Why does it take up to a year longer to get disability benefits if you live in Huntsville, AL?
It is because Huntsville has only one tiny little hearing room, unlike much smaller towns that have up to four hearing rooms.
If you are disabled, you probably will need a hearing before you can get benefits. The average wait time for a hearing in Alabama is 17.3 months. In the Florence ODAR office the wait averges 17 months. However, if you live in or near Madison County, AL you can expect a wait of 24 months or longer. Again, the reason is that Social Security can only hold one hearing at a time in Huntsville compared to the ability to hold 3 or 4 hearings at once in the Florence ODAR office.
Huntsville is under the jurisdiction of the Office of Disability Adjudication and Review (ODAR) in Florence, AL. The judges have offices in Florence, not Huntsville. Huntsville is considered a remote hearing site. And since judges only have one tiny little hearing room available in Huntsville, it takes much longer to get a hearing just because the claimant lives in or near Madison County. I have had several clients die in Madison County waiting on a hearing that they never got.
This is especially troubling when you stop to realize that the Huntsville metro area has 444,000 residents. The city of Huntsville has almost 200,000 residents. So why is the largest population center in North Alabama limited to one tiny hearing room? Ask the politicians who set it up that way.
But isn't this problem fixed by accepting a hearing by video-teleconference (VTC)? No, it isn't. My experience has been that VTC hearings usually don't speed up the process.
The only thing I've tried that sometimes helps is to agree to schedule a hearing in another city--such as Cullman or Florence. If the claimant and his/her representative will waive travel expense, and are willing to drive to Florence or Cullman at their own expense, a hearing can sometimes be arranged sooner in one of those towns. But not in Huntsville.
I think that Social Security would like to have more capacity for hearings in Huntsville but politicians won't give them funding. Just the addition of one small hearing room in Huntsville (or Madison) could reduce the waiting time by months.
17 months is a long time to wait at best. But when you begin looking at 24 go 30 months or more, it gets very difficult for disabled individuals who may be having a very hard time with basic living necessities (food, housing, medical care).
FIND DISABILITY REPRESENTATION HERE
It is because Huntsville has only one tiny little hearing room, unlike much smaller towns that have up to four hearing rooms.
If you are disabled, you probably will need a hearing before you can get benefits. The average wait time for a hearing in Alabama is 17.3 months. In the Florence ODAR office the wait averges 17 months. However, if you live in or near Madison County, AL you can expect a wait of 24 months or longer. Again, the reason is that Social Security can only hold one hearing at a time in Huntsville compared to the ability to hold 3 or 4 hearings at once in the Florence ODAR office.
Huntsville is under the jurisdiction of the Office of Disability Adjudication and Review (ODAR) in Florence, AL. The judges have offices in Florence, not Huntsville. Huntsville is considered a remote hearing site. And since judges only have one tiny little hearing room available in Huntsville, it takes much longer to get a hearing just because the claimant lives in or near Madison County. I have had several clients die in Madison County waiting on a hearing that they never got.
This is especially troubling when you stop to realize that the Huntsville metro area has 444,000 residents. The city of Huntsville has almost 200,000 residents. So why is the largest population center in North Alabama limited to one tiny hearing room? Ask the politicians who set it up that way.
But isn't this problem fixed by accepting a hearing by video-teleconference (VTC)? No, it isn't. My experience has been that VTC hearings usually don't speed up the process.
The only thing I've tried that sometimes helps is to agree to schedule a hearing in another city--such as Cullman or Florence. If the claimant and his/her representative will waive travel expense, and are willing to drive to Florence or Cullman at their own expense, a hearing can sometimes be arranged sooner in one of those towns. But not in Huntsville.
I think that Social Security would like to have more capacity for hearings in Huntsville but politicians won't give them funding. Just the addition of one small hearing room in Huntsville (or Madison) could reduce the waiting time by months.
17 months is a long time to wait at best. But when you begin looking at 24 go 30 months or more, it gets very difficult for disabled individuals who may be having a very hard time with basic living necessities (food, housing, medical care).
FIND DISABILITY REPRESENTATION HERE
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