Out of work, and out of benefits

Reporting from Philadelphia — 

When Congress went home for the Memorial Day recess without approving another lifeline for the unemployed, most of the country didn’t notice. But Dentral Holman Smith knew right away.

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FOR THE RECORD: An article in Saturday’s Section A about Dentral Holman Smith and her efforts to cope with long-term unemployment and the loss of her federal jobless aid gave the wrong name for the consulting business she operates. It is PNM Solutions, not PMS. Also, Smith’s name was misspelled in a photo caption as Dentral Holmes Smith.

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She got home from church, kicked off her shoes, and booted up her computer to fill out the form that allows her to collect $996 twice a month. A message flashed, “Account Inactive.”

There went the money for rent and the phone, $50 for the church collection plate, $78 for her monthly bus and rail pass. She stared at the screen and did what 15 million other jobless Americans have learned to do in the worst recession in a lifetime: figure out how to hang on.

Her infected tooth would have to wait; she took a couple more Aleve. She counted the money in her wallet: $3.32. She already had what she needed from her church, a bag of free groceries and faith. She closed her eyes and asked God, what now?

It has been two years and seven months since Smith, 42, was laid off from her job as a social worker for a nonprofit agency that moved people from welfare to work. They would straggle into her downtown office, women in short shorts and tattoos; she taught them how to dress for an interview, the importance of punctuality. Her placement numbers were so high that when Smith’s coworkers started getting pink slips, she figured she was bulletproof.

But when the ax finally fell, it seemed the one person she couldn’t help find a job was herself. Wal-Mart pronounced her overqualified. UPS didn’t believe she could lift 70 pounds. Target didn’t call back. A hospital hired her as a community advocate, and as she danced with joy around her apartment, she received a call saying the job had been eliminated after all.

Now Smith, separated from her husband, with three grown children who still depend on her, has collected all Washington is willing to give, one of an estimated million or more people whose predicament has outlasted the government’s goodwill.

When the economy crashed, Congress passed a series of extensions allowing people to collect jobless benefits beyond the traditional six months. In hard-hit states such as Pennsylvania and California, a cap was set at an unprecedented 99 weeks. There is no talk of raising it. Smith and others like her — known as “99-weekers” — have reached the end of the line. Oddly, she is relieved.

“I’m blessed it lasted as long as it did. The time I received my benefits is the time I was given to grow spiritually. And I’m coming up on my graduation,” she says from the small, dark room she rents in northwest Philly, a loaf of bread hanging from a doorknob out of reach of the mice.

The national unemployment rate is at a stubborn 10% (worse if you count the ones who have stopped looking for work.) The country is 11 million jobs in the hole. But the deficit is soaring and more extensions for the unemployed mean more debt. Washington’s sympathies are running low. This week, legislation to expand jobless benefits for hundreds of thousands deadlocked in the Senate with no end in sight.

Deficit hawks and die-hard liberals are up in arms. How will taxpayers shoulder the cost? How will the jobless survive with five out-of-work applicants for every opening?

For the majority of Americans, it’s a philosophical argument. For Smith and the millions of jobless like her, it boils down to the same choice day to day, hour by hour: what to do without.

***

She wakes up at 5:45 for her morning devotional. Her daughter, 21, is in the bed next to her, her son, 19, asleep on the floor. Her eldest is married, with children of her own; Smith helps when she can with diapers and formula. She opens to Genesis, a wall of stickers beside her — bill reminders.

This room in a boarding house in Germantown costs $500 a month. Nine tenants share one bathroom. If you can’t get in first, it’s best to get in after Darrin; he’s clean.

She wasn’t always poor. Not so long ago, Smith was a homeowner raising her family in rural North Carolina. Her husband made $80,000 a year driving a truck; she pulled in close to $40,000 as a mechanical engineer. They had a car, a truck, a van, two dogs, a rabbit and, what she misses most at the moment, four glorious bathrooms. That was before the marriage broke up and she brought the whole brood to Philadelphia, via a shelter for abused women.

She walks down the hall to check; somebody’s already in the bathroom. She should eat something but her tooth is killing her. The filling fell out a couple of months ago and the cost of repairing it wasn’t in the budget. Cheaper just to take it out. The dental school at Temple University wanted $97. The dentist around the corner charged $25, tried to pull it and broke it in the process. Now it’s throbbing.

Time to check the bathroom. Missed it again. She’s supposed to be downtown at 9 a.m. to be interviewed for an article about what it’s like to be out of work so long. She wasn’t sure she should do it, so she asked God. He told her to go.

No money for a June transit pass. She’ll have to buy tokens; $3.32 will get her there, but not back. Maybe Miss Betty down the road has $10 she can borrow.

Better make the trip downtown worthwhile. What else can she get done? The post office and bank. Maybe the check came for the research she did for that college student. Please God. She was always good in school, studying mechanical engineering and then social work at the University of North Carolina. She landed jobs in both fields just shy of finishing her degrees. She has always had a job.

Yes! Bathroom’s open. She showers in a hurry and plugs in her hot rollers. No more $65 trips to the salon for a color, shampoo and set. Now she leaves the gray and cuts it herself. Curling the ends hides the uneven parts.

It’s almost 8. She walks eight blocks to Miss Betty’s and borrows a twenty, two blocks to the drugstore for a five-pack of tokens, then runs for the 23 bus. Just missed it. Fifteen minutes to wait.

She sits down at Starbucks, a half-hour late, and lets herself be talked into a bottle of water, room temperature, and a croissant. She pulls off a small corner and chews cautiously. The Aleve is kicking in.

***

The story line is familiar by now: The economy is improving, but not the job market. Nearly half of the unemployed have been out of work more than six months. Long-term unemployment is higher now than in any previous recession. The 99-weekers started showing up last spring. No one seems to know what to do about them.

“Once you hit the end you are pretty much done. People in that situation are a national emergency,” says Christine Riordan, a policy analyst with the National Employment Law Project in New York, which advocates for the jobless.

Smith never thought she’d be out of work this long. The first year, she sent out about 100 resumes. Sometimes she got as far as a third interview, certain she had it. She panicked and took jobs that made no sense. One involved a four-hour roundtrip commute for $9 an hour; the trains went on strike the second day and she had to quit.

Why wasn’t anything working? God must have another plan. She panicked less and prayed more. She tithed amounts that didn’t make sense for a person who couldn’t afford a decent dentist. She stopped sending out resumes and started pursuing her passion, her own consulting business — PMS Solutions. It stands for Po’ No Mo’. She helps small businesses in her community, operations with good potential and terrible business skills. She sets up an accounting system, a Web page, an investment plan, gets them “bank ready” for growth.

“They aren’t structured in any way. Some of them don’t even know how much money they are making,” Smith says.

She wraps her croissant in a bag, puts it in her purse. We head up Market Street, past her old office building, to the post office. Mail has a way of disappearing in a boarding house, so she collects hers here. Besides, she never knows when she’ll have to move. There was that awful room over the restaurant she rented after she lost the apartment; it turned out to be illegal and everybody got evicted. For three nights she slept here in the regional rail station. She might have stayed with friends, but she wanted to hit bottom and listen for instructions.

She unlocks the mailbox. A check! One thousand dollars for consulting work finished months ago. Praise God. The rent and bills are covered, for June anyway. Four blocks to the bank. She deposits all but $100.

“You want that in 20s?” the teller asks.

“No, one bill,” Smith says. “I’ll spend ones and fives, but I’ll think twice before I break this.”

Every penny is recorded in her organizer. Groceries — pasta, sauce, corn — whatever $20 buys at the dollar store twice a month. It all gets cooked in the Presto electric skillet in her room. (The boarding house kitchen is best avoided.) Her dishes and cutlery are in a plastic bin in the closet, next to her shoes.

It’s Wednesday. Noon prayer in an hour. She never misses. On the bus back to her neighborhood, Smith nibbles at the croissant. The church is a peeling, sky-blue building on a rundown block. It’s hot inside. The four seniors in attendance fan themselves with a picture of Martin Luther King Jr.. “Sister Smith!” one calls out.

Mother Freeman kicks things off with “Be Ready When He Comes.” Smith gives thanks for lessons learned in this time of want. “The recession has become a blessing to us because it has motivated some people to do what they would not have done,” she prays, eyes shut tight.

Critics argue that extending federal benefits swells the deficit and dissuades the unemployed from accepting lower-paying jobs. Advocates say every dollar of extended federal benefits produces $1.93 in economic growth, and helps families survive.

Smith won’t quibble with either. Without the government’s help, it’s not clear how she would have managed. But she believes the government’s limit is the push she needs to start her business.

“I am going to step up my client search. I didn’t do it before because I did not believe in myself.”

It’s almost 2. I tell her lunch is on me. She slides into a booth in what used to be her favorite spot around the corner from her old office. It’s been so long, her usual — salmon burger with spinach and feta — isn’t on the menu anymore.

“My season with the benefits is over. I’ve come to terms with that,” she says. But what if the business doesn’t take off? “I cannot think that way. I do not walk in fear.”

The waitress arrives. Smith’s tooth is starting to throb. She says she isn’t very hungry, settles for the lasagna, and eats it all.

faye.fiore@latimes.com