How a complicated benefits system lets some fall through the safety net

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• Geoff Bennett:

  Amid many of the debates around entitlements and benefits, one thing often gets lost. That's that many people who qualify for help struggle to get and keep their benefits because it can be difficult to navigate the system.

  Economics correspondent Paul Solman looks at that challenge as part of our special series America's Safety Net.

• Morgan Wingate, Beneficiary:

  You want tea too?

• Paul Solman:

  Single mom Morgan Wingate is eligible for food stamps, but getting them?

• Morgan Wingate:

  You will think that you did everything you were supposed to do. Then you come to find out that you're supposed to be doing something else.

• Paul Solman:

  Jessica Joyner's experience:

• Jessica Joyner, Beneficiary:

  I submit my paperwork, and it'll be two or three months had gone by where I get a response. Sometimes, they don't get my information.

• Laurie-Ann Millis, Beneficiary:

  You really have to be on top of every piece of mail that comes in.

• Paul Solman:

  Laurie-Ann Millis' food stamps were once cut off.

• Laurie-Ann Millis:

  I didn't have my birth certificate or something. I didn't have access to it.

• Paul Solman:

  Georgetown University's Pamela Herd co-authored the book "Administrative Burden."

  PAMELA HERD, Co-Author, "Administrative Burden": It can feel like a full-time job, both getting on those programs and then actually staying on them.

• Paul Solman:

  Aurelle Amram has seen the challenges in her work for Code for America.

  Aurelle Amram, Code for America: You might have to fill out a form that could take you over an hour to complete with questions that are potentially incomprehensible that can make you really nervous that you're answering incorrectly.

• Paul Solman:

  The results are stark, literally billions in unclaimed benefits, says Amram.

• Aurelle Amram:

  There's $80 billion of money left on the table every single year because of how hard it is to navigate these hurdles.

• Paul Solman:

  Morgan Wingate's job has kept her from the in-person appointments required to maintain her WIC benefits, Supplemental Nutrition for Women, Infants and Children.

• Morgan Wingate:

  I just gave up. I just said, you know what, I'm not going to be able to make it because a lot of the appointments are during my work hours.

• Paul Solman:

  Yet, Wingate, who works as a caregiver for people with disabilities, needs all the help she can get just to feed her kids.

• Morgan Wingate:

  I don't make enough to take care of all of my children and pay my bills. So that is stressful. I'm going to get upset.

• Paul Solman:

  Laurie-Ann Millis: recently got a letter saying her Medicaid benefit was stopped because she did not recertify correctly.

• Laurie-Ann Millis:

  I'm actually holding off on going to the doctor until I get it straightened out. That's my crisis. It takes that one little crisis.

• Paul Solman:

  Mills' finances were already precarious.

• Laurie-Ann Millis:

  If it's not worrying about the quality of the food that you get just to make it to the end of the month and the fact that even the cheap (EXPLETIVE DELETED) is so expensive now, there's that, and then came up short on my rent. What if they put a note on my door, the stress of hearing that knock, the stress that, how am I going to catch up?

• Paul Solman:

  The safety net's entanglements take a toll, says Pamela Herd.

• PAMELA HERD:

  This is where it really hits people actually hard, I think, is just the amount of stress, anxiety and frustration people experience.

• Paul Solman:

  Janan Jones had her own struggles with getting benefits, but nothing like one of her friends.

• Janan Jones, Beneficiary:

  She was in the shelter and she got kicked out. She has a child to provide for her, so she — she had to do what she had to do.

• Paul Solman:

  What did she do?

• Janan Jones:

  She went into prostitution, because she couldn't get any assistance. And she did what she thought was right to provide for her and her son.

• Paul Solman:

  So why is it so hard for people?

• Aurelle Amram:

  It's about layers and layers of accumulated policy and regulations. We're very good at adding things and very bad at taking away regulations and requirements.

• Paul Solman:

  And government agencies are stretched thin.

• Aurelle Amram:

  Governments are seeing record numbers of cases continuing from the pandemic, with also record staff vacancies.

• Paul Solman:

  But there are folks out there trying to make it easier.

• Jimmy Chen, CEO, Propel:

  This is the Providers app.

• Paul Solman:

  This app from Jimmy Chen's company Propel based in Brooklyn keeps track of your monthly food stamp use.

• Jimmy Chen:

  This is your transaction history, as well as your deposit date.

• Paul Solman:

  Rather than call a 1-800 number to access the balance for your benefit card, called an EBT card, users can see their balance on the app for free.

• Jimmy Chen:

  Very similar to kind of how a bank might offer you a mobile app that lets you see your balance and transaction history, we did that same thing for the EBT card. And we currently serve more than five million households each month.

• Paul Solman:

  Of the 20 million American households with EBT cards.

  After stints at Facebook and LinkedIn, Chen launched Propel in 2014.

• Jimmy Chen:

  You have got companies like Uber and Airbnb, companies that are solving the problems faced by the demographic profiles of people who work in tech.

• Paul Solman:

  Relatively well-off people.

• Jimmy Chen:

  Relatively well off people, yes, solving their own problems. And the thing that made me uncomfortable was the feeling that, in this day and age, low-income families also have access to smartphones and use the Internet on a regular basis.

  And there are just way fewer software companies applying these state-of-the-art technology practices to solve their problems.

• Paul Solman:

  Now, Propel is a profit making company, but, Chen insists:

• Jimmy Chen:

  The way that we can build the scalable, sustainable impact that we're trying to build, not just a one-time summer project that helps people a little bit and then goes away, is by building a scalable business model behind it.

• Paul Solman:

  And that model includes job listings, a no-feed debit card, ads offering consumer discounts.

• Jimmy Chen:

  If you are purchasing online groceries through Walmart, they have given us this coupon code for our users to be able to get some money off their orders.

• Aurelle Amram:

  So this is one of the forms we're working to improve.

• Paul Solman:

  At nonprofit Code for America, Aurelle Amram is also trying to ease the process by simplifying government forms.

• Aurelle Amram:

  I believe this one is 16 pages.

• Paul Solman:

  Verification, you will need copies of all of the following all in capital letters, but copies of your official — copy — oh, my goodness. That's just the first page.

• Aurelle Amram:

  That's just the first page. And so already you're in this mind-set of fear and stress before you even started.

• Paul Solman:

  Yes, yes.

  So how to make it user-friendly?

• Aurelle Amram:

  This is the form we helped Minnesota redesign. It used to take over 100 minutes, on average.

• Paul Solman:

  Now it's mobile-friendly.

• Aurelle Amram:

  So we use things like the font size to draw your attention to certain areas…

• Paul Solman:

  Right. Right.

• Aurelle Amram:

  … just the information you need to know.

• Paul Solman:

  Right.

• Aurelle Amram:

  So you know what sections you can skip. You can see where you're supposed to check a box. There's all sorts of visual cues.

• Paul Solman:

  And so, for an application that used to take an average of 110 minutes to fill out:

• Aurelle Amram:

  We ultimately get to a form that takes 12 minutes on average, is available in multiple languages, is at a third-grade reading level for the same nine-benefit program.

• Paul Solman:

  It's all an effort to reduce the burden on folks like Laurie-Ann Millis.

• Laurie-Ann Millis:

  We're here because we're down already. You know what I mean? Don't make it any more painful than it already is.

• Paul Solman:

  After all, the safety net-eligible just want to get what's supposed to be theirs.

  For the "PBS NewsHour," Paul Solman.