https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/coronavirus-unemployment-delays-dc/2020/08/01/50016264-c522-11ea-8ffe-372be8d82298_story.htmlhttps://twitter.com/Marc_Normandin/status/1288215053423071238https://www.vox.com/2020/7/28/21341077/eviction-democrats-bill-housing-emergencies-lifeline-program-pressley-harris-delauroDemoncraps: "This is absolutely fine. We'll give you a
lawyer voucher so your eviction is upheld by the judge. #We'reHelping!"
He had five days to move out of the house in Brightwood Park, and now Daniel Vought stood looking at the plastic crates stacked in the living room holding his things. T-shirts. Power cords. Pokémon cards and stuffed animals. His beloved guitar — a Gibson Explorer electric — still hung on the wall. He figured it would be safer staying behind.
A new housemate was coming, one who could actually pay $800 a month for the room Vought, 30, had lived in rent-free since the coronavirus pandemic shut down the Georgetown bar where he worked.
For four months, his unemployment benefits application had been snared in red tape at the D.C. Department of Employment Services, a black hole of unanswered emails, phone holds and automated voice messages offering delays instead of answers.
(Granted, it could probably sell the Guitar and Pokémon cards [though the cards wouldn't give much, the hey-day of those are over compared to Magic]. But maybe that "roommate" is keeping it for him? IDK.)
What the HELP Act would do
The HELP Act would allocate $10 billion in Emergency Solutions Grants (ESGs), which provide funding to states and localities for programs related to things like homelessness prevention and outreach, to go toward funding legal representation for those on the verge of being evicted.
Research has shown that providing tenants access to counsel can dramatically improve their chances in housing court, and the odds of a favorable outcome increase sharply.
Tenants are far more likely to come to housing court without attorneys, compared to landlords. For example, in New York City, before the local government instituted a right-to-counsel law in 2017 for low-income tenants facing evictions, 95 percent of landlords had an attorney compared to less than 1 percent of tenants, according to New York University’s Furman Center. After NYC’s right-to-counsel law was passed, tenant representation increased across the city. According to the Community Service Society, 84 percent of 22,000 eligible New Yorkers who had attorneys stayed in their homes in fiscal year 2018.
So in other words: The lawyer vouchers should be
state programs (Thank you, democracy for this bullshit state/federal tier-system for better/worse) that should be done to give the evicted a better chance instead of the "working class party" throwing them a pity bone instead of telling the Republicans to fucking help or lose their elections/grow some balls and pass the second stimulus that should've been done in
June at the latest.
But unless Congress acts immediately, many of these protections are gone, or will be by the end of the month, just a few days away.
#OOPS
And if Congress doesn’t pass a version of the HEROES Act soon, and eviction bans aren’t extended, the HELP Act would create an additional cushion, giving tenants assistance to fight evictions in court and a small lifeline to limit the effects on their credit history. During an unparalleled public health and economic emergency, every bit counts.
Except they're still out on their ass, and the landlords will have nobody to go in due to the mass unemployment. So bravo there to both parties.
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 offered the couch in his one-bedroom Bronx apartment, and sent $100 through Western Union to help with travel expenses.
“It’s the street or my dad’s,” Vought said. “There’s nothing else.”
But was $100 even enough to get to New York City? His cellphone bill was due: $50. If he paid, was the rest enough for travel? Were buses even still running between the District and New York?
“When you’re poor everything is a 10-step process that ends up costing way more than if you actually have resources,” Vought said before starting his walk to Western Union, a mile and a half away at a Safeway on Georgia Avenue.
(...)
He couldn’t find other work. His dad wired $50 or $100 when he could, small lifelines that brought a mix of relief and shame.
“That’s another 100 bucks that’s now not in my dad’s pocket,” he would think.
(...)
“Nobody wants to date a guy who doesn’t know where he’s going to be living next. Nobody wants to hang out with somebody that smells . . . because they haven’t had a shower in three days,” he said.
“The economic differences are becoming so stark in such a small area like here that I can’t even relate to people anymore that I meet. They look at me like I’m crazy. I look at them like they’re stupid.”
Kennerly’s frustrations centered on his lack of a computer.
His benefits were held up, a city worker finally told him, because he’d provided incorrect information when trying to fill out the form on his phone. In June, the department promised to expedite his claim, but an important email ended up in his spam folder, costing him another month without aid.
“I don’t have a computer,” he explained. “It’s sort of embarrassing to tell people that you don’t, but I just don’t.”
Given how most everyone is on their (smart)phones now a days, it's absolutely
atrocious how the federal AND state governments haven't top-to-bottom reworked their sites to be responsive or mobile-first (as much as I hate that web design). Given the severe lack of IT department employees in the government [last I checked] it shouldn't be surprising, but given many states have atrocious systems (21337 has mentioned it in the past IIRC) it's
insane how the government has entirely failed.
@Riotious: Suck my dick, from the back. That goes for Shosta and Mandark, too. This shit is
pissing me off and I'm not even in their (the people mentioned in this article) situation.
Both parties fucking suck, and if you go "oh well the Democrats suck less" you can eat my asshole and bowel movements both.
There is zero reason as soon as the Pandemic started that Pelosi and Pence shouldn't have been all hands on deck.
Fuck them both for the "vacation"/off season the governors went on for about 2-3 weeks at a time while the Pandemic and no solid life-line plan was going on.
Fuck the Republicans for being assholes. Double-fuck the Democrats for saying they're the "party of the working class" and doing everything in their fucking power to not do shit to help the poor/working class (vouchers, etc).
