The Trump administration and Elon Musk’s move to cancel the leases of dozens of Social Security Administration offices across the country disproportionately affects red states, raising the prospect of longer drives and fewer in-person services for older adults.
The DOGE website states that the Social Security Administration is closing 47 leases across 21 states, although some of the specific closures apply to only part of a building or refer to buildings that don’t exist. Seventeen of the affected states voted for President Donald Trump in 2024.
Lawmakers said they’re monitoring the situation. But Republicans continued to be supportive of DOGE efforts, even as advocates for older adults warn that the closures could make it considerably more difficult for some people to access much-needed services.
“I look at it like this, it’s the administration’s job to run the federal government. If they think they can do it with less people and less offices, then more power to them,” Rep. Bruce Westerman of Arkansas, where four offices are closing, told NOTUS. “If they can’t, then that’s where I think Congress steps in with oversight.”
The office closures arrive as the Social Security Administration plans to cut about 12 percent of its workforce. The government has said most of the offices being shuttered are not public-facing — without offering specifics as to how many are open to the public.
In many cases, the next-closest office is one or two hours’ driving distance away. Such offices typically provide services like replacing documents, applying for Social Security numbers or Medicare benefits, and hearing cases for disability insurance. These services are accessible online or by phone, but many older adults prefer in-person help, advocates said.
“Our older adults are not as computer literate,” said Melissa Prater, director of purchased services at East Arkansas Area Agency on Aging, which works with older adults in and around Jonesboro, the largest city in the northeast Arkansas region. “They’re just not comfortable doing stuff like that online, and it’s very frustrating for them. It causes them stress, when there shouldn’t be stress there for those type of things.”
Prater said the Jonesboro Social Security Administration office is a hub for the rural area around it. The office still provides in-person services, although often by appointment. Once it closes, Prater said she expects to see more calls to the Area Agency on Aging from people looking for Social Security help.
That’s an added workload for already stretched local agencies. Jane Walker, executive director of the Terrebonne Council on Aging in Houma, Louisiana, where an office is closing, said she’s already planning how to handle more calls, as well as provide transportation for people to travel an hour away to the next-closest office.
“We’re gonna have to help them navigate the Social Security website online and be the in-between Social Security and this client of ours, the senior,” Walker said. “But I don’t know how much of a toll that’s gonna take from our agency. Do we need to hire another person just to help these people?”
Members of Congress are already starting to hear from worried constituents.
Five of the offices set to close are in Georgia. Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff, rattling off the names of the closing locations, told reporters he has already heard “serious concern” about the harms to Georgia residents.
“I think it’s a big mistake,” Ossoff said. “Seniors can’t necessarily use the internet to access their benefits, right?”
Ossoff didn’t comment on how many of the Georgia offices were still providing public-facing services.
In early March, the General Services Administration said many of the facilities being closed were obsolete because they had been used for hearings no longer done in-person. Some are being consolidated into other nearby offices. The government will save about $8 million annually by cancelling these leases, according to data on DOGE’s website.
Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy said in a statement to NOTUS that the Houma office “is not closing, just the parts not being used.”
“I will continue to monitor the situation to make sure this is the case and if it will impact local jobs,” said Cassidy. “This is part of President Trump’s agenda to downsize government while still providing people with the services they expect.”
But it’s unclear how many of the closing offices fall into that category, and many of them are far from other services. People who need these services are confused and concerned, advocates for older adults said.
A national spokesman for the AARP referred NOTUS to a February statement, which said the organization has heard from thousands of its members who are worried about the status of their benefits and their local Social Security field offices.
“On behalf of the 68 million Americans receiving their hard-earned Social Security and the 183 million workers paying in to Social Security, AARP is requesting assurances that people can expect to have their questions answered and services delivered in a timely, efficient manner,” read the statement.
In Montana, two offices, in Kalispell and Missoula, are closing. The next-closest offices are more than two hours away by car. Montana Sen. Tim Sheehy said he hasn’t heard any feedback yet from constituents.
“We’re working hard with all the federal agencies to make sure that any cuts aren’t impacting services,” Sheehy told NOTUS.
Sen. Ted Budd of North Carolina, where four offices are closing, said his office has gotten calls about it, and he’s “looking into it.”
“The bottom line is to make sure that people have the service that they need,” Budd told NOTUS.
Georgia Rep. Buddy Carter represents a district with a shuttering office. He told NOTUS he’s had some constituents express concern but that his office is “still trying to determine the impact” of the closure and potential cuts to the workforce.
In Alabama, four offices are set to close. But Rep. Robert Aderholt told NOTUS the one in his district, in Cullman, is actually not closing — just a hearing space that’s no longer used.
Some lawmakers say Social Security offices are already less accessible than they should be, though, meaning physical locations don’t provide immediate access to service anyway.
In February, New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand protested the closure of an office in the Hudson Valley. But Gillibrand said that the Social Security Administration has faced “stagnant budgets and an increasing workload, while it has also closed field offices and seen the deterioration of in-person and phone services shifting more interactions online.”
Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana said that closing facilities and “DOGE-ifying” the agency might actually remedy that problem. He said offices had generally stopped providing in-person services and phone wait times were too long, limiting access even while there was a brick and mortar building.
“You couldn’t just go to the Social Security office, which is the way it was my entire life, historically, that was the way it was,” Higgins told NOTUS. “I am concerned about the closure of offices and how it makes [older adults] feel. I was more concerned about the Social Security offices not functioning.”
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CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misstated the savings DOGE projections from cancelling the leases. It is $8 million annually.
Helen Huiskes is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.