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Re-Entry Team Adapts to Pandemic By Katie Krusey and Jeff VanBuren, Re-Entry Project
and an overwhelmed phone staff, the early days of COVID were a challenging time to file a claim. Fortunately, the State increased staffing and hours to process phone To say the last six months has claims, and was very responsive to clients who had made been difficult for many of our climistakes when attempting online claims. Through April ents would be an understateand May we were able to effectively assist clients who ment. Thrust into a pandemic needed advice related to UIB, but the process became seemingly overnight, everyone more streamlined when State Senator Rachel Mayâs office has been forced to adjust. For the staff became involved. They were able to develop a line of Re-Entry Program, this brought communication with NYS DOL, and provided invaluable two major changes: we needed to assistance to our clients. Combined with the extra $600 adjust to the new types of assisper week allotted by the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance our clients needed, and to tance program, Re-Entry Program staff were able to faciliadapt our program to meet the tate unemployment relief payments for our clineeds of our clients. ents totaling over $40,000. This was an excepIndividuals with crimitionally rewarding outcome. nal histories In March, when the CARES Act included a are $1200 Stimulus Payments available to often Americans, we saw an immediate need. faced with discrimination when Because low income folks, who are at seeking employment. Most emthe mercy of inscrutable landlords ployers review our clientsâ criminal and lack of funding, have to change history information at some point in addresses frequently, it was obvithe application process. This very often ous that many peopleâs Stimulus leads to an adverse, and often unlawful, Payment checks would be mailed to the hiring decision. This has a multi-pronged wrong address. Updating someoneâs address was impact even prior to the pandemic: our clino easy task. The IRS web site crashed multiple times, and ents incur additional obstacles to obtaining it was nearly impossible to reach a live person on the employment, and they are often relegated to lower-paid, phone. Current and new clients shared their frustration less desirable jobs. The pandemic, which brought record and desperation as they ran low on money and had bills to high unemployment and fierce competition for jobs, has pay. It became apparent that, as employment opportunionly exacerbated these effects. When the United States ties declined or evaporated and as many of our clients lost unemployment rate soared past 20% on April 23, it was a their jobs, it was paramount to educate the community peak the US had not seen since 1934. Over 30 million unabout the processes through which they could ensure that employment claims have been filed nationally, maxing out they received their stimulus, any UIB they were entitled to, the unemployment rate at around 18.8%, while the New and about the newly announced state eviction moratoriYork State unemployment rate peaked at 16% in July. Beum. tween March and August 2020, nearly 3.5 million New Yorkers applied for Unemployment Benefits. We spent the month of April riding a steep learning curve These high unemployment numbers have put an unprece- while concurrently sharing all reliable information we dented stress on the unemployment system. With the De- learned with our clients. Regarding stimulus payments partment of Labor (DOL) web site intermittently crashing, from the IRS, our first advice was to encourage clients who
