Keep those offices open!

By Sharon Maeda

The Social Security Administration intends to close its heavily-used Seattle neighborhood offices and require persons seeking any of the agency’s many services to go instead to a single office in the Federal Building.

The move is strongly opposed by community organizations and by 7th District Congressman Jim McDermott. Their concerns about the forbidding requirements to even get into the Federal Building have yet to be addressed by Social Security.

The existing Belltown office at Ninth Avenue and Lenora Street and the International District office at 675 South Lane Street serve about 300 persons per day. Both offices are readily accessible to a clientele that includes immigrants, the elderly, people with disabilities, troubled veterans and the mentally ill. Interpreter services are available.

The Federal Building is a whole other thing.

Can you imagine immigrants, people with disabilities, and folks with PTSD even entering this Level IV high security facility? Valid state or federal identification is demanded. All who enter must pass through a magnetometer. All must pass their belongings though an X-ray machine. Security guards are ever present.

The guards presumably speak only English – a serious problem for elderly immigrants being asked to put their purses, backpacks or wallets on the conveyor belt, or to submit to an electric wand being run all around their bodies. If it’s intimidating to us, what about our elders?

How would innocent persons, seeking only information about their benefits, respond to having an electric want run all around their bodies?

On the streets outside there are just two handicapped parking spaces. Commercial parking is expensive. Even when a friend or family member offers to drive, there’s no place to park!

At the long-established neighborhood offices, valid identification is not needed. There are no magnetometers or x-ray machines. Employees can interpret for non-English speaking visitors in several languages. Telephone interpreter service is also available. There is plenty of free or low-cost parking nearby.

Low-income visitors who can’t afford a state identification card, clients with disabilities and those with limited or no ability to speak English deserve to be served in their communities.

The change in offices would guarantee that many innocent persons, fearful of running the Federal Building gauntlet, would forfeit not only the information they need, but the benefits they may be entitled to.

PSARA is strongly opposing the move to the Federal Building. There’s still time to rescind this harsh, bureaucratic decision. Call Social Security Regional Commissioner Stanley Friendship at 206-615-2100. Urge that low-income visitors who cannot afford to purchase a state ID card, clients with disabilities, and those with limited or no English continue to be served in their own communities.

It’s simple justice.