Street Roots • Nov. 13-19, 2015
S A F E T Y N ET, from page 4
for varying reasons, such as
incarceration, the suspension of
benefits or death, said Mohageri.
The Social Security Administration
has drawn criticism from the outset
61 its handling of the Safety Net
debacle.
In March, 2014 - just days before
Safety Net’s closure - Disability
Rights Oregon, Oregon Law Center
and National Senior Citizens Law
Center filed a complaint against the
federal agency for not assigning
Safety Net’s clients new payee
services to ensure their benefits
would not be interrupted.
Shannon Singleton, executive
director at JOIN, a nonprofit
transitioning people living on the
streets into housing, said many of her
agency’s clients who had been
receiving benefits through Safety Net
became responsible for managing
their own money after the closure.
“There were a lot of people who
really could use and needed that
support that became their own
payees,” she said. “It wasn’t
necessarily what was b est for them in
the long term .”
More than 200 of Safety Net’s
clients who were owed money are
now deceased. As of November 3,
only five of their estates had been .
paid, said Mohageri.
News
The deaths of clients for whom
Safety Net still held money had
occurred prior to 2008 up until July
2015. Safety Net retained funds
belonging to estates of some
deceased individuals long after, they
died.
Mohageri said Social Security has
been unable to locate 158 estates of
deceased beneficiaries owed money
that was retrieved from Safety Net’s x
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a e e e ssa rlly w h a t was
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SHANNON SINGLETON,
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While hundreds of client deaths
may seem unusual, the mortality rate
among former Saftey Net clients is
consistent with a rate of death
determined in a 2013 report from the
Center on Budget and Policy
Priorities. It found that people who
receive disability benefits experience
a high rate of death for various
reasons - from poor health to .
socioeconomic disadvantages.
The report also noted “an
unknown, but significant, number die
during the five-month waiting period, v
when (disability) benefits are
unavailable.”
It is unclear w hether or not Safety
Net’s closure and the ensuing
difficulty in receiving benefits many
of its former clients faced as a result
played a role in any of these deaths.
Inquiries about where the money
went and the nature of the accounting
errors have gone unanswered. The
U.S. Attorney’« Office referred
requests to the Social Security
Administration, which referred back
to the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s vague
press release. A records request by
Street Roots is currently pending with
the Social Security Administration.
Instances of payee services
mismanaging their clients’ money
isn’t common, said Mohageri.
But on Nov. 5, the executive
director of another payee service was
sentenced in a Portland courtroom
after he pleaded guilty to stealing
nearly $100,000 in disability benefits
he was managing for clients in Idaho
Falls, The Oregonian reported.
Golden B arrett was sentenced to five
years probation and ordered to pay
back the money he stole.
Page 5
Walkin’ In A Fog
by Brent B. Lusted, while incarcerated in Delano
Community Correctional Facility, 2005
I’d been walkin’ in a fog for so very long;
Wherever I went the direction I took was always wrong!
I’d bump and run into anything
right in front of me,
Cuz I’d be so high and drunk
I could barely even see!
Burning down bridges was my specialty!
And I’d let down everyone who’d ever been kind to me!
But when the fog finally lifted
Jesus there you stood
You’d always been there but
I just couldn’t see you so good.
L A U G H IN G P L A N E T .C O M