South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
Pandemic pushing people to financial ruin
Industry leaders predict the worst hardships lie ahead
A growing number of unemployed Floridians, their finances shredded, are struggling to pay for their homes and feed their families as COVID -19 pushes the economy to the brink that many have feared since spring.
Nearly seven months after the coronavirus shattered businesses, disrupted industries and forced hundreds of thousands of working Floridians to the sidelines, South Florida’s social safety net is severely frayed.
Emergency U.S. government benefit programs begun in March have expired or are near exhaustion. And there is no immediate sign that more federal re
lief is imminent as feuding politicians in Washington remain stalemated in negotiations.
Some businesses have recalled workers, for sure. But thousands of desperate families in South Florida have been driven to food banks, legal aid and mental health programs in an attempt to survive the lingering pandemic.
The anguish is likely to grow.
“This crisis isn’t going to end any time soon,” said Jennifer O’Flannery Anderson, CEO of the Community Foundation of Broward, which helps philanthropists steer funds to social causes. “We have to get out of crisis mode and into long-term recovery and response.”
According to an August report compiled by the Nonprofit Executive Alliance of Broward, an organization of top leaders of charitable and social service organizations, “the landscape has changed drastically and looks grim with more people now experiencing financial instability.”
“Requests for financial assistance have also soared, showing a frightening increase in the number of Broward households unemployed or simply unable to make ends meet in the current economic climate,” the report added.
Roy Schimmel is one of those in distress.
On Wednesday morning, Schimmel, 60, of Tamarac, was the first in line at a Feeding South Florida food giveaway at Sunrise Tennis Club Park. He arrived at 1 a.m. and slept in his car as he waited. By 9 a.m. hundreds of cars were lined up behind him, stretching east on West Oakland Park Boulevard and hooking north onto Pine Island Road.
Schimmel has been a regular at food giveaways ever since he got laid off in March from his job stocking shelves for businesses at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. His wife is disabled and can’t work. His only income is $275 a week in unemployment. “Who’s going to be able to live off of that?” he said.
He has been searching for jobs but hasn’t had any luck. He’s also not in any position to take a job that’s too physically demanding. In recent years he’s had two shoulder s u rg e r i e s a n d a k n e e surgery. He also has severe arthritis. “I don’t know how much longer I can keep going.”
Schimmel said that in recent weeks he’s noticed that some food giveaways are now hit or miss because of a lack of inventory or heightened demand. “Sometimes you may get lucky, sometimes you get next to nothing.
He feels lucky that his house is paid off. “People who are living in apartments are now having landlords throw them out,” he said. But he understands there is another side to the tight money equation: “Those landlords have bills to pay, too. You can’t just let people stay for free.”
Feeding South Florida, a giant nonprofit, has been handing out food at more than 40 distribution points throughout the pandemic. From Palm Beach County to the Florida Keys, more than 110 workers and thousands of volunteers have maintained a steady flow of food to the jobless and their volunteers.
The number of people obtaining food doubled to 1.5 million on an annual basis after the pandemic hit, the organization says. Some 45% said it was the first time they’d sought help.
Paco Velez, the organization’s CEO, says federal money that has funded hundreds of tractor-trailer truckloads will end in October. After that, Feeding South Florida will have to buy food on its own. Besides mass food distributions, local governments such as Palm Beach County started handing out cash assistance for food a month ago from funds provided by the federal coronavirus relief program.
“Our families are truly desperate,” Velez said. “They have been desperate and fearful for quite some time. They got an infusion of funds from a stimulus check and emergency unemployment benefits. But that can only go so far.”
Walter Igreda, 67, of Weston, was in line at Sunrise at 4 a.m. Wednesday to ensure he could receive some food. “If you come at 9 a.m., you’ll be way in the back,” he said.
He was laid off in March from his job doing maintenance at a hotel in Weston after 18 years. He said he hasn’t heard anything about the hotel reopening or recalling employees.
“I’m waiting for them to call me,” he said. “As of right now, I don’t know anything.”
Igreda said he is currently getting unemployment compensation, but it barely covers his rent. Over the past month he started joining food lines to help ease his expenses. His wife also picked up odd jobs to help make ends meet.
He said he has been looking for jobs, but it has been difficult. “No one calls back.”
The jobs crisis
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Shanais Valdes, 33 of Hollywood, is a single mother of two who worked before the pandemic as an accountant for a large hotel chain. She was laid off in the first week of March and applied for benefits, only to see her account locked due to possible identity theft.
Valdes spent weeks faxing and emailing documents to agency staffers who didn’t get the situation resolved until July. That’s when she finally got an email from the state Department of Economic Opportunity to validate her account so she could claim her weeks as unemployed.
However, her effective date of unemployment was recorded as July, not March, the actual month she lost her job. She tried to get that corrected and called the agency hausted gan She rental By said selling then, assistance more her she Valdes savings her than has and furniture. 70 received had and times. anoth- be- exer assistance, $300 per which month is in what cash she family. is using She to is sustain still two her months behind on rent and is under pressure from her landlord. After her credit score plunged, she is worried about what will happen if she has to move from her current home.
“Then it will be, ‘Oh, well you don’t have good credit,’” she said. “But that’s because I’m not receiving money that is rightfully owed to
Meanwhile, she is appealing the DEO’s ruling that she lost her job in July and is looking for a job.
State Sen. Jason Pizzo, DMiami, said he’s corresponded with 20,000 people since the pandemic started; many of them live outside his district.
He said he gets hundreds of Facebook posts a day from people who are growing more desperate. In late August, a woman reached out saying she and her family were on the verge of homelessness because the state’s antiquated unemployment computer system failed to authorize her benefits.
Pizzo took a snapshot of her message and posted it on Twitter. A spokesperson for Gov. Ron DeSantis reached out and the family got their back pay within 24 hours. But Pizzo did not celebrate. “There are 5,000 people just like that.”
He said that things have only gotten worse in recent weeks as people who have not gotten their benefits are under even more of a crunch. “People have become more desperate. The suffering has become more profound.”
Zachary McCoy, 28, of Boca Raton, is a restaurant server who saw his biweekly income plunge from $2,000 to $4,000 to $150 a week. He filed for unemployment in May, but the DEO mistakenly classified him as self-employed, a ruling that barred him from weekly state benefits.
The DEO fixed the error in late July, but he hasn’t been able to get his backdated funds since then. In the meantime, he had to vacate his apartment in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea. He is also behind on his car payment and behind on his rent at his new apartment in Boca Raton.
He said someone at the DEO told him that they are working to process backdated payments, but it won’t be until December or January that he receives any money. He estimated that he is owed nearly $14,000. “I don’t have that time to wait,” he said. “I have bills to pay right now.”
Little government help
In late March, not long after the pandemic derailed what was once a thriving national and state economy, Congress passed the $2.2 trillion Coronavirus Aid Relief and Economic Security Act, which, among other things, provided supplemental unemployment benefits for millions who lost their jobs, loans to help small businesses keep their people employed and $25 billion to the nation’s airlines so they could retain employees on the payroll through Oct. 1.
But all of those programs have expired as COVID-19 remains an uncontrolled scourge that has killed more than 210,000 people nationally, including more than 15,000 in Florida.
A federal $600 weekly jobless benefit ended in late July, leaving unemployed Floridians with a pretax benefit of $275 a week, among the nation’s lowest. A followup $300 weekly benefit authorized by President Donald Trump disappeared within weeks after the funds — diverted from a pool of federal disaster money — quickly dried up.
Last week, state Democratic lawmakers introduced a bill that would nearly double Florida’s weekly payout from $275 to $500 and lift the maximum number of weeks benefits from 12 to 26. But there is no sign that Republicans support the ideas.
Meanwhile, unemployed workers whose 12 weeks of state benefits have expired can apply for another 13 weeks of $275 payments funded by a federal program called Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation. The program runs through the end of the year, but Floridians need to apply for the additional benefits once the balance of their current claims run out.
A separate, federally funded program for the selfemployed and independent contractors is also still in force.
By December, the DEO says it will have added to the number of weeks of state benefits the jobless can receive due to the rise in Florida’s unemployment rate. But the agency has not said how many weeks will be added to the current maximum of 12.
As they wait, out-of-work Floridians fear they could wind up on the streets. Now that Florida has stopped extending moratoriums on evictions, lawyers and tenants are girding for a wave of eviction cases to flood local courts.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently issued its own moratorium on removing renters from their homes on Sept. 4, reasoning that evictions
would increase the spread of COVID-19. Like the state’s former bans, the CDC’s action also prohibits removal of homeowners in foreclosure cases.
Nonetheless, restrained by state and federal moratoriums, landlords forced to wait for months to file court papers to oust tenants or homeowners are gearing up for court action.
“I think evictions are going to be the next big issue,” said Jennifer O’Flannery Anderson of the Community Foundation of Broward.
Patrice Paldino, executive director of Coast-toCoast Legal Aid of South Florida, said people have been calling the nonprofit agency for information, “but we don’t have court cases right now” in the areas of evictions and debt collection.
“Those two areas are going to explode,” she warned. “Right now, attorneys for landlords and creditors are probably drafting their complaints to have them filed and ready to go.”
Paldino also has seen a 50% increase in divorces from the same time last year and a 30% increase in paternity cases. But she worries most about what will happen when the CDC moratorium against evictions expires at year’s end.
“What’s the plan for Jan. 1 when all of this over?” she asked. “Then, we’re okay with everybody being homeless?”