‘I am just waiting to die’
Social Security clawbacks drive some into homelessness
More than a year after the federal government first cut off her disability benefits, Denise Woods drives nightly to strip malls, truck stops, and parking lots around Savannah, Georgia, looking for a safe place to sleep in her Chevy.
Woods, 51, said she had rented a three-bedroom house she shared with her adult son and grandson until March 2022, when the government terminated her disability payments without notice.
According to letters sent by the Social Security Administration, the agency determined it had been overpaying Woods and demanded she send back nearly $58,000.
Woods couldn’t come up with the money. So, until February 2026, the agency is withholding the $2,048 in disability she would have received each month.
“I still don’t know how it happened,” said Woods, who has requested a waiver and is seeking a hearing. “No one will give me answers. It takes weeks or months to get a caseworker on the phone. They have made my life unbearable.”
Kilolo Kijakazi, acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration, told a congressional subcommittee in October that her agency notifies recipients when they have received overpayments and works to “help those who want to establish repayment plans or who seek waiver of the debt.”
But relief from overpayments goes to only a relatively small number of people. And many others face dire consequences: Some become homeless, are evicted from rental housing, or see their mortgages fall into foreclosure.
The SSA has a painful legacy of excluding Black people from benefits. Today the agency’s own published research shows its overpayments most often hit Black and Hispanic people, the poorest of the poor, those with the least education, and those whose medical conditions are unlikely to improve.
Woods is one of millions who have been targeted in the Social Security Administration’s attempt to claw back billions of dollars it says was wrongly sent to beneficiaries. Years can pass before the agency catches a mistake, and even the little bit extra it might send each month can add up.
In reclaiming it, the government is imposing debts that can reach tens of thousands of dollars against those least able to pay.
KFF Health News and Cox Media Group reporters interviewed people who have received overpayment notices and nonprofit attorneys who advocate for them and re