“You are all going to be rejected,” cautions Clarence Sessoms, a U.S. Air Force veteran and Morrisania resident who first filed for disability in 2004. His matter has not been resolved.

He hopes his third appeal hearing this month can finally secure him benefits he’s been seeking the last 14 years.

Genevieve Machado, a Castle Hill resident and former medical assistant who stopped working due to fibromyalgia and a torn meniscus, the latter occurring during a slip and fall and the former surfacing during her career, also feels hoodwinked. She has been working the appeal process and has been unable to secure a hearing date since 2015.

“I have been honest. Maybe if I would have lied, it would have worked,” says Machado. “It’s disappointing really… You work, work, work, work, work, at the end of the day when you need assistance… [you need] the money that you put in, you are denied everything, and why? Why? It’s crazy.”

A lengthy wait for a hearing is not unusual in the Bronx. Data kept by the Social Security Administration (SSA) shows residents who have filed a disability claim at their local Social Security office wait an average of 779 days, over two years, for their case to be reviewed at the Office of Disability Adjudication and Review (ODAR) at 226 E. 161st St. This is the longest wait time in the nation, higher than the national average of 593 days, and there are 6,457 cases pending in the Bronx now. On top of that, only 45 percent of those who are granted a hearing will receive disability benefits.

The Americans with Disabilities Act defines a disability as a physical or mental impairment that severely limits one or more major life activities. Some disabilities are physical.  Sessoms, for instance, has had six procedures on his knees, two back operations, a torn rotator cuff, and a torn muscle in his arm, suffered for various reasons, and can no longer perform as a union construction worker, his job of 30 years. Other so-called “invisible disabilities” may not be immediately apparent from the outside. Some examples are learning disabilities or mental health conditions.

SSA defines disability differently than many other agencies. To qualify for their benefits, claimants must prove they’re unable to perform work they previously were able to and be unable to do other work due to their medical problems. Their disability must also have lasted or be expected to last for at least a year, or result in death.

Sessoms does not believe he was fairly assessed by SSA. After he injured both of his knees in 2004 he required three years of rehabilitation to walk again. It was then that he first filed and was denied by SSA.

“I went through all my savings, all the money I had in the company 401(k), my annuities in the union, I spent everything I had to stay afloat. Now I have nothing. And your family suffers when you’re the main breadwinner; they suffer,” Sessoms explains. He has since relied on his wife’s income and a check from Veterans Affairs to stay afloat.

“My best description of [the backlog] would be a national disgrace,” says Mary Dale Walters, senior vice president of strategic communications at Allsup, LLC, a disability benefits representative that helps those seeking disabilities assistance navigate the lengthy application process.

After filing a Social Security disability claim, applicants must both prove that they have worked and contributed sufficiently to the Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) and that they are completely disabled. Allsup assists in filling out applications, pulling medical records together, confirming that the relevant taxes have been paid, and that everything is insured.

Sessoms, who is represented by Allsup, says going through the process without representation was very difficult. Allsup suggested he petition for a hearing in New Jersey instead of the Bronx since it was choked with the backlog of cases.

“They continue to put rules and regulations in place that slow the process, don’t have a real benefit to them or to the individuals going through the program and make things even harder for everyone involved,” Dale says. Dale cites an example is how SSA now requires nearly all medical records be submitted for review prior to a decision being made. “So what happens is that they end up with 50,000 or 60,000 cases, with medical evidence that’s more than 1,000 pages long.”

John Shallman, a spokesman for SSA, acknowledged the backlog, attributing it to an aging baby boomer population as they enter disability-prone years and the 2008 Great Recession. The federal agency has hired 250 administrative law judges since 2016 to answer the backlog, with results beginning to show.

“We continue to make progress in eliminating the hearing backlog. For 13 consecutive months, from January 2017 through January 2018, we have reduced the number of people waiting for a hearing decision,” said Shallman.

Sessoms is indignant. “We are not the ones who are scamming the system, we are the ones who are putting into the system, paying our money into it and I think you should give us the benefit of the doubt.”

Additional reporting by David Cruz

Editor’s Note: The print version of this article lists Mary Dale Walters as Mary Dale. 

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Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.