When an SSI applicant or recipient lives in a public assistance household, we do not consider there to in-kind support and maintenance received from other members of that household.  In determining whether a household is a public assistance household, we evaluate whether members of the household receive benefits identified on a list of public income maintenance (PIM) payments.

We propose to remove payments made under The Refugee Act of 1980 (those payments based on need) from the list of PIM payments.  The eligibility period for these limited payments has steadily decreased since their inclusion on the list of PIM payments and was recently shortened to a four-month period, which makes it inefficient and impractical to continue to use them as a marker for determining public assistance households.