She lost her job because of COVID-19. Now she and her three daughters may be evicted.
Having been evicted once, Bertha Osson knows what it’s like to have no place to call home, to be forced to share a bed with her three children at a friend’s home for a year.
“I wouldn’t like to have that experience again,” said Osson, 48, who was evicted from her last home in Florida City and now faces a similar fate amid the coronavirus pandemic.
A single mother with three teenage daughters, Osson lost her job in August as a cook in Key Largo due to COVID-19. She is two months behind in rent on her $1,450-a-month house in Homestead.
Chronic back pain, which requires her to see a chiropractor, has limited her employment opportunities, she said. Because of the pain, she can’t put her certified nursing assistant license to use because it requires her to lift patients.
“You know when you have three kids, bills to pay and not working, the situation is not easy,” Osson said.
Adding to her worries is that she’s been unable to collect unemployment. “I applied and have been waiting. They haven’t given me anything and that is what I was depending on to help me pay my bills,” she said. “I am not going to lie, it’s really tough.”
Alpha Fleurimond, the executive director and founder of Three Virtues Organization, a Homestead nonprofit that has been assisting Osson, said he’s tried unsuccessfully to get an answer from the state on unemployment benefits. He helped her fill out the paperwork and has tried to help her make ends meet, but the pressures on his nonprofit have been enormous since the deadly virus’ outbreak earlier this year.
“Because of the pandemic, our numbers are increasing. But that doesn’t mean we have more funding,” said Fleurimond, whose agency provides a food pantry, camp for kids and other social services to migrants, the elderly and the Haitian community in South Miami-Dade County.
“One of the things that we get a lot is people asking us to help them pay their rent, their electricity. . . . We have a lot of people asking us for that and we don’t have funding to continue to help them,” said Fleurimond, who nominated her for help from Wish Book.
Fleurimond said his clients fall into two groups: migrants who work in the agricultural fields in South Miami-Dade County and low-wage earners who worked in the hospitality industry in the Keys, where a lot of jobs have been lost because of the novel coronavirus.
“It’s been a crisis for most of our clients,” he said.
Osson is among them.
Even with fears of eviction looming, her thoughts are with her children. Her oldest daughter, Keonia, 19, had to temporarily drop out of college at Miami-Dade, Osson said, but if she had a laptop, she could take classes online, hopefully starting in January.
Middle daughter, Laisha, 16 and a junior in high school, also needs a laptop, while her youngest, Kiera, 13, recently asked for an iPad.
HOW TO HELP
Wish Book is trying to help hundreds of families in need this year. To donate, pay securely at MiamiHerald.com/wishbook. For information, call 305-376-2906 or email wishbook@miamiherald.com. (The most requested items are often laptops and tablets for school, furniture, and accessible vans.) Read more at MiamiHerald.com/wishbook.
