The high demand for services from our Public Benefits Unit has increased throughout the pandemic. A staggering 250,000 Unemployment Insurance (UI) claims have been filed in the District since March 2020. UI benefits are administered by the DC Department of Employment Services (DOES). These weekly benefits provide crucial lifelines to unemployed workers by enabling them to continue paying for basic necessities – such as food, shelter, and medical care – after losing their jobs.
Yet every day, Legal Aid meets individuals who, through no fault of their own, are unable to access such vital benefits. Agency delays and errors continue to jeopardize the already-fragile financial state of low-income families and, as a result, far too often we see clients having to make choices between getting food and medical care or paying their bills.
In addition to tackling a high volume of UI cases, Legal Aid has continued its longstanding work to improve the delivery of other essential public benefits, including stimulus payments, Social Security, SNAP, TANF, Alliance, and Medicaid to individual clients. We have also continued to advocate with the DC Council and other agencies to improve programs and eliminate barriers to benefits to ensure that DC residents can access the benefits they need and are entitled to.
The end of the District’s Public Health Emergency, however, also means that many benefits are being terminated or phased out, including the end of “emergency allotments” that bolstered SNAP benefits during the pandemic. Our clients will also potentially face the termination of their Medicaid and Alliance benefits, including those who receive home health services that help them live at home. Our work of shoring up the safety net for our client community will be even more essential over the coming year.
Latasha Robinson
LaTasha Robinson, a resident of Northeast DC, is one of the hundreds of thousands of District workers who lost their jobs due to the COVID-19 pandemic. After her job loss, Ms. Robinson applied for unemployment compensation and was approved for benefits in August 2020.
However, despite being approved, she did not receive any payments. As time passed, Ms. Robinson repeatedly contacted DOES yet never received any payments or a satisfactory explanation for the delay. After waiting seven months without any unemployment payments, Ms. Robinson connected with Legal Aid in March 2021.
Ms. Robinson began working with Legal Aid attorney Satcha Robinson. Satcha, who works with Legal Aid’s Reentry Justice project but began taking UI cases during the pandemic to help with the surge in need, advocated on Ms. Robinson’s behalf with DOES through an urgent escalation process. After Legal Aid intervention, DOES made an initial partial payment to Ms. Robinson.
With Legal Aid’s representation, Ms. Robinson received over $17,000 in unemployment compensation.
Unfortunately, the partial payment was a lower, incorrect amount than what was owed to Ms. Robinson. Satcha brought this to the attention of DOES and, as a result, DOES corrected the payment amount and issued payments for all missing weeks.
ZenAba Amadou
Zenaba Amadou, a mother of five, had also applied for UI in the District when she lost her job in the hospitality services industry due to COVID-19. Ms. Amadou had tried to apply for UI when her job ended in March 2020, but she was not able to successfully submit her claim until a month later. When Legal Aid attorney Zenia Laws began working with Ms. Amadou, she learned that DOES had not paid Ms. Amadou UI for four weeks.
Due to the high volume of new UI applicants, DOES phone lines were jammed, and the agency’s website frequently crashed. This delay meant that Ms. Amadou would not receive about $2,400 in UI, including $600 per week of supplemental federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), for the weeks when she could not file her application. Without employment income, Ms. Amadou needed to rely on her weekly UI and the federal PUA to support her family.
“When I got connected with Legal Aid, I felt safe, and I trusted them with my life. They helped me and got all my money to support my family.”
ZENABA AMADOU
After Legal Aid’s continued weekly emails to DOES, the agency finally changed the start date of the UI claim and paid Ms. Amadou about $4,000 in UI that she was owed. However, changing the UI start date caused DOES’ computer system to think that Ms. Amadou owed DOES money, and her payments stopped altogether. Legal Aid attorney Marcia Hollingsworth, who had taken over Ms. Amadou’s case, had to contact DOES weekly to resolve this new issue. When DOES was not responsive to the weekly emails, Marcia filed an appeal on Ms. Amadou’s behalf to challenge the false overpayment. After a phone hearing, an administrative law judge reversed the overpayment and DOES paid Ms. Amadou over $8,000 in UI that had been withheld, in error, for three months.
Unfortunately, this was still not the end of Ms. Amadou’s challenges. Legal Aid had to contact DOES again when Ms. Amadou could no longer file her weekly UI claims online. This caused a delay in DOES paying her weekly. After working with Ms. Amadou for over a year, Legal Aid finally closed her case in September 2021.