RICHMOND, Va. -- A Richmond mom said she and her nine-year-old son had to sleep in a car after her unemployment benefits stopped with no warning.
Shareka Flack said she had been receiving unemployment benefits from the Virginia Unemployment Commission since October.
"June third was the last payment," said Flack.
She said since then, she had had trouble getting in contact with the VEC. When she did get in contact, she was given the runaround.
"I've talked to several different people who work for VEC and they say, 'you have an outstanding issue, Mrs. Flack, you have to verify your identity, you have to send in paperwork.' I did all that and still nothing," Flack said.
The single mom to a nine-year-old said the wait had led to real consequences, including losing her apartment.
"There have been days where prior to reaching out to family, we had to sleep in our car. And that’s because the money is not coming in that was normally coming in at first," Flack said.
Last week, the VEC asked a judge to dismiss a Class Action Lawsuit after they said they had worked through 98 percent of the backlog of outstanding claims.
In their request, VEC Commissioner, Ellen Marie Hess, said they had decreased the total number of unpaid claims awaiting adjudication from 92,158 to 1,860. Thus, resolving more than 95 percent of the unpaid claims that the settlement required by September 6.
Pat Levy-Lavelle, Senior Intake Attorney at Legal Aid Justice Center, said while progress had been made, he believed it was too soon for a judge to dismiss the case.
"Virginia is really far from out of the woods," said Levy-Lavelle. "There's still tens of thousands of people likely waiting for their cases to be processed. There's tens of thousands of people without information. And there's a ton of people out there that are that are hurting and still needing relief."
Flack knew that to be true.
"Maybe my son needs a shirt for back to school, or maybe he needs some socks for back to school, but y’all don’t understand it because it’s not y’all," Flack said.
In a release, the VEC said people in Flack's situation would still get the benefits that were previously owed to them, if their claim was found to be valid, even after federal programs ended on September 4.
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