Each month, Social Security recipients line up at shelters or charitable organizations to collect their monthly benefit checks.
The recipients, some homeless and with mental health issues, find comfort in the familiar routine of having mailed checks handed over by people they know and trust.
The Social Security Administration will stop issuing paper checks to beneficiaries on Sept. 30, which concerns former Social Security Administration commissioner Martin O’Malley.
“Aren’t we supposed to meet people where they’re at?” O’Malley, a former Baltimore mayor, Maryland governor and 2016 presidential candidate, told The Baltimore Sun. “There’s a peace of mind in knowing that a check will always be there for you. There’s a big divide in terms of the ability to access the Internet, as well as people in their golden years who are not digital natives.”
President Donald Trump issued an executive order in March requiring all federal disbursements to shift to electronic payments by the end of this month.
The Social Security Administration said the shift will curb lost or stolen payments, speed up processing times and save the government millions of dollars a year.
Advocates for the paper checks said they are worried about people living on the less-populated side of the digital divide — people often lacking smartphones or bank accounts, and using paper currency largely shunned by others.
Each month, people line up inside Progress Place, a Silver Spring drop-in center for the homeless, to collect Social Security checks that the center holds for them, often because they lack fixed addresses or bank accounts.
“It’s often hard for many people to understand that there are many people who don’t trust digital systems,” said Liz Krueger, director of homeless services for Interfaith Works, a nonprofit organization. “They are comfortable and secure with a physical check and won’t do electronic banking, and that tends to be our most vulnerable population.”
SSA has been encouraging beneficiaries for years to transition to electronic payments.
The agency, responding to questions from The Sun, said less than 1% of beneficiaries still get paper checks. That amounts to about 720,000 people, according to O’Malley.
“SSA is proactively contacting those beneficiaries to alert them about the change and the process to enroll in direct deposit or receive Direct Express cards,” the agency said in an emailed statement. Direct Express is a prepaid debit card.
About 73.9 million people receive at least one form of Social Security benefits, including 52.6 million retired workers and 7.2 million disabled people, according to figures compiled by the Pew Research Center. The Social Security Administration (SSA) is based in Baltimore County.
About 12% of people live in households without any internet connection, according to a 2023 study by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Commerce.
But in Baltimore, more than 40% of households have lacked reliable broadband access in recent years, “with low-income households and communities of color being the most affected,” said a report released in March by the city. The report highlighted expanded free Wi-Fi and other programs to try to bridge the divide.
O’Malley and other Democrats say the Trump administration is cutting Social Security services in hopes of eventually privatizing it.
“The people that now run our government are not a group of people that believe our government should work,” O’Malley said. “They never saw a federal function that they couldn’t privatize so their buddies could make a buck on it.”
Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano told a Senate committee in March: “I’ve never thought about privatizing.”
The White House said Democrats “peddle lies about Social Security.”
White House Assistant Press Secretary Liz Huston said last month that the administration is “massively improving the customer service experience through technological improvements, preventing illegal aliens from accessing benefits, and delivering no taxes on Social Security through the One Big Beautiful Bill.”
A spokeswoman for the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, a nonprofit advocacy group, said she understands the reason for phasing out paper checks. But she has questions.
“There is some kernel of legitimacy behind it, because if you’re getting a paper check from the government, it’s easier for somebody to steal it than it is if you get a direct deposit into your account,” said Maria Freese, the group’s senior legislative representative.
“The problem is that you have half a million people in this country who do not have bank accounts. That’s why they’re getting paper checks now,” Freese said. “Most of them are extremely low income, and they just don’t operate that way. And so they deal in cash.”
Freese said she was hoping to see details from the agency on what procedures it might take to ensure that nobody slips through the safety net and is left without their needed monthly benefit. She worries that many paper check beneficiaries will struggle to navigate a “convoluted” waiver system, and that “a lot of them probably have no idea that they’re even going to have this issue come up at the end of the month.”
Asked about possible waivers, the SSA referred The Sun to U.S. Treasury Department language on a website saying the department “will grant exceptions to the rule only in rare circumstances.”
It said a waiver would be permitted if electronic payments “would impose a hardship due to a mental impairment,” if the beneficiary is at least 90 years old, or lives in a remote location unable to support electronic financial transactions.
“If you do not meet the criteria above, you are required to convert your federal benefit check to electronic payment,” the website says.
Social Services organizations are bracing for the change.
“This is going to be huge,” said Shannon Mouton, executive director for Laurel Advocacy and Referral Services, which offers a food pantry and other assistance for homeless and low-income people in parts of Prince George’s, Anne Arundel, and Howard Counties.
“Almost all of our (about 100) homeless clients rely on paper checks. The digital divide is incredibly real,” Mouton said. She called it “unrealistic” to expect them to depend on devices they likely don’t own or struggle to access because they may not have electricity for charging.
For years, people without bank accounts used check-cashing services to get their Social Security money. That still happens, although the numbers have dwindled.
“We’re pretty much the first resort of the alternative banking for anyone who’s not normally dealing with the banks,” said a cashier at Jimmy G’s Check Cashing in Elkridge who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect his privacy. While the numbers have dropped sharply in recent years, he said, as many as 50 people a month still cash paper Social Security checks at his store.
Have a news tip? Contact Jeff Barker at jebarker@baltsun.com.