Memphis Medical District Collaborative sat down with Jessica King, HIRE Local participant and recent recipient of HIRE Cares COVID-19 Emergency Assistance.
What was your living situation like before COVID started?
Before, we had everything under wraps. We were still kind of late with rent, but it was more so because our pay periods didn’t fall on the due dates for our bills. When we were late, it was more like 2-3 days late instead of being months behind. Before all of this happened, we were good and on top of everything.
What has your living situation been like during COVID?
It’s been a living nightmare, just about. My fiancé’s hours have been cut short and I have been let go from my job. It’s like— where is the next dollar going to come from? How are we going to be able to basically keep everything together with the small amount of money that we do have as far as feeding and taking care of the kids, keeping up with light bill, keeping up with rent? It’s a feeling of “what do we do next?” instead of getting paid on payday and immediately taking care of the bills.
Have you had your hours cut? laid off? furloughed? — When did you see a turn in your situation due to COVID?
I was laid off from my warehouse job. Because of COVID-19, they weren’t getting as many orders as they thought they were going to get. They had a last in, first to go policy. I had only been working there a week when COVID-19 hit and was let go. When customers stopped purchasing because they heard the rumor that Coronavirus was carried through the boxes and that delivery drivers might have it, it slowed everything down. It went from employers saying we need you all to we no longer need you, as everything slowed down. With that job, seniority ruled. If you were there for six months or so, you still had your job. Anybody having worked less than 6 months, they did not need. This all happened towards the end of March.
How has COVID impacted your family/ ability to afford necessary goods?
It went from me and my fiancé having everything together to him now having to do everything on his own. I have to figure out if I need to pay my car note. You have to pay your car note in order to keep the car in order to keep going to work. It became a question of if I should take all the checks that I made throughout the month and put them together with the little bit of money that I do have to pay rent; or should I pay the lights, the car note, the things that the kids need. It became more of a this or that situation. Instead of working with my fiancé to split the bills with the money I had coming in, I watched him have to make choices of what bills we could and couldn’t afford to pay. It wasn’t like that before. We went from comfortable to sacrificing some bills to pay others. It was really very hard. You want to do it, you know you have to do it, but at the same time, you don’t have the funds to do it. It’s a living nightmare.
What bills or needs did you find yourself having to put on hold or sacrifice during this time?
The kids are growing rapidly, but I had to put purchasing new clothes for them on hold. Buying groceries was put on hold. After seeing my check each week, I knew that it wouldn’t cover rent, so we’ve put rent on hold. It came to a point where I applied for food stamps, so purchasing food was no longer an obstacle. Before, we would sometimes go to Grandma’s house to eat or scrape up the few dollars that we had to make sure that we can eat. It became overwhelming after a while.
How has COVID impacted your job search and/or career progress?
Thankfully, I have an interview and an orientation tomorrow to start Monday. It’s for a temp warehouse job. I feel like I can do this temp job, and hopefully it lasts because Coronavirus dies down. Normally, you go to work for temp warehouse jobs and they say we’ve got to get a certain amount of work done on current orders and backorders to reach their quota. Once we get that certain amount of work done and shipped out because everyone is working so hard, then they don’t need you, and warehouses start letting people go earlier than the normal 2-3 months for temp jobs. It’s now mom going from one job to another to another to another to try and make ends meet. People still have bills and kids. We still have to maintain our health and our children’s health, a household, and we still have to maintain cars to make sure we can go back and forth. To hire somebody and tell them they’ll be here for a couple months, to then saying we don’t need you anymore after two weeks— it becomes frustrating.
How has the HIRE Local program assisted/not assisted you with the hardships faced due to COVID?
We were literally two months behind on rent for the month of April and June because of the cut hours and no job at all, so we were literally facing eviction and losing just about everything we have and splitting the family up to make sure everyone had a place to lay their heads. When I received the call regarding HIRE Cares rental assistance, it was perfect. We no longer had to split up. We could get caught up on bills. We no longer had to decide whether or not we had to pay one bill and lose something else or risk losing the house. It was making everything back stable how we had it. We no longer had to pick and choose what we should pay off and put on hold until the next paycheck. To see some type of relief on my end and my fiancé’s end, it was like finally something good has come out of this whole Coronavirus. Something good has finally happened. The support means that we can still have our spot, not break the family up, and still be able to keep everything that we had worked hard for before this Coronavirus even started. I literally sat down and broke into tears because we finally have help— and it’s not from family because family is going through the same thing. We finally have help to where we can still keep our little family we created together without going to a hotel, Grandma’s house, sister’s house, cousin, auntie, none of that. It helped us out a lot.
What other resources are getting you through COVID? — Unemployment? Stimulus?
I got the stimulus check, but my fiancé didn’t due to his child support costs. I was able to take the stimulus check to get us caught up for the month of March on rent, utilities, and groceries. My fiancé no longer had to look around to see where the next dollar was coming from or work overtime. I’ll be calling CSA for utility support as well. Food was no longer a problem once I started receiving food stamps. I received the HIRE Local Visa gift card as well, which has assisted me in paying for gas to make sure I can get back and forth from my interviews and make sure my son has a consistent babysitter.
Outside of local and federal resources, what else has been getting you through the pandemic?
Taking the time to pause and gather with the family has helped— to come together to joke and laugh. We might go sit with aunts, uncles, grandma and cousins to sit, talk, laugh, and play and get our minds of everything that’s going on. We just have a good time and get our minds off of what’s going on.
What do you think about our federal and local government’s response to the pandemic?
They really move so slow. I don’t know if it’s just Tennessee, but they really move so slow. I filed for unemployment 8 weeks ago, and I still haven’t heard anything. It would be better if they were to move a little faster and pause on taking vacations, even as this work becomes overwhelming. For people like me, unemployment is needed because this is how we’re able to not lose everything we have or go end up in court to face eviction. If everyone was to just come together and work like they were before COVID, even though everyone is at home, everything would be so much smoother. Instead, I’m told that representatives are on vacation and I have to wait until they come back from vacation for assistance. Anything can happen during this time. We can lose our house, our cars, we can have a medical emergency in the family— and if they don’t have insurance, we have no way to pay for it. If they were to move quicker—not too quickly, because we don’t want them to make any mistakes—but, if they were to move how they were before and actually work with us, it would help out a lot.
What would you say your next steps are for yourself and your family?
My fiancé’s job has picked back up. Now, he’s getting every day work. He’s getting his regular hours plus extra hours. Within the next week, we are planning to move to a bigger house in our price range. My new job is paying about the same amount as his and it’s a weekly job. COVID has made us really sit down and create and stick to a budget. We’re making sure to save money aside from our jobs weekly so that we won’t be behind. Even though Coronavirus is going on, we still need to have savings. Whenever the unemployment hits, we can take that and pay off bills for a month or two and now work towards taking care of the kids’ needs and maintaining our bills instead of picking and choosing what to pay. It’s a work in progress, and it can be stressful, but we’re sticking to it.