A10 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, AUGUST 2 , 2020
efits are the traditional source of
aid, and that has been bolstered
with additional payments
through the federal Cares Act, the
legislation passed this spring to
support workers sidelined by the
pandemic.
That same legislation set in mo-
tion the Pandemic Unemployment
Assistance program for those who
don’t qualify for traditional unem-
ployment insurance — people like
gig workers, independent contrac-
tors and small business owners.
The money was supposed to be-
come available in April.
But in the District, those seek-
ing pandemic assistance must
first apply for — and be denied —
traditional benefits. That applica-
tion can be submitted over the
phone or online. But pandemic
assistance can only be applied for
online — and, until recently, only
in English. Further complicating
matters, the city’s employment
website, built in the early 2000s,
struggled at the start of the pan-
demic with mobile phone traffic
and pageview surges.
Many of the logistical knots
could be sorted out in a phone
conversation with a city staffer. But
connecting with the employment
services agency is another battle.
In May, a group of George Wash-
ington University law students
spent a week calling the agency’s
hotline. According to testimony
presented before the D.C. Coun-
cil’s Committee on Labor and
Workforce Development later that
month, of the 643 calls made be-
tween May 11 and May 15, only 20
percent connected.
Calls made between 9 a.m. and
noon connected just nine percent
of the time.
D.C. officials say the depart-
ment has since hired emergency
support staff and moved employ-
ees from other agencies to help
staff the phones, bringing the con-
nection rate to 64 percent by late
July.
But the average call time is still
one to two hours, and the agency
still receives an average of 5,
calls daily.
Somewhere in that daily logjam
of phone traffic was Kennerly,
dial i ng and getting hours of classi-
cal music, as May rolled into June
and his benefits did not come and
no one could tell him why.
“Every time I would stay on the
phone for three hours,” he said.
Rollins, too, called the Depart-
ment of Employment Services
(DOES) regularly, as her pantry
dwindled.
“I’m just swimming and hoping
I don’t drown,” she said at one
point. “These are concerns people
have in Third World countries. I
started thinking we might not sur-
vive this.”
Vought started each day trying
DOES on the phone, then yelling
into a pillow or putting his hand
through the wall when another
attempt ended in frustration and
brought him a day closer to home-
lessness.
“Where am I supposed to go?”
he said. “Be on Mayor Bowser’s
steps screaming?”A downward spiral
It was Saturday morning. Four
days left before Vought had to
move. He sat on the porch, a
bummed Marlboro Red in one
hand, counting the bills in his
wallet. Two. Three... Six. Seven.
He was down to $7 in cash.
He now had a place to stay —
230 miles away. Vought’s father, a
68-year-old maintenance man at a
Manhattan skyscraper, had of-
fered the couch in his one-bed-
room Bronx apartment, and sent
SEE BENEFITS ON AUntil those benefits kicked in,
should she buy food or pay the
rent?
Rollins decided to use her sav-
ings on food, buying groceries in
bulk and scanning Pinterest for
recipes that would last.
She called it “survivor mode.”
As the weeks ticked by, and her
unemployment check did not ap-
pear, she pushed aside thoughts
about what might be ahead, help-
ing her son with his school work
and learning to make soap — a new
hobby, something to keep her busy.
The notices she got from her
landlord noted that due to special
protections put in place by the
District during the pandemic, she
could not be issued a summons for
lack of payment for now. But they
were keeping track of each $1,
payment she missed.
“I could not fathom the idea of
what was coming next. I couldn’t
look in that direction,” she said. “I
don’t want to be in no shelter, so I
tried not to think about it.”
A few miles away, Thomas Ken-
nerly was sleeping on a relative’s
sofa and starting to despair of ever
finding another place of his own.
He and his wife had sold the row-
house they’d owned in Southeast
Washington for nearly 20 years just
before the pandemic set in, a last-
ditch effort to avoid foreclosure.
Kennerly’s wife moved in with
her mother. Kennerly — a former
D.C. police officer who left law
enforcement in 2001 after being
shot in the line of duty — packed
up for his brother-in-law’s one-
bedroom apartment in Naylor
Gardens.
They planned to save for a few
months and get another place.
Then Kennerly, 48, lost his job
as a seasonal delivery man at the
Amazon Hub Locker on Alabama
Avenue SE because of the corona-
virus.
In April, he applied for benefits.
He didn’t have a computer. The job
center where he usually could hop
on a desktop was closed. He ap-
plied on his phone. For weeks,
there was no word — and no mon-
ey coming in.
“It’s impossible to get an apart-
ment without funds,” he said. “You
don’t want to be depending on
other people. It’s hard. You’d rath-
er have your own.”Clogged pipelines of
assistance
Kennerly, Rollins and Vought
all needed help from the govern-
ment to steady lives shaken by the
first global pandemic in a century,
a plague that has contracted the
economy at a record pace and put
close to 50 million out of work
across the country.
But the social services infra-
structure designed to deliver that
help in the District stalled at the
very moment its services were
most critical.
The federal government added
additional benefits to what the
city offered, creating a new alpha-
bet soup of options for struggling
workers. According to activists,
attorneys and applicants, howev-
er, the quickly assembled system
led to a paralyzed tumult.
“We have had around 200 calls
from people looking for help ac-
cessing their benefits, and many
are facing delays, if not all of
them,” Nicole Dooley, a staff attor-
ney at the Legal Aid Society of the
District of Columbia, said in July.
“It’s just an overwhelming num-
ber that are applying, and [the
city] can’t handle this huge wave
of applications.”
There are two main public as-
sistance pipelines for District
workers set adrift by the pandem-
ic. Unemployment insurance ben-has fielded more than 133,
claims, nearly five times the num-
ber processed in all of 2019.
The pileup has led to delays for
applicants knocked from their
economic perch, many of them
reaching for government help for
the first time. Although the D.C.
Council recently approved a major
modernization of the system, im-
plementing it will take years.
In the meantime, the end of July
meant the end of the initial round
of federal emergency pandemic
assistance. Republicans and Dem-
ocrats in Congress are deadlocked
over the scope of a second wave of
federal help. No matter what that
future assistance looks like, for
people like Vought, still waiting for
benefits from the spring and living
without a financial cushion, the
damage has been done.
People pushed into poverty by
the coronavirus pandemic could
face years of increased depend-
ence on government help, experts
say, and greater housing insecuri-
ty and homelessness. A single
mother with another baby due
this summer found herself choos-
ing between buying food or paying
the rent. A former D.C. police offi-
cer spent months on a relative’s
sofa, unable to find work or collect
unemployment so he could find
his own housing.
Their desperation morphed at
times into isolation and anger,
feelings Vought confronted as his
cracked iPhone rang that Friday in
late June. It was an aide from the
office of D.C. Mayor Muriel E.
Bowser (D) who had responded to
his earlier messages and com-
plaints.
“I understand your frustration,”
the aide said. But she didn’t have
any news.
“Can you do me a solid and just
bug them once a day for me?”
Vought begged her. “I don’t know
if they’re forgetting me. I don’t
know if somebody is skipping me
in the line. I don’t know if this is
just the worst time to have a last
name that starts with ‘V.’ ”
“I think it’s just an overwhelm-
ing amount of people,” the aide
answered, promising to follow up.
“Have a good weekend.”
Vought stared into the living
room, where stray sunlight from
the drawn blinds fell on the crates
he would have to store or haul or
trash by Wednesday. His bank ac-
count was overdrawn. He had $
in his wallet. A week from now, he
could be homeless.
“Oh,” he mumbled. “I’m going
to have a great weekend.”‘Survivor mode’
The pandemic crept up on
Lakeisha Rollins one text at a time.
When the coronavirus hit the
District in March, the 30-year-old
was working at the Whole Foods
Market on P Street NW, pulling
items off shelves to fill online or-
ders. Rollins, who is studying to
become a nursing assistant, got a
message that one of her co-work-
ers had tested positive. The next
day, another text alerted her about
another positive employee. By
April, six workers at the store had
contracted the virus.
For Rollins — who has a 10-
year-old and a baby arriving in
August — the health risk was too
much. A fan of “The Walking
Dead,” she left her job and decided
to wall her son and herself off from
the outside like survivors barri-
cading against zombies.
That meant a tough decision.
She had about $500 in the bank
and was eligible for pandemic as-
sistance because she left her job
due to a health concern.BENEFITS FROM ADesperately waiting for
a check that hasn’t come
MICHAEL S. WILLIAMSON/THE WASHINGTON POST
Daniel Vought, 30, plays the guitar, which he hopes he won’t have to sell. The former bartender was
forced to vacate his room in a group house in July because he couldn’t afford the $800-a-month rent.the coronavirus pandemic
Off er Ends 8/30/20.