By Jill Colvin
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
HARLEM — East Harlem's Rafael Nunez has been struggling to make ends meet since he lost his job nearly a year ago.
"It’s been very tough," said the father of three, who has been scouring the Internet and taking courses in computers and bus driving to try to find work.
But things are about to get worse for Nunez, who is set to become one of the approximately 18,000 Manhattan residents who will lose their unemployment benefits over the next month after Congress failed to pass an emergency extension on Wednesday.
"I don’t know what I’m going to do," said Nunez, 38, as he sat with his resume in hand, waiting to see a career counselor at the city-run Workforce1 Career Center in Harlem. His $270 weekly benefits will expire at the end of this week.
Approximately 200,000 of the 525,000 people who collected state-wide benefits the week of Nov. 8 were set to exhaust their checks this month, analyst Doug Lukaszewski said.
The biggest blow will come on Dec. 5, when extended benefits will expire for more than 100,000 people — an unprecedented number.
"We’ve never seen anything like that," Lukaszewski said.
Congress still has a chance to restore the benefits retroactively, as it did in July, seven weeks after they expired, the AP reported at the time.
Gary Burtless, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, a liberal think tank, said it would be highly unlikely for Congress not to pass another extension with unemployment still so high.
But until then, he said the expiration would be a blow, not only to the unemployed, but to the economy, since unemployment checks are cashed and spent faster than almost anything else.
"There aren’t many other ways the government could spend $50 or $60 billion and have it spent that quickly," he said.
Across the city, residents are bracing for the worst.
West Harlem’s Eric McIntosh, 33, who worked in construction until he was laid off last May, said he would lose his benefits in February unless Congress intervened.
He said the future looked scary, as he tried to raise his 2-year-old son while re-training himself for a career building solar panels, where he hoped he would find work.
"It's very important," he said. "When they expire, it’s going to be a problem."
Gloria Rivera, 56, who worked as an accountant for 30 years before she was laid off in 2008, knows what it's like. Her benefits ran out in May.
"It’s very frustrating. I go to an interview and I’m told they have 600 applicants for a single job," she said.
She’s said she’s exhausted her savings and has been borrowing from friend and family to pay her bills. Her roommate has been covering her share of the rent.
"You have the fear: Am I going to be homeless? How long is it going to take?" she said.
"You don’t want to live off assistance. You want to work."
