She's blind, but has to submit each year that she's still blind and therefore still eligible for benefits. In addition to that, there's about a billion rules surrounding where assistance can come from, and under what circumstances she's financially penalized for it. A great example is if her contributions to food for the household are less than 50%, she loses about a third of what she's paid from SSI, so a few hundred dollars.
It is ... taxing to keep up with, to say the least.
It is how they manage to minimize benefit payouts. Of course if you are on disability or SSI, they need to know about income and 'assets' to determine your benefit amount, but they utilize every opportunity available to chip away at that monthly payment, making it near-impossible to save or try to make any 'gains' from it.
I became unable to work as of May, 2008. I started applying for social security disability immediately. I went through the process at least 4 times, with denials and appeals, including having a lawyer and going before an administrative law judge twice.
It took SSA over a full decade to finally find me, "medically disabled" and eligible for benefits. But guess what? All your work credits for social security expire 5 years after you stop working. So instead of being approved for actual "Disability benefits" which would have been based upon former wages and work history, I am now only eligible for Supplemental Security Income which is a fraction of what I would have had with disability.
Not only that, but on ACTUAL disability benefits you are allowed to work and earn up to a certain dollar amount per month or annually BEFORE it has any affect on your benefit amount. Not with SSI. You start working while on SSI, you pretty much lose dollar for dollar in benefits what you start earning.
Oh, you get SNAP or Medicaid benefits through the state? Well guess what? Those departments will now count your measly SSI against other benefits, lowering the amount of SNAP benefits you can get monthly. Get it from one department, they take it away from an adjacent one.
So tell me again how living in poverty (read: $10k annually) is so great and fantastic and stress-free when your income barely pays rent for a shoebox in the lowest-income areas of the country?
Get. Fucking. Real. Out-of-touch asshats.