Did You Know Our Senior and Disabled Residents Live on an Average Social Security Income of $10,889 per Year

Seniors receive income from a variety of sources, the primary sources are Social Security, pensions, earnings, and income from assets. RHA seniors have either lost a great deal of their asset base or in many cases, never had them driving them to live on SSI. US News and World Reports indicates senior citizen net worth continues to decline suggesting that there will be greater needs for affordable senior housing. Health care costs are often cited as a major contributor to senior expenses. [1]

Income for disabled residents often is less than the traditional worker. “Workers with disabilities who have at least a high school education earn 37 percent less on average than their peers without disabilities, a disparity costing federal and state governments up to $31.5 billion in potential tax revenue, finds an American Institutes for Research (AIR) analysis.” Disabled RHA residents generally rely on Social Security Disability Income as their primary source of income.

Key findings from a 2015 Henry K. Kaiser Family Foundation analysis:

• Close to half (45%) of adults ages 65 and older had incomes below twice the poverty thresholds under the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) in 2013, compared to 33% of older adults under the official measure.
• The poverty rate was higher among women ages 65 and older than men in this age group in 2013 under both the official measure (12% versus 7%) and the SPM (17% versus 12%). Among people ages 80 and older, 23 percent of women lived below the SPM poverty thresholds in 2013, compared to 14 percent of men.
• The official poverty rate in 2013 was nearly three times larger among Hispanic adults than among white adults ages 65 and older (20% versus 7%) and two and a half times larger among black adults ages 65 and older (18%). Rates of poverty for all three groups were higher under the SPM, with 28 percent of Hispanic adults, 22 percent of black adults, and 12 percent of white adults ages 65 and older living below the SPM poverty thresholds in 2013.

Federal definition of disabled – Federal laws define a person with a disability as “Any person who has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities; has a record of such impairment; or is regarded as having such an impairment.” In general, a physical or mental impairment includes hearing, mobility and visual impairments, chronic alcoholism, chronic mental illness, AIDS, AIDS Related Complex, and mental retardation that substantially limits one or more major life activities. Major life activities include walking, talking, hearing, seeing, breathing, learning, performing manual tasks, and caring for oneself.

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[1] http://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/publications/factsheet-disability.aspx