ProPublica reported on April 28, 2026 that a Trump administration rule change under review at the White House Office of Management and Budget would reduce or end Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits for as many as 400,000 disabled and elderly Americans who live with low-income relatives. The rule would deduct the value of a recipient's bedroom, and count other family support, against their SSI check even when the family qualifies for SNAP food stamps.
The change would reverse a 2024 Biden administration rule that added SNAP to the public assistance programs whose households are deemed unable to support a disabled relative. The OMB regulatory listing says the agency proposes “to adopt our former longstanding definition of a public assistance household, according to which every household member has to receive a PIM payment for the household to constitute a public assistance household.” The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, using a 2024 SSA analysis, estimated it “would likely result in benefit cuts for over 275,000 people and loss of eligibility for over 100,000 more.”
ProPublica documented the case of Shy'tyra Burton, 22, of Philadelphia, who receives $994 a month in SSI and lives with her father, a city sanitation worker who earns about $2,000 a month. Under the rule she could lose up to a third of her benefit, about $330 a month, even though her household already qualifies for SNAP.
Cutting Burton's benefit would save taxpayers about $11 a day, ProPublica reported, but if her father could no longer support her, housing her in a residential facility could cost many hundreds of dollars a day. Galen Carey of the National Association of Evangelicals, the father of a son with Down syndrome who receives SSI, said it is wrong to reduce a disabled person's benefits for choosing or needing to live with loved ones. OMB communications director Rachel Cauley said “this story is false because it speculates about policies that have not yet been decided.” ProPublica reported the rule could take until 2027 to be finalized.
Correction (October 2, 2026): This entry previously put Galen Carey's view in quotation marks; ProPublica paraphrased him, and the quotation marks have been removed. Rachel Cauley's quote has been corrected to her exact words (“have not yet been decided”). We removed an unsupported reference to a “lifetime” benefit and softened the claim that the rule “actively pushes” families toward institutional care to what ProPublica reported. We added that the rule would reverse a 2024 Biden-era change.