"In the last year, it's gotten a lot worse": Barriers to Disability Benefits in 2025

• In Event: The Political and Social Dimensions of Ableism and Its Impact on Everyday Life

Abstract

The US Social Security Administration (SSA) administers two forms of cash assistance for disabled people, Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI). Together, these programs serve roughly 16 million beneficiaries, most of them low-income. Over the course of 2025, SSA underwent a cascade of administrative and policy changes, include a drastic cut in staff, an effort to move client services online, including the expansion of AI-based platforms, and rapid shifts in rules governing access to walk-in services at field offices. We sought to explore the impact of these changes on those seeking assistance from SSDI and SSI. To do so, we interviewed 52 advocates at 32 community organizations across the US who assist SSDI and SSI claimants. These attorneys and benefit specialists are in frequent contact with SSA on behalf of their clients, making them ideal sources to describe agency practice.

While SSDI and SSI were already known for their bureaucratic complexity, respondents overwhelmingly reported that SSA became more difficult to navigate in 2025. They described changes to the phone system, staffing cuts and reassignments, and fluctuating walk-in and appointment policies at field offices that made communication with SSA staff more difficult for both claimants and advocates.

Respondents stressed the dire consequences of this deterioration of service. For disabled claimants, many of whom live in poverty, delays in claim processing could mean homelessness, deteriorating health, and even suicidality. The negative impacts of these changes were not evenly distributed, but instead were disproportionately borne by those already facing other forms of marginalization. Particularly hard-hit were people with limited technological literacy and internet access, those with psychiatric, cognitive or communication disabilities, people with unstable housing, and members of mixed-status immigrant families.

Authors

• Matthew Borus, Binghamton University

• Katie Savin, California State University Sacramento

• Callie Freitag, University of Wisconsin-Madison