Miami-Dade’s unemployed turn to libraries for old-fashioned fix for state’s website mess
Florida’s modern unemployment system continued to fail José Alcantra Wednesday morning as he walked to the front door of the Edison Center library and picked up a welcome relic from the system’s past.
The 45-year-old Uber driver hasn’t been earning money for weeks, and also hasn’t been able to log onto Florida’s overwhelmed, malfunctioning website for unemployment assistance. The state’s phone centers haven’t been helpful either. Alcantra displayed a cellphone now on its 31st minute waiting for someone from the Department of Economic Opportunity to pick up and assist him.
Which led him to the county library, one of 26 branches that began handing out state unemployment forms that morning with offers to mail back any placed in slots usually used for returning books.
“I’ve tried online,” Alcantra said after picking up his seven-page form at the library off Interstate 95 in Miami. “It doesn’t let me finish.”
High demand in the Miami area for a paper workaround to Florida’s failed unemployment system made national news Tuesday when Hialeah opened a distribution center in a parking lot and drew crowds of people standing alarmingly close together.
“It’s not been an issue today,” Hialeah Mayor Carlos Hernández said by the tent where city workers handed out envelopes with the state forms. “We gave out over 8,000 applications yesterday. The demand was so incredible.”
The city enforced its no walk-ups rule on Wednesday, and lines of cars came and went in the parking lot set up for drive-through distribution of the state forms. But most of the work shifted to the county’s library system, shuttered by the coronavirus pandemic but now being used as community hubs for handing out state paperwork.
Gov. Ron DeSantis said this week the state hopes to see website visits become more successful with the addition of more servers to increase capacity. His administration on Wednesday touted a new mobile-friendly site to speed applications for people forced to use their phones for online transactions. But users continue to report being kicked off the site, even when they attempt to finish applications in the middle of the night.
The countywide distribution of blank applications seemed to go smoothly with few lines and quick pickups.
Seven miles away from the site of Hialeah’s chaotic Tuesday debut, Miami-Dade’s Palm Springs library had nobody walking up to the folding table where library workers had boxes of English, Spanish and Creole forms from the state.
“We need to get the word out that we have 26 locations,” Mayor Carlos Gimenez said at a news conference at the Palm Springs site. “And not just one.”
Four cars were lined up Wednesday morning for a drive-through option at the North Dade Regional Library, where library workers in masks and gloves distributed forms from a tent. People could walk up, too, and Jobenson Justinien had the table to himself when he arrived.
The 23-year-old said he lost his job on the loading dock of the Burlington clothing store about two weeks ago, and has been unable to sign up for state unemployment benefits online. He lives with his mother and cousins, and the coronavirus shutdown has meant the household will quickly run out of money without assistance from Florida.
“We try to help each other,” he said. “Our savings are running low.”
How do you get a Florida unemployment form?
The easiest way is to print it out if you have access to a printer.
Miami-Dade is also handing out the paper forms at 26 of its library branches, from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., seven days a week. The forms can be returned to the library’s book drop-off slot, or mailed directly to the Department of Economic Opportunity in Tallahassee.
The participating libraries are:
Libraries
Allapattah Branch, 1799 NW 35th St., Miami, FL 33142
Arcola Lakes Branch, 8240 NW Seventh Ave., Miami, FL 33150
California Club Branch, 700 Ives Dairy Rd., Miami, FL 33179
Coconut Grove Branch, 2875 McFarlane Rd., Miami, FL 33133
Concord Branch, 3882 SW 112th Ave., Miami, FL 33165
Coral Reef Branch, 9211 SW 152nd St., Miami, FL 33157
Country Walk Branch, 15433 SW 137th Ave., Miami, FL 33177
Edison Center Branch, 531 NW 62nd St., Miami, FL 33150
Fairlawn Branch, 6376 SW Eighth St., West Miami, FL 33144
Golden Glades Branch, 100 NE 166th St., Miami, FL 33162
Hialeah Gardens Branch, 11300 NW 87th Ct., Hialeah Gardens, FL 33018
Hispanic Branch Library, 1398 SW First St., Miami, FL 33135
Homestead Branch, 700 N. Homestead Blvd., Homestead, FL 33030
International Mall Branch, 10315 NW 12th St., Doral, FL 33172
Kendale Lakes Branch, 15205 SW 88th St., Miami, FL 33196
Miami Beach Regional Library, 227 22nd St., Miami Beach, FL 33139
Miami Lakes Branch, 6699 Windmill Gate Rd., Miami Lakes, FL 33014
Naranja Branch, 14850 SW 280th St., Miami, FL 33032
North Dade Regional Library, 2455 NW 183rd St., Miami Gardens, FL 33056
North Shore Branch, 7501 Collins Ave., Miami Beach, FL 33141
Northeast Dade - Aventura Branch, 2930 Aventura Blvd., Aventura, FL 33180
Palm Springs North Branch, 17601 NW 78th Ave., Hialeah, FL 33015
South Miami Branch, 6000 Sunset Dr., Miami, FL 33143
West Dade Regional Library, 9445 Coral Way, Miami, FL 33165
West Flagler Branch, 5050 West Flagler St., Miami, FL 33134
West Kendall Regional Library, 10201 Hammocks Blvd., Miami, FL 33196
This story was originally published April 8, 2020 at 7:36 PM.