Mei Yao spent 20 years in the Navy, eventually graduating to chief petty officer. But an incident with a superior officer had her dishonorably discharged in 1990.
A short time later she was so brutally beaten by her husband that she began experiencing grand mal seizures and had 17 of them since, each requiring a weeklong recovery in the hospital. She and her husband divorced, but she was unable to work because of her medical condition.
The only income she realizes are monthly $600 payments of Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), under $100 in food stamps and a small sum from several storage units she bought a few years back. Yao survives by making weekly stops at a local food pantry, loading up on day-old bread, pasta and canned vegetables.
“I think the government treats the disabled like peons,” she said. “I think they just don’t care. There’s no compassion.” Fourteen percent of Orange County’s population is considered disabled and 72 percent of them are poverty-stricken — only 7 percent are in the upperincome category.
Jim Wright, University of Central Florida sociology professor, said the disabled fall into a sad conundrum: having a spouse in the workforce is one of the few ways they can rise from poverty, but then that spouse cannot care for the disabled. Additionally, a large number of disabled people are single. Wright and Jana Jasinski recently released the first comprehensive survey on “Poverty in Central Florida.”
The study analyzed issues like housing, debt, racial and gender disparities and health care within three income classes — low, middle and upper. Alater part of the study focused on the disabled and senior populations.
Wright said the disabled are not being compensated enough to live a quality life because SSDI has not escalated as quickly over the years as the cost of living. Additionally, there is a large disparity in services for the disabled population.
“More than a tenth of the population is disabled so many people are touched by it, but still it is easy for us to assume these people are being taken care of and forget about it,” Wright said.
“Some are surprised by how heavily concentrated this group is in the lowincome category but if you stop and think about it, how else would they be if they are single and cannot work?” Even if SSDI paid adequate compensation, Wright’s study concluded that only three-quarters of households containing one or more disabled persons receive SSDI, meaning major issues exist with disability eligibility.
It took Yao seven years to qualify for SSDI and she is still appealing the government’s original decision stating that she is not disabled. “There is a lot of bureaucratic red tape there. It makes you feel really vulnerable when no one can hire you and no one is there to take care of you,” she said.
The study also revealed that only 15 percent of households with one or more disabled persons receive food stamps, 11 percent indulge in freemeal programs, one in four get free food from charitable organizations, and still 45 percent say they need more food than they have. “We need to revisit SSDI payment levels.
Those who are dependent get further and further behind each year,” Wright said. “But this is hardly the time to go to the feds and say these levels need to be increased because of the shape of the economy.” Seniors have come a long way Visiting Nurses, Meals on Wheels, MetroPlan Orlando — all of these serve local seniors in need.
While many seniors in Central Florida need help, other groups are in much worse shape. Children, for instance, have the highest poverty rate today, while seniors have the lowest. This was not the case in the 1960s when the War on Poverty began, Wright said.
Since then, eligibility for Social Security has expanded — today 90 percent of those aged 65-plus are enrolled. Meanwhile subsidized- housing options, while limited, are available, and many private-sector services are offered for seniors.
“We solved the seniorpoverty problem by throwing money at it, which is the right thing to do. But free health care, subsidized housing, monthly payments that increase with the cost of living — these are all things we do for seniors that we need for the general lowincome population.”
For more than 50 years Doloris Archer was a housewife and mother to 13 children and stepchildren. However, she and her husband separated just before his death in 2004. When he died he left all of his assets, except their home, to his mistress.
At age 75 the widow with no professional skills or retirement income is living only on monthly Social Security payments and bags of food she picks up weekly from Woodbury Presbyterian Church. “We (she and her disabled son she cares for) would not have the same quality of life if it were not for this place,” she said about the church.
“I feel there should be something more for seniors like me. We put everything we had into this country when we were young.” Although the study showed most seniors are in good shape, Mimi Reggentin, Orange County Commission on Aging program manager, said more problems could arise given that the elderly population nationwide, and particularly in Florida, is about to soar just as federal, state and local funding are being cut.
“There is a limited supply of subsidized senior housing with a six month to a year and a half wait, medical and prescription costs are rising at a much higher rate than inflation, and funding for seniors at the state and federal levels has not increased very much in recent years,” she said. “We will not see many new initiatives for seniors or any group with the federal cutbacks and property-tax cuts.”
