This article is adapted from an episode of our podcast, “Civic.” Click the audio player below to hear the full story.
Social Security — one of the most trusted institutions in American life — is facing an upheaval that’s alarming staff and beneficiaries.
In San Francisco, more than 100,000 people depend on monthly benefits for essentials like housing, food and medicine. But deep staffing cuts, office closures, stricter identification rules and failing phone systems are making it harder for people to access the support.
Joanna Parnes, managing attorney for Bay Area Legal Aid, which provides free civil legal assistance to low-income people, said her clients’ lives are upended by opaque notices, overpayment demands and unreachable phone lines. She recounted trying to get answers for one client whose benefits were suddenly severely cut back.
“We called multiple times. Each time we were on hold for about 20 minutes, and then our call was dropped,” Parnes said. “And meanwhile, he’s in great distress about whether or not he’s going to be able to pay his rent.”
This episode of “Civic” explores how staffing cuts, office closures and stricter rules are straining the Social Security system.
Since January, more than 7,000 Social Security Administration employees have been laid off or reassigned, or have left voluntarily, according to a June report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. It is the largest staffing cut in the agency’s history.
The agency now has the lowest staffing in 50 years with one employee serving an average of 1,260 beneficiaries, triple the ratio in 1967. And many more departures are expected.
Digital advancements have allowed administrators to become more efficient. But workers say staff reductions have already gone too far as the agency shrinks its presence across the country.
Sylvia Norman, president of the union local representing Social Security Administration staff across Northern and Central California, said the union tried to fight office closures in San Francisco’s Hunters Point and Parkside neighborhoods, and that the Mission office’s fate is “iffy.”
“We’re talking about a city as big as San Francisco with only three offices now, and you have a city as small as Fresno with three offices. So, something’s wrong with that picture,” Norman said.
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Compounding the issue, agency leaders have implemented inflexible schedules, intensive performance monitoring, and customer service “warmth” metrics that some workers call arbitrary and unrealistic.
“They’re just trying to get people out the door the easiest way they can, and they base it on attendance and performance,” said Jacqueline Hopkins, who has worked in the Richmond, California, office for over a decade.
The result of the pressure campaign has been widespread burnout, Norman said.
“I have management pretty much almost crying on your shoulder about some of the things that they’re being told they have to do,” she said. “It’s causing people to get ill. I have one of our reps, as a matter of fact, Jack, he had a stroke. He’s in the hospital.”
President Trump’s pick to oversee the agency, Frank Bisignano, a former banking executive with no experience in public benefits work, told federal lawmakers in June that he planned to keep staffing levels low and push for automation.
“Increased staffing is not the long-term solution,” he said. Instead, improvements would be made “by becoming a digital-first, technology-led organization that puts the public as our focal point.”
But moving services online creates obstacles for many, especially older adults without reliable internet or computer skills, said Laura Chiera, executive director at San Francisco-based Legal Assistance to the Elderly.
“Obviously, some seniors are tech savvy, but most, honestly, have a really hard time,” Chiera said. “And they’re getting attacked by scammers on every single front. These are professionals in scamming people. So the more you move all these services online, that’s what happens.”
The human cost
The agency’s administrative budget — less than 1 cent per payroll tax dollar collected — has been cut about 17% over the past decade when adjusted for inflation. The result: Disability claims take an average of seven months for an initial decision and more than two years if appealed.
In 2022, the Office of the Inspector General reported that more than 10,000 Americans died while waiting for disability benefit determinations.
San Francisco resident Paul Aguilar, a 61-year-old long-term HIV survivor, knows the cost of those notoriously long delays.
Aguilar received a notice in March claiming he owed the agency more than $200,000 after an overpayment issued in 2013 retroactively canceled all payments since then. The agency stopped his Medicare and disability payments. His request for reconsideration was denied and his appeal hearing could be scheduled several months or years into the future; he has no way of knowing when that will happen.
Without coverage, he faces $3,000 monthly drug costs. His physician, Monica Gandhi, called the situation life-threatening.
“If he is unable to stay on HIV therapy, the natural course is unfortunately, morbidity and mortality, getting opportunistic infections and dying,” Gandhi said.
Aguilar said he’ll keep fighting.
“I’m going to be okay no matter what,” he said. “I mean, I’ve been battling AIDS since I was 18. So, this is, like, just one of those things.”
False fraud claims
In his address to Congress on May 4, Trump claimed millions of Social Security recipients were over 110 years old, implying widespread fraud. In reality, fewer than 90,000 beneficiaries are over 99 and most “zombie” accounts appear due to outdated database entries, not active payments. The agency’s improper payment rate is under 1%, with most errors stemming from reporting mistakes, not fraud, according to its Office of the Inspector General.
U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said the fraud narrative was part of a larger push to privatize the program so investors could get their hands on the $1.2 trillion in payroll taxes the administration collected each year.
“They invest it in the market and that helps the shareholders, which is a lot of those wealthy billionaires,” Schiff said. “If the market goes up, great. If the market goes down, well, you lose.”
Legal pushback
California Attorney General Rob Bonta has joined 21 other states’ attorneys general in suing to stop the cuts and closures, arguing they violate the Social Security Administration’s duty to serve the public. While a judge denied an injunction, the case continues.
Bonta is urging Californians to fill out online complaint forms whenever they experience problems with the agency — like missing or late benefit checks, or the inability to reach agency staff by phone, online or in person — to help his office track widespread issues and potentially pursue legal action.
Anyone experiencing problems with social security can complete the form at oag.ca.gov/socialsecurity.
CLARIFICATION 10-9-25: Due to a publishing error, the second half of this quote appeared truncated in an earlier version of this story: “I have management pretty much almost crying on your shoulder about some of the things that they’re being told they have to do,” she said. “It’s causing people to get ill. I have one of our reps, as a matter of fact, Jack, he had a stroke. He’s in the hospital.”