Consider This from NPR - Is The Biden Rescue Plan Working? 'American Indicators' Weigh In On The Recovery

Episode Date: May 4, 2021

The pandemic economy has left different people in vastly different situations. Today, we follow up with four American indicators — people whose paths will help us understand the arc of the recovery. You first heard their stories back in February. Now, we're talking to them again to ask how the American Rescue Plan has affected their lives — or not. Brooke Neubauer in Nevada, founder of The Just One Project; Lisa Winton of the Winton Machine Company in Georgia; Lee Camp with Arch City Defenders in Missouri; and New Jersey-based hotel owner Bhavesh Patel. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University performs breakthrough research every year, making discoveries that improve human health, combat climate change, and move society forward. More at iu.edu forward. Just over 50 days ago, President Joe Biden signed one of the largest economic rescue packages in American history. Today, I signed into law the American Rescue Plan, an historic piece of legislation that delivers immediate relief to millions of people. We didn't know exactly how immediate that relief would be. Among the people waiting for answers were a hotel owner in New Jersey.

We've been asking for grant money here because we haven't seen much. A food pantry manager in Las Vegas. The big thing for me is sustainability, not just right now. And a housing attorney in St. Louis. I want to see that money make it to the hands of the people that need it the most. These are some of our American indicators, people from different parts of the economy who are helping us trace the arc of the recovery. We first introduced them to you in an episode of this show back in February. Today, we follow up to see the real impact

of the Biden administration's $1.9 trillion relief package. I think the thing that worries me the most is uncertainty. When the funding is coming. Bureaucracy that may get in the way. I'm cautiously optimistic. Consider this. Across very different sectors of the economy, things are headed in the right direction, but still shaky. Our American Indic indicators explain why. From NPR, I'm Ari Shapiro.

It's Tuesday, May 4th. This message comes from NPR sponsor Deloitte, with insights and perspectives across a range of issues, including legislative policy, workforce strategy, and more, to help business leaders respond and reset confidently. At Deloitte.com slash US slash COVID hyphen 19. This message comes from NPR sponsor VMware. With app, cloud, security, and workspace solutions, VMware helps companies navigate change, meeting them where

they are, and getting them where they want to be faster. VMware, welcome change. A few years ago, a website popped up in Stockton, California, and conspiracy theories started ramping way up. And it's being funded by conservative movement underneath the table. And I was like, oh my gosh, you guys, people really believe this. What happens when the local news outlet isn't fact-checking conspiracy theories, maybe encouraging them? Listen now from NPR's Invisibilia podcast. It's Consider This from NPR. We've been following the pandemic recession and recovery through the lives of four people. Our American indicators represent different parts of the country and of the economy.

Back in March, we called them up for some initial reaction to the news when President Biden signed his American Rescue Plan into law. It extends unemployment benefits. It helps small businesses. It lowers health care premiums for many. It provides food and nutrition, keeps families in their homes. I'm very excited to see all of the housing relief make it to the president's desk and now into law. That's Lee Camp, a housing attorney who advocates for people facing eviction in the St. Louis area. About 1,500 miles to the west, Brooke Neubauer runs the biggest mobile food pantry in the state of Nevada. There is a lot of financial support coming for the food insecure organizations, which I think is amazing. Stimulus checks and relief programs don't roll out

overnight. So we waited about a month after the bill became law. And then we called back all four of our American indicators to see what things look like for them right now. As people are vaccinated, states start to reopen, and the federal government takes a more hands-on role in trying to turn around the economy. We started with Brooke Neubauer, founder of the Just One Project that distributes groceries around Las Vegas. So when the stimulus checks hit, we absolutely saw a decrease in our serving lines for sure. Interesting, like by how much? We typically serve over 17,000 people. And last month, just as an example, when the stimulus checks came out, we served 12,000.

So it's a pretty big clip. That's like a third less almost. I know it really is, you know, and I could just think about the fact that how many of our clients were just so excited to go to the grocery store and just buy whatever they wanted. I mean, that had to have been a very special feeling for them because it's something that they haven't been able to do in so long. She told me her biggest concern is that this relief bill is like a sugar rush and that economic challenges from the pandemic are going to continue for years. What she really needs is long-term support to plan far ahead. Like if we could set up a plan and have multiple year funding, I think that would give nonprofits an amazing chance to create sustainable programs that would actually help our communities long-term.

So I want to ask you about an LA Times story about Las Vegas. The first two sentences of this story said, that rumble you hear along the strip might be the sound of returning tourists on the march, or maybe it's the spring awakening of the entire Las Vegas economy. Is that what it looks like from where you sit? You know, I think that people are really eager to get back to life here. I think people are starting to want to feel safe traveling again. However, I do believe that it's going to take years and years for our economy to bounce back. While Nevada's governor says his state will be fully open by June 1st, New Jersey is moving more slowly.

That's where Bhavish Patel lives. He's our second American indicator. I am the principal at ADM Hotels and also the chairman of the New Jersey Restaurant and Hospitality Association. The COVID relief package did a lot for restaurants, not so much for hotels. And Patel's family owns seven hotel properties. I was just talking to a cousin of mine, George, and he says March, April have been really good. They're going back to their 2019 numbers before COVID.

And I'm like, that's fantastic. And he's like, what about you? I'm like, well, I don't think we're going to see that yet. When we first spoke to you back in February, you said you'd been at about 10 to 15 percent occupancy. What are you seeing these days? We're seeing in the mid 20s, like the low 20s, 22 percent, 23 percent. So it's climbed. But again, it's not anywhere where we need it to be survival or survival mode. Tell us about your employees. One of the things that we're realizing, not only in my business, but other businesses and other hotels, is it's just too hard to find employees right now.

They're making a lot more money staying at home, collecting unemployment. I think it's every business. You go out there, whether it's a Wawa, a 7-Eleven, whether it's a bank, whether it's restaurants, hotels, everyone is looking for employees and no one just can't find them right now. A group called the National Federation of Independent Business put out a report last month saying 42% of business owners reported job

openings that could not be filled. They said that's a record number. Of course, one answer is to offer higher salaries. But for Bhavish Patel, with more than three quarters of his rooms empty, the money just isn't there. So that's the view from a hotel owner in New Jersey. In St. Louis, the new law helped people stay in their rooms rather than getting kicked out on the street. Housing attorney Lee Camp told me the relief package made a huge difference to renters facing eviction. Essentially, if you're behind on rent right now, you will have an opportunity to apply for rental relief that would hopefully cure any rental arrears that you may have as a result of the pandemic and would also square you up with your landlord so that you would not face a threat of eviction. And the idea is to increase housing stability really throughout this country.

So that's really different from a moratorium on evictions. That's like wiping out debt. Yeah, it certainly is. But his clients can't relax just yet. For many of them, the rental relief has been slow to come through. And the city of St. Louis just joined the county in processing evictions for the first time in more than a year. That means tenants who may have fallen behind on rent in the last year are now subject to physical removal from their homes. And every day, Camp says, he gets calls from people facing that threat. That confused me because there is a CDC moratorium on evictions. Lee Camp explained. So the CDC moratorium is a type of opt-in protection. Tenants have to literally fill out a form

and provide it to their landlord declaring financial hardship and an inability to get rental assistance funding before they're protected by that moratorium, which is very difficult for a lot of tenants. And the main reason is that they're just not aware that they have to actually opt into this protection. Huh. I'm sure that on some level, even though the government may be providing more help,

it's also like the rules keep constantly changing. And what you learned one month might not be relevant the next month. That's exactly right. And I'm very lucky to have a law decree to be able to navigate those different changes. It's so incredibly hard for individuals, particularly the families I work with, who are already in crisis. They're likely out of work. They've received notices from the sheriffs that they could be physically removed from their homes.

And now they're trying to navigate rules that are changing what seems to me to be by the minute. So he sees reason for optimism and also concern. Our fourth and final American indicator is Lisa Winton. Her family owns a small manufacturing plant outside of Atlanta. We help our customers make tubular parts for their products. So for instance, a refrigerator, freezer, chair, lawnmower, anything with small diameter bent tubing. Lisa told me the pandemic is still disrupting supply chains. That means raw materials can get delayed for days and component parts for

weeks. For her, the coronavirus relief bill didn't do much to fix those issues. But she expects to feel more change if President Biden's next major proposal becomes reality, a massive infrastructure and jobs plan. I think in general for our industry, it will make a dramatic impact. On the one hand, she's really excited about the worker training provisions in the package. She has found it tough to hire up people with the technology skills that her plant requires. And especially with all the people who've been laid off in other industries, she sees a big opportunity. And so the ability for them to retrain to jobs in manufacturing that have higher pay scales, I think can only benefit our economy and our country. But on the other hand, she's very concerned about the

plan to pay for this by raising taxes on corporations. She says that could set her back. So what we've seen in the past is we've seen like a huge influx of business when the taxes went down for corporations because they did do so much investment. And so for us, that was a really great thing. So my concern is the other side of the coin. If their taxes go up, are they going to stop investing in capital equipment? Her employees are getting vaccinated. Some of her customers are starting to visit the plant again. And next month, she's planning to attend her first in-person trade

show since before the pandemic. Like all of our American indicators, Lisa Winton says she feels a sense of progress tempered by a fear of the unknown. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Ari Shapiro.