New York Times Re-write: August 9, 2020: Buy Food or Keep Car

The following blog was taken directly from the Sunday New York Times, August 9, 2020 by Ben Casselman and Gillian Friedman. I was looking for something to write about this week and when I read this I said wow! this is perfect as to how I AM FEELING. We are all at the end of our ropes. We are all beginning to make choices that we never imagined we would have to.

$600 Dries Up, And Decisions Are Wrenching

Buy Food or Keep Car? Consequences Spiral

Latrish Oseko and her daughter

When Latrish Oseko lost her job last spring, government aid helped to prevent a crisis from becoming a catastrophe. A $1,700 federal stimulus payment meant that when her 26-year old car broke down, she could replace it. The $600 a week in extra unemployment benefits from the federal government allowed her to pay rent and buy food.

But the federal money has run out, and talks in Washington over how to replace it have broken down. Ms. Oseko is sitting in a Delaware motel room where she's been since her landlord kicked her out of her apartment at the end of July.

There was hope that Congress would do the right thing.

But negotiations are at a political stalemate, and the President said on Friday that if Congress did not come up with a solution he would issue an executive order to extend the benefits. But even if he does this, Congress is still going to have to allocate the funds.

For many of the 30 million Americans relying on unemployment benefits, it could already be too late to prevent lasting harm. Without the extra $600 a week, which ran out at the end of July, they will need to get by on regular unemployment benefits, which often total at only a few hundred dollars a week.  For many American families that will not be enough to prevent eviction, hunger, utility cut-off, loss of automobile, refusal to seek medical assistance and mounting debt.

If ever there was a time that Congress needed to unify, it's now.

Ms. Oseko and her daughter are paying $76 a night to stay at the Delaware motel they are staying at, and she says it is filling up with families who are in the same predicament. She's been looking for a job, but the jobs she is qualified for as a data entry clerk want her to be working from her home. She can't get a home or rent an apartment because she doesn't have a job. Catch-22!

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