But that number is from another era. It's just $2,000, the same as it was in 1989.
Right. If SSI's asset limit had kept up with inflation, instead of being $2,000 today, it would be $10,000 today.
Yeah. I heard dozens and dozens of stories from people who ran into that $2,000 asset limit. You know, people who get SSI, they're required to report everything they own to Social Security and to let the agency monitor their bank accounts and collect income data. I spoke to a man in Illinois.
He said he felt trapped living in what he told me was a run-down apartment with rodents in an unsafe neighborhood. So he went looking for a new apartment. He saved up to make the down payment. Social Security, though, saw the money in his bank account, and he was now over $2,000, and it sent him a letter saying it was going to kick him off of SSI. So he stopped saving, and he never moved.
Showing 181–200 of 255 · page 10 of 13
← Previous
Next →