Street roots., March 14, 2014, Page 5, Image 5

Street roots
5
March 14, 2014
CHECKS, fro m page 4
WARRANT, fro m page 1
judge denied his claim.
“The judge said to me, for all I know you
want the money to get alcohol and drugs,”
recalls Zuber. “I don’t even drink!”
Zuber got representation for his case and
eventually won, getting $945 a month. He
also gets health insurance, which he hadn’t
had in 10 years and found out that he is
diabetic. He now takes medication for his '
agoraphobia.
In 2011, after five years of being unable
to leave his parent’s house, he took his first
steps outside and had trouble recognizing
his own street. He now visits friends and
spends time with his niece and nephew. He
even made it to his 20-year high school
reunion.
“I can be a part of stuff that I need to. be
a part of,” says Zuber.
receiving assistance. Agents took computers and
will also be looking at records for any signs of
malfeasance, she said.
The federal government operates two programs,
Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Social
Security Disability Insurance (SSD), that provide
cash benefits to individuals who are prevented from
working as a result of a disability. There are 81,000
people in Oregon receiving SSI, a program for
individuals who have limited resources. For SSD,
which is for people who have a work history, that
number is 120,000.
Individuals who qualify for benefits but are
deemed incapable of managing their own money are
assigned a*“payee.” The payee has control over the
benefit money and is entrusted with making sure
that it’s used to cover the basic needs of the
recipient Often the payee is a family member or
close friend. Organizations such as Safety Net serve
as payees for individuals who don’t have the option
of using friends or family.
“On April 01, 2014 Safety Net of Oregon will close
our doors for good,” reads a sign taped to the
cracked window on the organization’s office. The
sign also advises clients to get in touch with the
Social Security Administration to find another
payee, “Thanks for the memories,” the sign
concludes. Another sign written on a yellow legal
pad and taped to the door simply reads, “closed.”
Safety Net has been Charles Vaughan’s payee
since last summer, which he says is “way too long.”
Vaughan, who has bad ankles and speaks in a heavy.
Alabama drawl, says that he’s had trouble getting
part of his $721 monthly disability check from
Safety Net to see a dentist and an optometrist,
neither of which he ended up seeing. He says he
just wants to get square with Safety Net and try to
move back to Alabama. But in the meantime there
is the pressing problem of getting a new payee.
“I don’t know what to do about that,” he says.
Meredith said that Safety Net can still process
payments for-rent, medical and other needs of
disability recipients but will cease those -services at
the beginning ofApril.
Street Roots was unable to reach Safety Net for
comment.
' • ' .
Safety Net’s 2012 tax forms, the most recent
publicly available, states that it had $689,987 in
revenue and was running a deficit of $2,486.
According to records on the Oregon attorney
general’s website, Safety Net has had five consumer
complaints lodged against i t All the records state
that the problems were voluntarily resolved, the
consumer was pursuing their own solution or there
wasn’t sufficient evidence to prove that Safety Net
violated the law.
isability hearings are hard to scrutinize
because they are not public, but
attorneys and representatives say that
judges have biases.
Portland’s Mellani Calvin has worked as à
non-attorney representative since 2010,
helping clients navigate the SSA
bureaucracy and assemble the
documentation they need to make their
cases. She says that it’s often easier to -
make the case for a disabled white collar
worker who has had steady health insurance
and documentation of their medical
problems.
“We have records to prove his casé,” she
says. “But a homeless person hardly has any
of these things, and they’re ruled out really
quickly/fj.
She remembers representing two young
educated womenwho had careers before
developing chronic illnesses^She recalls the
judge “falling over backwards” to award
them benefits. But it was a different story
when she represented a man who didn’t
have health insurance and was reluctant to
go to the doctor because of the cost.
Richard Sly, who has worked as a
disability attorney for three decades, says
that judges can be hostile to poor people
who smoke and have other bad habits and
have worked menial jobs all their lives, j
“The guy who’s been an electrician all of
his life, he’s age 52. There’s no question
about his work ethic,” says Sly. “He wrecked
his back doing his work. They’re more
sympathetic to that. But I got a guy who’s
mentally ill, no medical care. That’s going to
be a harder case.”
Under the law, someone qualifies for
disability if them is no job in the economy
they can work. Calvin says Some judges will
suggest jobs like egg-washer, button-sewer
or potato chip-sorter for clients.
In October 2013, the Social Security
Administration settled a class-action lawsuit
filed against it on behalf of eight applicants
who were denied benefits. The suit alleged
that thé applicants ran into a “brick wall of
bias” from five of the, eight judges staffing
the administration’s Queens, New York
office, which had one of the highest denial
rates in the country. According to the suit,
the judges engaged in “bullying and
unprofessional behavior,” cherrypicking and
manipulating evidence to support pre­
ordained conclusions. Under the the
settlement, 4,000 denied applicants will
receive new hearings.
Emilia Sicilia, director of disability
benefits advocacy at the Urban Justice
Center, which litigated the case, says the
suit didn’t make any allegations of systemic
bias beyond the Queens office. However,
she did say that it provided for the issuance
of a policy on judge bias by the Social
Security Administration.
“There has never been alawsuit quite as
large as this one beçaüsé.it involved more
than one ALJ,” says Sicilia, who adds that
B
The median ease
backlog for the 170
hearing offices
spread throughout
the country is
4,967. For thè
Seattle office,
there are 5,791
cases waiting a
decision. In
Portland, it’s 8,008
cases. I
biased judges and the case backlog are two
separate issues.
The backlog, depending on who you ask,
is partially attributable to the rise of
disability law firms that base their business
on volume, which has earned them the
disparaging moniker of “disability mills.”
Critics says these firms file as many Claims
as possible, regardless of merit, with the
expectation that enough of them will be
approved to make a profit. This model
involves the aggressive recruitment of
clients. If you watch daytime TV, you will
likely see an ad for à company promising
you the benefits you deserve. Calvin says
she’s heard rumors that representatives will
visit meal services geared toward the
homeless in hopes of picking up clients.
“When you are working with that kind of
volume you are* not giving quality
-representation,” saysdisability lawyer
Cheryl Coon, who only takes 12 cases a year
and estimates that some firms take on
thousands of cases annually. “It’s that
simple.”
In addition to adding to the backlog, Coon
says these bulk operations also bring
questionable cases before judges, which
makes them more skeptical of all claims.
The most wellknown is New York City-.
based Binder and Binder, which didn’t
respond to a request for comment. In
Portland, Schneider Kerr & Gibney also
takes on a large volume of cases.
P H O T O B Y JAKE T H O M A S
A makeshift closed sign hangs on the door to Safety
Net, an agency the offered payee services to Social
Security recipients in Portland. The company was
closed following a federal search warrant avid
allegations that it was mismanaging client funds.
In Portland, Safety Net does not have the best
reputation with individuals and organizations who
serve recipients of federal disability benefits.
“I’ve had a number of clients who have had Safety
Net as their representative payee, and they are
universally unhappy with the response they’ve been
getting and believe they have a hard time getting
their money from Safety Net,” says George Wall, an
attorney who helps disabled people qualify for
benefits. Wall says that when he has had a choice,
he has steered clients away from using Safety Net
as their payee.
Patricia Kepler, an independentliving specialist
at Independent Living Resources, a nonprofit
organization that helps individuals with disabilities,
says that she has clients being served by Safety Net
and many of them are unsure how they will access
their money and are panicked over the situation.
Kepler says there are only five payee organizations
in Oregon and the service is in high demand.
“I can tell you that a large number of our
consumers are on various payee systems, and all of
them have their weak moments and I’ve received
complaints from all of them,!* she says. “But most of
them, that I’m aware of, come from Safety Net,”
Kevin Kerr, a partner at Schneider Kerr
& Gibney, says that the large volume of
cases his firm takes on allows it to
represent people who have difficult cases
that other attorneys would be reluctant to ~ "*
take.
“We’re erring on the side of helping
people,” says Kerr.
This isn’t the first time, that disability
programs have drawn national attention.
Edward Berkowitz, a professor of history
and public policy at George Washington
University, says that there is often an uptick
in disability claims following recessions,
which provokes a backlash.
When Ronald Reagan was elected he and
his allies passed legislation that cut the
disability roles, says Berkowitz. A similar
uproar, he says, occurred during the 1990s.
Berkowitz says that the pendulum swings
the other way when people realize the
human cost. “Horror stories,” says
Berkowtiz, of people having heart attacks or
committing suicide emerged after disability
roles were tightened in the 1980s,
prompting Congress to backtrack.
“There’s all this emphasis nationally on
all these judges that approve people,” says
Coon. “But when you consider the human
cost of disapproving a person, the more
serious problem in this country is the
number of people who are getting
disapproved.”
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