Like so many during the COVID-19 pandemic, one Crescent City family is trying to make ends meet while navigating a whole host of stresses.Erin Kraemer and her three kids moved to Crescent City in April 2019, in search of a bigger city and a place for Kraemer to get her teaching credential. Now, that’s up in the air as the family navigates the pandemic and its lasting economic hardships.Their life in Siskiyou County wasn’t bad — they had a good homeschool group where Kraemer could work and the kids could make friends. But living on rural property was a challenge, and the area was missing the opportunities she wanted for herself and her kids.#placement_573654_0_i{width:100%;max-width:550px;margin:0 auto;}var rnd = window.rnd || Math.floor(Math.random()*10e6);var pid573654 = window.pid573654 || rnd;var plc573654 = window.plc573654 || 0;var abkw = window.abkw || '';var absrc = 'https://ads.empowerlocal.co/adserve/;ID=181918;size=0x0;setID=573654;type=js;sw='+screen.width+';sh='+screen.height+';spr='+window.devicePixelRatio+';kw='+abkw+';pid='+pid573654+';place='+(plc573654++)+';rnd='+rnd+';click=CLICK_MACRO_PLACEHOLDER';var _absrc = absrc.split("type=js"); absrc = _absrc[0] + 'type=js;referrer=' + encodeURIComponent(document.location.href) + _absrc[1];document.write('');“They were just at that age,” Kraemer said. “They want to know more about the world.”So she looked at cities up and down the west coast they might be able to move to. Crescent City was the one they could afford, and one they’d visited a few times, Kraemer said.Plus, its home to the College of the Redwoods, where Kraemer could take classes to get her teaching certificate. The four made the move in September 2019, buying a piece of property near the college and living in an RV while they waited for the construction of a manufactured home on their property.The family faced challenges — like when their camper overturned in a Thanksgiving windstorm, forcing a move to a nearby motel — but things were looking up. Kraemer enrolled in full-time classes and got her kids signed up for school at Uncharted Shores Academy.Right as Kraemer was in the final hiring stages of two jobs (one as a Census worker, and another as a substitute teacher in area preschools), the world changed as it started to feel the impacts of a novel coronavirus which quickly spiraled to pandemic scale.Soon, the jobs spiraled away, too, with the Census changing how it worked during the pandemic and preschools shutting their doors. On the cusp of getting hired, the pandemic left Kraemer and her kids relying largely on student aid from the college and CalFresh food assistance as they moved into their new home in April.“We were just going to wait it out, kind of,” Kraemer said.Then, schools shut down, going online for distance and hybrid learning. Her kids, who’d grown up being homeschooled while living in Siksiyou County, were having trouble adjusting to the new schedules and remote learning.“They were just kind of not OK,” Kraemer remembered. “It just doesn’t work for my kids.”So, she chose to homeschool them, pausing her own classes at the college while she did so. Unable to find her own childcare that would allow her to find work somewhere, she floated the idea of babysitting, since she had childcare experience. But she couldn’t find anyone to take her up on the offer.So, in need of financial support, Kraemer applied for unemployment benefits, pulling her into a state system which has seen a deluge of claims and a wave of fraud. It was a move she says she’d have been better off not taking.“I’m in worse-off condition now than if I wouldn’t have applied,” she said.Mostly, she’s been held up by the bureaucracy. She applied for benefits in late August and got an award letter, but when she called asking where her actual money was, she discovered there’d been a mix up – the agency had somehow gotten her social security number wrong.As of Jan. 21, the California Employment Development Department reported over 900,000 claims backlogged by processing issues like this one. Most of them were waiting for claimant certification, a holdup that some have associated with glitches on the EDD website.“Then I got a flurry of all those little paper claim forms,” Kraemer said.She experienced her share of website troubles, too. On one occasion, after getting access to a scanner, the site wouldn’t let her upload the inch-thick stack of documents to verify her claim.Still, she filled out each little paper claim form, and sent them back. But she got nothing, until a notice arrived, telling her she had to reapply for benefits.This time was more successful — she got an award letter and benefits for the month of December and the first week of January. But shortly after she used some of the funds to re-enroll for online classes to get her teaching certification, she heard back from the agency, which told her the payments were made in error.The agency told her she needed to pay them back.“I got a little less than $700 and now they say they want it back,” Kraemer said. “How are people even supposed to jump through all those hoops?”Meanwhile, the EDD was dealing with a massive fraud scandal, after $2 billion or more in benefits was allegedly siphoned away in the names of infants, inmates and residents of other states.Kraemer thinks her benefits could’ve been impacted by the scandal in some way, if someone had applied in her name. But she can’t be certain, since she’s had a challenging time even getting through on the phone.With lines busy, she’d often tried to call at odd hours.“I was setting the alarm and getting up at like 4:00 in the morning,” Kraemer said.Her EDD troubles remain unresolved and she’s worried about how she’ll be able to make house payments and keep the internet on for her kids’ school work at home. While she thinks they’ll be OK, Kraemer worries about needing to let go of the house if she can’t get back to work in the next year or so.“I’m fortunate,” Kraemer said, adding that her kids have been taking the year’s difficulties in stride. “I’m grateful for what we have.”But she’s also frustrated. Like millions of Americans, she’s had to navigate the confusing process of applying for government support, all while teaching her kids and trying to find work. She hopes to see the EDD expand its offices, giving claimants a place they could go to get in-person application support.Kraemer said she’s lucky to be worried about things like how to fix her car, noting that there are many in the community who are facing even greater struggles.“It’s not the end of the world,” Kraemer said. “The point is, it’s not just me.” googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('ad-1515727'); });