Colorado unemployment applicants continue to wait months to receive benefits

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) -- Janette Cantor has been waiting nearly 20 weeks for unemployment benefits, and she says she’s received little communication and help from the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment.

Cantor applied for unemployment in April. She said the process was smooth until she had to identify herself — a requirement to prevent unemployment fraud. She said despite providing all the necessary documentation back in April, her identity still hasn’t been approved and her application remains in limbo.

“There's people that are becoming homeless because of this,” Cantor said. “It's not fair. We're doing our part, but they're not following through on theirs.”

She said she’s called and emailed the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment (CDLE), which handles unemployment claims, dozens of times but all she gets is “crickets.”

“I call in at 8:00 in the morning, I call in at 2:00 in the afternoon, and all you get is recording,” Cantor said. “You can't call in and talk to a live person.”

Without the benefits, Cantor said she and her husband have struggled financially.

“We had our car repossessed because of not being able to make the payments and not getting my unemployment in a timely manner,” she said.

Cantor has since found a new job but she said she believes she is still owed benefits for the three months she was unemployed.

The CDLE said it takes about four to six weeks for an unemployment claim to be processed. However, multiple applicants told 13 Investigates it’s taking two to three times as long.

Rachel Schnell walked out of the Pikes Peak Workforce Center after applying to jobs and told 13 Investigates it’s been nearly eight weeks since she applied for unemployment benefits, yet her application still hasn’t been approved. During that time, she said she’s applied to about 60 jobs.

“I've had to defer two of my loans,” Schnell said. “I've had to defer car payments. We are running out of resources.”

Schnell said she’s worried about how she will provide for her two kids without the benefits.

“I've put all these bills off and now it's like, how do I get my daughter's uniforms or how do I throw a birthday party? My life has been put on hold,” she said.

Her application was stuck in the same identification process as Cantor’s. She said it wasn’t resolved until she called Governor Jared Polis’ office asking for help. She said a couple of days later her identification was verified. Later this month, she has a hearing to determine if she will receive her unemployment benefits.

13 Investigates reached out to the Governor’s office about the unemployment benefit delays. They declined to comment and instead referred us to the CDLE.

The CDLE said the delay in benefits is due to a new fraud analytics tool they recently implemented.

According to Philip Spesshardt, the director of the Division of Unemployment Insurance, the department saw a significant jump in fraudulent activity around the end of March. In response, the department moved all of its fraud detection tools to the highest security level. Because of this, many legitimate claims were trapped.

“We know how frustrating this may be for those legitimate claimants who are experiencing delays in payment because of these fraud holds. The department has been working over the last 6 weeks to identify those legitimate claims and move them for release. This has taken time due to the high volume of fraud and the high level of information these fraudsters have on the victims they are targeting,” Spesshardt said in a statement.

“From April through the end of July, the department has seen 62,000 initial claims. Of those 22,000 currently have fraud holds in place, and of those 22,000 holds, 5,766 are active claims. We believe the population of legitimate claimants being held up is within the 5,766, as all other claims were abandoned after fraud holds were put in place indicating a high likelihood of confirmed fraud. We fine-tuned and checked the validity of this set of claims and recently released those of low risk for fraud.”

But these unemployment benefit delays aren't a new problem. The CDLE has struggled to approve applications in a timely manner for months.

According to federal data from February, Colorado is the slowest state in the country — approving 36% of unemployment claims within three weeks, which is the threshold the U.S. Department of Labor classifies as "timely."

This leaves applicants wondering what to do.

“How are people surviving? What do we do? Where do we go from here?” Schnell questioned.

13 Investigates asked the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment these questions, but they never responded.