The ongoing government shutdown means many of the approximately 31,000 federal workers in the Tampa-St. Petersburg metropolitan area will not get paid until it ends.
Local charities and nonprofits like United Way Suncoast, Feeding Tampa Bay and Crisis Center of Tampa Bay are stepping in to fill the gaps.
But it’s not their first time – in 2018, there was a 35-day shutdown.
“Nearly half of the households in our Suncoast community are living paycheck-to-paycheck, struggling to make ends meet,” said Nichole Peña-Miller, the director of financial security for United Way Suncoast. “So, we saw in 2018, and we’re seeing again now that even just missing a single paycheck can be disastrous.”
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One of the main worries is that workers will be laid off permanently, according to Clara Reynolds, the CEO of the Crisis Center of Tampa Bay.
“ We were already living in challenging economic times,” Reynolds said. “You know, housing prices, regular inflation, the cost of basic necessities. And we also know that if federal employees don’t get paid, it has a ripple effect across our community because that means rents and mortgages and utility bills won’t be paid.”
One of the main priorities of the charities is to assist impacted workers in finding information.
“ Many of these federal workers see themselves as the helper and not the helpee,” Reynolds said. “So, many of them don’t even know how to access the resources that are available for everybody.”
Still, it’s essential to be proactive and make a plan, according to Peña-Miller and Reynolds. They said affected workers should contact their mortgage company or landlord, phone provider and banker credit union to see what programs might be available to them.
Since the start of the shutdown, the local charities have banded together to pool resources. Reynolds said Feeding Tampa Bay and the United Way Suncoast led the effort to assist, bringing other organizations along.
Peña-Miller said that if the shutdown does exceed 2018’s month-plus length, they are prepared to continue gathering resources using that network.
