Tales Of The Trump Depression, Con't

August 2.  Rent's due.

And the checks have stopped coming because of Mitch and the Senate GOP.

People have nowhere to go, no money, no job, no hope, and thousands of residents of Washington DC are facing life on the street in a pandemic, where COVID-19 awaits.

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.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of people in the nation’s capital have been sucked down the same confusing abyss. Through July 29, the employment office has fielded more than 133,000 claims, nearly five times the number processed in all of 2019.

The pileup has led to delays for applicants knocked from their economic perch, many of them reaching for government help for the first time. Although the D.C. Council recently approved a major modernization of the system, implementing it will take years.

In the meantime, the end of July meant the end of the initial round of federal emergency pandemic assistance. Republicans and Democrats in Congress are deadlocked over the scope of a second wave of federal help. No matter what that future assistance looks like, for people like Vought, still waiting for benefits from the spring and living without a financial cushion, the damage has been done.

People pushed into poverty by the coronavirus pandemic could face years of increased dependence on government help, experts say, and greater housing insecurity and homelessness. A single mother with another baby due this summer found herself choosing between buying food or paying the rent. A former D.C. police officer spent months on a relative’s sofa, unable to find work or collect unemployment so he could find his own housing.

Their desperation morphed at times into isolation and anger, feelings Vought confronted as his cracked iPhone rang that Friday in late June. It was an aide from the office of D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) who had responded to his earlier messages and complaints.

“I understand your frustration,” the aide said. But she didn’t have any news.

“Can you do me a solid and just bug them once a day for me?” Vought begged her. “I don’t know if they’re forgetting me. I don’t know if somebody is skipping me in the line. I don’t know if this is just the worst time to have a last name that starts with ‘V.’ ”

“I think it’s just an overwhelming amount of people,” the aide answered, promising to follow up. “Have a good weekend.”

Vought stared into the living room, where stray sunlight from the drawn blinds fell on the crates he would have to store or haul or trash by Wednesday. His bank account was overdrawn. He had $10 in his wallet. A week from now, he could be homeless.

“Oh,” he mumbled. “I’m going to have a great weekend.”

This story is being played out a million times in a million places all over the US this weekend.   Republicans at the local, state, and national level have all made sure that the safety net protecting Americans has frayed to the point of collapse. The Trump Depression is like dropping an anvil on a spider's web, overwhelming state unemployment systems and rendering them useless, flooding them with the broken wreckage of Trump's failure to contain a deadly virus ravaging 80% of the nation's population and showing no sign of rolling back as we get ready to send kids to schools, creating all-new outbreaks.

Something has got to give in the next couple of months, if not in the next few weeks. I hope it will be Republicans giving up in order to try to save any hope they may have of keeping the Senate. I dread it will be Mitch or Trump demanding trillions more for the wealthy at the expense of the rest of us, and an August recess that breaks the country by the time Labor Day rolls around.

Millions will be evicted by then.  It will be a cataclysm.

We have one week.