JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — As the eviction moratorium is soon expiring, the federal $300 supplement payments have also been axed.
The Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation payments ended on Saturday, leaving unemployed Floridians scared for what the future holds.
“Once it’s gone, I don’t know what I’m going to do,” said Christine Benvenuti, who has been unemployed due to contracting COVID-19 and remaining sick. “I don’t know how I’m going to pay my bills.”
Benvenuti was just forced to move with her son, after no longer being able to afford her prior home.
“The rent out there is expensive,” Benvenuti said.
Benvenuti paid through August, but with the FPUC $300 payments expiring, she said a month’s worth of unemployment payments won’t even cover her new rent.
“By August, I’ll probably be homeless,” Benvenuti said.
Christopher Byerley said he already is homeless.
“I lost my place of residence because of their lack of payments,” Byerley said. “I’m living from my car.”
Soon, he said he may not be able to afford that.
“Once it changes over to the $275 per week, that will be barely enough to pay my car and insurance and gas, and things like that to live,” Byerley said.
Both Byerley and Benvenuti receive Florida’s maximum unemployment payments of $275 per week. Many people don’t even receive that much.
The average unemployment payment being paid out in Florida is $237 as of May 31, according to the Department of Labor.
Florida pays out some of the lowest unemployment benefits in the country.
Many of the other states that have dropped the FPUC payments have significantly larger maximum weekly unemployment payments than Florida.
“So now it is just my state weekly benefit amount of $197 that we have coming in,” said Meli Feliciano.
Feliciano was receiving unemployment payments, while her husband has been working, but he recently fell ill and is now out of work for eight weeks.
“I didn’t plan on that,” Feliciano said with tears.
Now with the eviction moratorium possibly expiring, she, and many other Floridians, don’t know what the future holds.
“I know I’m going to have to start looking for a place, start packing up, with my husband and my daughter, and I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Feliciano said.