Irma also financial disaster
Paycheck-to-paycheck staffers’ fragile budgets bust
In a $53-a-night hotel near the Orange County jail, Beverly Burgess, her husband and 13-year-old asthmatic son weathered the disaster after the storm.
Hurricane Irma left their Pine Hills apartment with no power for a week, and after two nights without air conditioning at home, she feared the heat and blossoming mold spores could send her only child to the emergency room, unable to breathe.
“Now I’m spending money I don’t have,” she said on Day 4. “I just lost $400 worth of food in our refrigerator and freezer, and we’re using up our savings on a motel room and eating out . ... You try to plan, but then something like this comes along and throws a monkey wrench into everything.”
Although Irma meant inconvenience and
discomfort to some, for Central Florida’s legions of paycheck-to-paycheck workers, it’s created a second wave of trouble. From spoiled food to home repairs to rising gas prices, Central Floridians trying to eek out a living wage face a gauntlet of unbudgeted expenses.
“Nearly half of our community is one paycheck away from financial crisis,” said Vickie Martin, executive director of Christian HELP, a nonprofit work and resource center in Casselberry. “So when a hurricane keeps them from working or they have to make repairs, there is some bill that is not going to get paid — their rent, their car payment, something essential.”
At $20.70 an hour, Central Florida has one of the lowest median wages of any major metro area in the U.S. — about 13 percent below the national average; statewide, about 3.3 million people, nearly 16 percent of the population, live in poverty. And a large minority is always scrambling to cover the basics of food, shelter and transportation. According to a United Way report released early this year, that amounts to more than 40 percent of the region’s residents.
“Unfortunately, some of the neighborhoods that were already hurting were hard hit,” said Eric Gray, executive director of Orlando-based United Against Poverty, one of the busiest social-service agencies in the state.
“Everyone who was without power for more than a day has either had to throw food out or cook it right away. You think about it, a refrigerator can hold a pretty significant amount of income,” he said. “And if you have children who are usually eating [free] school lunches, and now they’re at home, that’s going to take another toll. And if you can’t go to work because they’re home and you have to take care of them, that may be the biggest hit of all. There’s no making up that income.”
In Altamonte Springs, paralegal Nicole Pridgen is still tallying the losses from that trio — spoiled food, lost work, closed schools.
“Nobody budgets for a hurricane, and suddenly you have to go buy gas and supplies and canned food and bottles of water,” said Pridgen, a single mother to a ninth grader and a 2-year-old.
She also missed four days of work, first because her office closed, then because her toddler’s day-care center was closed along with the school system. Her employer covered part of the loss, and Longwood’s Feeding Children Everywhere helped with some meals. But the rest will come from her pocket.
“The financial strain adds to the physical and emotional strain,” she said. “I feel like I have disaster PTSD.”
Sherry Easley, 49, understands that sentiment. The Winter Garden resident rode out the storm at a storm shelter with some 400 strangers and her 21-year-old daughter, who has Down syndrome.
“First I lost three days of work — and I work two jobs,” she said. “Then I had to lose another day because my daughter was really affected by this in a way I didn’t realize at first. When we got home, she wouldn’t leave my side and then got physically ill. I guess her nerves were shot.”
Easley, who works at Lowe’s during the day and cleans at night, lives in housing subsidized by the nonprofit Matthew’s Hope. Between lost income and having to toss $200 of frozen food when Irma snapped power lines, she’s having to scrimp on groceries and readjust her timetable for moving into her own place any time soon.
“I don’t know what I would have done without Matthew’s Hope,” she said.
In fact, many of the hardest hit might easily have fared worse if Irma had arrived as a stronger hurricane or employers, governments and nonprofits not stepped up to help. Walt Disney World and Universal Orlando, for instance, agreed to cover hourly workers for time lost when the parks closed. So did some of the local school districts who have contract workers.
State and federal governments let food-stamp recipients buy ready-to-eat foods not usually covered — then set up a one-time emergency food program for low-income people who lost wages or had Irma-related damages.
The Irma Community Recovery Fund, led by a group of economic justice groups, held neighborhood cookouts, feeding more than 3,000 people in low-income neighborhoods in west Orlando, Oak Ridge, Kissimmee, Sanford and Apopka and providing ice, diapers and assistance filing for emergency benefits.
And dozens of nonprofits and churches mobilized to offer supplies and clean-up aid — some even as their own facilities were damaged and without power. United Against Poverty, which runs a low-cost grocery store, had to throw away thousands of dollars in food after losing power — and then couldn’t process customers’ food stamp benefit cards or credit cards for a week because its cable service was down.
“Everybody wants cash,” complained Orlando mom Sandra Davis on Day 5 of trying to feed four kids without a working stove or refrigerator. “So now there’s even more that I’m having to spend out of the money that’s supposed to go to rent.”
The small call center she worked for before Irma hit was closed indefinitely when the storm tore off its roof. she hoped to land a job picking up downed tree limbs for $15 an hour and, in the interim, she had fashioned a makeshift grill using a rack from her oven and some charcoal.
“What are you going to do?” she said. “The kids have to eat.”
Seven days after Irma passed, Burgess, a self-employed grant writer, finally returned home to a now-empty refrigerator. She had missed a week of work and her husband, a chef, had missed two days. She had saved her receipts from the motel, the laundromat, IHOP and Popeyes, hoping there might be reimbursement from FEMA.
She was grateful, she said, that the hotel manager had been so nice, that a friend had bought them dinner one night, that the storm hadn’t been worse. But she was exhausted from worry, too. “I just keep thinking: How are we going to bounce back from this?” she said.