Mom vs. wolf at the door
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Jamie L. Smith is 38 years old and lives a few blocks north of me in Albany’s West Hill neighborhood.
She has four children: A 23-year-old daughter who’s out of the house; a 19-year-old daughter who was slated to begin service in the Air Force this spring, though the COVID-19 pandemic has put that plan on hold; a 16-year-old son; and a 9-year-old son who is about as immunocompromised as you can get. Smith’s youngest has had two heart transplants — the first just nine months after being born prematurely (he weighed less than 3 pounds when he entered the world, she said) — and the second last year, in combination with a kidney transplant.
Until March, Smith worked as a supervisor for Waterford Corp., which operates the hotel chain Townplace Suites. Along with a number of employees, she was sent home in early March and formally applied to the state Department of Labor for unemployment benefits March 16. Her application was approved March 27. Unfortunately, that’s where the process seems to have gone into administrative purgatory.
More than two months later, the $2,700 federal stimulus check she received via direct deposit under the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security, also known as the CARES Act, has been almost expended.
Smith, who moved her family to Albany last year after working for Vassar Brothers Medical Center in Poughkeepsie for 18 years, pays $1,100 in rent each month, utilities not included. So far, she has managed to stay paid in full.
But, on Thursday, Smith told me she has $57 left.
“It’s mentally draining,” she said of the sheer uncertainty of living with the proverbial financial wolf at the door for an extended period of time. “... You don’t know what today or tomorrow will bring.”
Of the eight people from her office she knows of who have applied for unemployment, she’s one of two still waiting for the funds to start flowing.
The Albany School District has been providing lunches five days a week, and Smith has availed herself of the food distribution being offered by Trinity Alliance. She and a neighbor swap meal-prep duties for their families.
“Wherever there are resources, that’s where we’re going to go,” she said.
As the weeks have ticked by, she has become increasingly desperate in her outreach to people in power. Trying to get some kind of certainty about when her benefits might be coming has turned into a parttime job in its own right.
She joined a Facebook group where members trade advice on
the best tactics for moving a benefits claim through the system. Smith has made multiple calls to the Labor Department, which has been understandably overwhelmed by the historic spike in unemployment claims, but she has never had a live conversation with a human being. Smith has also reached out to the offices of Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan, multiple regional state legislators and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.
She said the governor’s office put her on hold for two hours — by the time she left a voice mail, it was after 5 p.m.
“I wasn’t angry,” she said. “I tried to stay civil.”
I relate this not to suggest that these people are hardhearted: All of us are living through the nation’s greatest challenge since World War II, and most elected officials and public employees are doing their best to get their arms around the sheer scope of it. They are contending with the vast number of people who need to be protected from the virus, and the perhaps even larger population that will need public assistance to get through the economic devastation that followed in its wake.
But Smith is first and foremost a single parent — the administrator of her household — clamoring for assistance.
It’s the domestic version of the pleas being issued by revenue-strapped municipalities that are now engaged in the brutal work of drawing up austerity budgets and deciding who will need to be cut.
Last week, the status changed on Smith’s application.
Two months after her initial filing, the Labor Department had advanced to calculating the amount Smith is supposed to receive.
She’s expecting $504 a week — which means that more than half of her benefits will go to pay the rent.
Smith’s employer has asked if she’d be willing to come back to work when the Capital Region’s phased reopening makes it possible. She is understandably worried about being exposed to the virus, and thereby exposing her ailing son to a potentially fatal illness.
She has applied for other positions and even conducted a virtual interview, but opportunities are not plentiful.
When I called Smith back Friday to fact-check this column, she was on hold with the governor’s office a second time.
She has no idea why her benefits have not begun flowing.
“Maybe they need me to fill out a different form,” Smith said. “Maybe I need to do something a different way.”