Crisis counselor: ‘ Wound is very deep’
NEW HAVEN — Every day, Sylvia Cooper looks directly into a menace she can’t see.
“We know what tornadoes and floods do, but this pandemic is like an invisible storm,” she said.
Cooper, a crisis counselor, during the coronavirus
pandemic, said the financial burden is severe for many of the people with whom she interacts.
“I see many, many people impacted by it, on the brink of just collapsing financially,” she said of the pandemic. “We are assessing people, calling them up for interviews, helping to connect them to community resources and helping them with behavioral health.”
It’s not a theoretical issue for Cooper, who has seen important sources of her income dry up because of the pandemic and who has exhausted her savings this year. She lives in an apartment with one 20- year- old son who has special needs and is participating in a job training program offered by the public school district’s special education program.
Cooper, who works part time at Varick Memorial AME Zion Church, ordinarily also works a contract job at that church for a faith- based drug recovery program that has currently gone dark because of the inability to meet in groups. She said she has had car troubles and issues with her dryer, leading to costly repairs.
“We don’t have food stamps, so I’m spending money on food and gas. If I can walk somewhere, I’ll walk,” she said. “You have to factor all of that in.”
Additionally, Cooper has chronic health issues which make maintaining some standard of access to health care crucial.
“I take a lot of medication and need to manage my stress, which can trigger a lot of things,” she said.
Her counseling work is through a state contract through a Ministerial Health Fellowship advocacy coalition project funded by the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services and the Federal Emergency Management Agency during the coronavirus pandemic.
The expectation of the stimulus check was confirmed Sunday, as President Donald Trump signed a $ 900 billion relief bill that would provide $ 600 to American adults earning below a certain income threshold, and children younger than 17. It will be the second round of stimulus checks delivered to Americans during the pandemic following a round of $ 1,200 checks in the spring.
Adult dependents, “such as college students aged 17 and over, and elderly dependents do not qualify for the $ 600 rebate,” according to the nonprofit Tax Foundation.
Trump and Senate Democrats have advocated for raising the stimulus checks to $ 2,000; Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R- Ky., has declined to bring up a bill that passed the House for a vote on the Senate floor.
“Whether it’s $ 600 or $ 2,000, people need to get it. They need it in their hand to rebuild,” Cooper said. “Everybody doesn’t have food stamps, but they need to buy food. School lunch programs don’t cover three meals a day every day. People are on edge about what are we going to get help with.”
According to experts, the need for stimulus funds has been felt throughout the state.
But Brian Marks, a senior lecturer of business and economics at the University of New Haven, said while the $ 600 checks are likely to be “helpful,” they may be “too little, too late.”
“I’d like to call it a Band- Aid, but it’s probably not a very good Band- Aid, especially for those in the demographic group of lower- income, blue- collar, front- line workers. It’s barely a Band- Aid,” he said. “This wound is very deep.”
Marks said that although unemployment claims have fallen since peaking in April, consumer spending was down in November. And while the state’s unemployment rate was reported at 6.1 percent in October, Marks estimated the number of unemployed residents likely is being underreported by about 5 percentage points — something he chalks up to “asterisks” in the reporting. According to the state Department of Labor, Connecticut’s unemployment rate rose to a reported 8.2 percent in November.
“The economy is fragile, very weak,” Marks said. “Take this weakness and the perfect storm we had last week into this week with the termination of a lot of benefits from the first CARES Act and we’re teetering. There are significant issues.”
The philosophy behind a stimulus program is that by giving people money they will spend it and that money will stimulate the economy, creating a multiplier effect whereby the increase in spending creates a positive ripple effect throughout the economy, Marks said.
Cooper said the impacts of the pandemic are exacerbated among people who have burned through their savings during the pandemic.
“Imagine you’re already poverty- stricken, working a minimum wage job and collecting unemployment. You don’t have child care, your children are home doing virtual learning, you can’t work because everything is just hard, if you don’t have subsidized housing or don’t have additional resources financially and you can’t work as a waitress or in a retail job because that shut down, you’re not bringing home enough money to pay rent,” she said. “You can’t even stretch your dollar, because costs have gone up.”
When the pandemic reached Connecticut in March, Cooper said she had just downsized apartments after five of her six children had moved out and she was “still in boxes” in her new apartment when the world began to shut down around her.
With $ 600, Cooper said she would look to split it up to cover several needs: her son needs some new clothing, she said, and she has utility bills to cover. With whatever remains, she said she would like to start rebuilding her savings.
Isadora Milanez, a union organizer based in New Haven, said some of her members experienced a gap in unemployment payments because of timing issues at the federal level. She said she is in multiple text group threads with the members of Unite Here, Local 217 — who work hospitality jobs in Connecticut — who regularly express anxiety about holding on financially until they receive a stimulus payment.
“The biggest question I get is when will it reach peoples hands,” she said.
Like Marks, she said the $ 600 is “like a Band- Aid” to a laid- off hospitality worker, but it should at the least cover members’ living expenses for a week. The money could be the difference between keeping their housing for the next month, she said.
“It’s a desperation for anything, and the sooner the better because of these pressing bills and payment plans,” she said. “It’s survival for members.”
Milanez said Local 217 “took a hit” during the financial crisis of 2008, but the present pandemic has had an “unprecedented” financial impact.
The Rev. Kelcy Steele, pastor of Varick Memorial AME Zion Church where Cooper works, said the needs insecurity has reached much of the congregation.
“( The line for) our food pantry is wrapped around the building and our soup kitchen numbers have increased,” he said. “People come by the church every day needing food. We have an emergency food pantry set up on a daily basis.”
Steele said the majority of the church’s parishioners qualify for the checks.
“They pray and hope to be receiving financial assistance,” he said.