2003-2023 Federal Cost of Living Increases by 8.7% :Changes in SSI for Individuals Will Not Keep Up with Rising Portland Metro Rents.

The headline news today is the 8.7% CPI-W COLA increase that will be used to adjust civilian and military pensions, and Social Security and SSI benefit levels. 

I choose to dig deeper and focus on the annual and cumulative changes from 2003-2023 with a breakout that shows how much individual SSI benefits have changed, AND the rent that is affordable at the SSI individual benefit level. 

The graph pasted below has all that data. 

Seven key points for the 2003-2023 period:

1. COLA increased by 52.8%.
2. The individual SSI benefit increased from $552 to $914--$362.
3. Affordable rent for individuals with SSI increased from $166 to $274--$109 per month. 
4. The 2022-2023 individual SSI increase is $73, from $841 to $914.
5. The 2022-2023 affordable rent increased for individual SSI recipients by $22--from $252 to $274 ; the FY 2022-FY 2023 HUD Portland metro 1 Bedroom Fair Market Rent increased by more than 4 times as much ($98), increasing from $1,512 to $1,610.
6. A $274 SSI individual affordable rent per month is not sufficient to even pay rental operating costs let alone any costs for supportive services.
7.  Providing affordable housing for individuals with SSI means a need for continuing rent subsidy AND rental units that have ZERO debt service. With new development costs of $400K+ per unit increasing the supply of these affordable units is a deep challenge. 

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog