Facing Eviction (full documentary) | FRONTLINE

[Music] the policies that were enacted to control the eviction crisis were unprecedented over the course of a year in states across the country an inside look at the housing crisis during the pandemic from those affected the most there's a patchwork of eviction policies that vary by state much of a tenant's experience was completely dependent upon the zip code that they lived in you begin to think about what's most important to you i have to visit the moral obligation a lot more because the legal obligation is in black and white small landlords say they simply can't afford to house people for free i need to see that our government cares equally about landlords as they do with tenants the clock is ticking for millions of americans who've gotten behind on their rent payments during the pandemic these are people that had jobs that felt secure now from frontline and retro report it's been an emotional rollercoaster i don't know how i'm going to get out of it facing eviction [Music] yesterday i came home with a 24-hour notice to vacate on my door i have a five-year-old so you know just trying to understand how this is going to affect her knowing the pandemic has already affected her a lot so it's just not [Music] it takes more than 24 hours to plan out your life you begin to think about what's most important to you um things that you can pack quickly and keep with you just in case you're not with your things for you know an extended amount of time right now my things are gonna go to storage um and where are you sleeping tonight haven't figured that out [Music] [Laughter] [Music] the coronavirus pandemic put tens of millions of americans at risk of being evicted to protect them the federal government ordered billions in rent relief and a temporary ban on evictions first through the cares act later through a moratorium issued by the cdc in an unprecedented move the trump administration announced a temporary national moratorium on evictions for tens of millions of renters who've lost work over the course of a year we went to states across the country to see how the protections were being carried out time is running out to keep families from being kicked out of their homes and how the effectiveness depended almost entirely on how local officials were enforcing it in some states it put a short-term hold on all evictions but protections are hodgepodge a patchwork of eviction policies that vary by state tenants scrambled to understand what their rights were like alexis hatcher in texas a state that already had limited protections for tenants when the pandemic really started hitting strong in the united states and we started to see business closures and eviction moratoriums i just started posting explainers on social media just to help people understand exactly what was out there and how it applied to them those posts started to be shared quite a lot and so before i knew it i was getting phone calls and emails and facebook messages and tweets and everything else from people all over the county asking for advice on their particular situations mark melton hatcher's attorney created a network of lawyers to help people at risk of losing their homes that's this landlord is trying to protect her by email by email huh yep government interventions that we've had to date have been helpful certainly the problem with this protection is it's not very effective because it doesn't apply automatically it only applies if those tenants know about the law well enough to sign an official declaration that they have to give to their landlord and the court uh for it to apply hello is this jamie what's going on i saw your message today at one o'clock i'm still behind on my rent but the thing is is my auntie was talking about some type of paper they don't show us the late fees before well the late fees are still chargeable but what city do you live in these are not deadbeats these are people that had jobs that felt secure and then all of a sudden the business they worked for is closing or they're furloughing people it was taking months to get unemployment insurance to go through because there was such an overlog of applicants that the state just couldn't process them quickly enough and so people were really in a bad situation where they had no real options they can't force you to leave your home until a court orders them to order you to leave yeah in february 2021 a federal judge in texas cashed out on the validity of the cdc moratorium saying it had overstepped its authority the cdc's moratorium on evictions is unconstitutional the judge ruled that while individual states have the power to put such restrictions in place the federal government does not and then separately the texas supreme court began allowing evictions to move forward which left many people like alexis hatcher in a precarious situation she became one of the first in the state to be evicted she had been a manager of a shoe store which closed during a pandemic she lost her income and fell behind on her rent court documents for her eviction case show hatcher filed the necessary cdc declaration saying she faced homelessness still this week a judge allowed for the eviction to move forward effectively what happened with alexis was the cdc moratorium was still there it didn't go away but texas courts decided that the cdc order no longer applied in texas as crazy as that is they started allowing landlords to evict people at will in texas you have one of the first states to challenge the cdc moratorium and successfully so throughout the pandemic emily benford was tracking how states were handling evictions much of a tenant's experience during the pandemic was completely dependent upon the zip code that they lived in whether or not you stayed in that home depended almost entirely upon whether or not your landlord was going to comply with the cdc moratorium or a local moratorium for that matter what sheriff showed up at your door and what judge you appeared before [Music] there were some judges in texas still willing to consider the cdc moratorium the county of dallas and the state of texas the honorable judge katina whitfield presiding is down in session good morning let's get started right here sir can you hear me [Music] in texas a federal court judge did state that the cdc moratorium is not constitutional i have mixed feelings about it because we have the tenants that we know were affected i see that there is going to be a lot of emotional cases that will be before me i have to visit the moral obligation a lot more because the legal obligation is in black and white it does not take into account the gray areas and that's the reason why i listen to both sides because once you do that that gray area is going to be exposed susanna is the 2219 the current amount out have you tried to okay first i don't you don't have to go into your particular circumstances of what caused you to fall behind but if you would like to explain what happened you can do that well what happened was dealing with the code then i got laid off about two three weeks and then once i fell back and it was just like part-time chicks and then i end up losing my job a lot of the people who were truly affected by covet they're no better now than they were a year ago we're talking about them losing their homes or their kids will have to be withdrawn from school whatever you know the stakes are high so if we have that type of situation number one y'all need to understand it you know put yourself in their shoes texas had started a new program that ordered judges to encourage landlords and tenants to work together to avoid evictions judge whitfield spent time explaining to tenants that there were still protections available to them right now you're not considered a cover person because you haven't filled that declaration out and submitted it to your landlord by what you testified to sounds like this would apply to you but you would need to read each and every bullet point very carefully and sign it because you have to um qualify under each one of these okay you would sign it you would submit a copy to your landlord and a copy to the court as of today you're not a covered person okay um so i would have to grant them judgment but that doesn't mean that it's too late to fill this out we're also going to email you guys a list of resources we have a packet of financial resources okay judgment in favor of the plan for 3308 19 possession and court calls best of luck to you go down there make the arrangements pay off what you can and try to settle it okay all right thank you guys so much y'all have a wonderful day thanks saying to you in making her decisions judge whitfield said she also had to balance the financial concerns of small landlords who were often more vulnerable than corporate property owners since cobit the mom-and-pop you know this is not a business i have one home that i'm renting out i still have a mortgage hoa fees insurance and those type of things i always stress the financial assistance and i remind the tenant that this person is still paying those things like you have to remember that just you know because it's hard on you remember that it's just as hard on them [Music] landlord sandra stanley quickly began feeling the impact of the pandemic just checking on you hi see if you need anything how's it going i'm good she and her family own eight rental properties around the dallas-fort worth area thank you for the partial payments and just continue to local landlords have up close and personal relationships with their tenants we know our tenants we know their children we know what's going on with them their situations over the course of the pandemic when i had to work with people with their rent we did okay paying our mortgage that we had on it but we did have struggled with the paying our our taxes hey steve this is sandra i was wondering did you get find a solution to the ac problem or at all we have to take care of the properties regardless of what if we get paid or not we had ac repairs we had a plumbing problem all that money has to come out of my pocket so i went into my retirement and got the money to pay the taxes and my brother he had a savings he had to go in his savings in my lifetime of being a landlord i've had to do at least three evictions probably over over 30 years we've had really tried to work with people and charge low rent so they can pay their rent i'd rather have somebody pay their rent than have eviction i hate doing evictions [Music] throughout the pandemic the people on the front lines of carrying out evictions in texas were deputies from the local constable offices my name is jacqueline lundy i work for the dallas county constables office precinct five i'm gonna put in my first address when i'm driving out to the location i kind of try to run some scenarios in my head okay if they're not at home fine but if they are at home what is my next step what am i going to do how am i going to approach it you don't know what state of mind they're in we're in a pandemic people have lost their jobs whatever home life that they have going on their emotions could be high sometimes it's uh you kind of are sensitive to the situation you just kind of have to compartmentalize the sad part of it it is sad i think for me i would prefer if they were not home but it's a roll of the dice when they are at home and if they are at home it tugs at you if there's kids involved because it's not their fault they're being displaced but for the most part um it's about safety you don't know who's behind that closed door so it's an unknown and an unknown is going to be a threat deputy lundy was on her way to a victim man who had been illegally occupying a vacant house for months just open the door i need to speak with you out here open the door we're going in oh he has a lot [Music] let's discuss this outside we need to get you out yeah because i don't know what you got inside the house taking everything out of the house and take everything out of the house put anything right here in the front yard all the furniture [Music] did you did you uh you got to say grace okay stay close the greatest indicators of eviction are being black being a woman or having children we know that black people are two times as likely to be evicted as their white counterparts after controlling for education and other factors we know that the single greatest predictor of an eviction is the presence of a child the day she was evicted alexis hatcher and her daughter spent the night at her grandmother's house but she was worried about covid and continued looking for somewhere else to stay are you on the southern side of arlington or on the northern side okay good afternoon how could i help you um i was wondering if you guys have anything available for maybe a week for a week starting today possibly yes if you come in tomorrow i've got a king room available at 99 per night oh okay that's a weak state that saturday through the following saturday saturday to saturday yes ma'am they're so expensive um hi i just have a couple of questions um first i was wondering if you guys have any um thing that's available for maybe a week no we don't have anything we'll be able to get you until sunday or monday yesterday i'm hoping to help you hi um so we were talking about the um one week room i couldn't remember if you said it would be available today or tomorrow just one adult one child and one kid okay i got you booked i'll see you tomorrow okay thank you so much this is 375 okay yes ma'am thank you i'll see you bye-bye you're welcome bye-bye i know we got that done right yay [Music] i'm glad that i have the daughter that i have because not all kids are so understanding and accepting she feels my energies she knew something wasn't right she was expecting something was going to happen but one thing she knows is mommy's always there mommy's still here so it must be okay you know even though she knows her stuff is not at home even though she knows we're not going back there she doesn't know we don't have a home because to her i'm sorry but to her wherever i am is her home more than 15 000 eviction notices have been sent out to new jersey residents during the pandemic even though new jersey governor phil murphy issued an eviction moratorium preventing people from being locked down even in states with strong tenant protections during the pandemic people were facing eviction in new jersey in addition to the cdc moratorium they passed their own ban on evictions for failing to pay rent but that didn't cover everyone i used to work at hello fresh but i stopped working there because someone on my line had corona now i'm a tent joke in a floater i was only back a month and a half i found out the landlord said i was a squatter i mean i just shouldn't worry for the simple fact i got an 11 year old daughter in december 2020 june robinson's landlord went to court claiming that she wasn't a legal tenant because her name wasn't on the lease and he hadn't received rent since before the pandemic even though she said she'd paid until recently miss robinson explained that she's behind on rent right now like a lot of tenants are in new jersey the new jersey governor and the supreme court essentially said that eviction cases couldn't go forward but the landlord filed this ejectment action which were still allowed to be filed claiming that june was not a tenant here you're essentially filing a lawsuit against someone saying they're a squatter we've seen it happen a few times over the course of the pandemic where a landlord says i can't fall for eviction so can we get them out with an ejectment it's possible that this is an attempt to just get around the protections i spend majority of my time now sitting outside in my car trying to figure it out and this time i'll be living in my car [Music] before she found an attorney robinson had an online court hearing see if that zone thing i downloaded yes good morning i was supposed to had a zoom court date today and i don't have a link or anything on my phone i never got um someone called me um like the fifth i think the 445th and said i would be uh getting an email so i can do the young video or something and that i never got an email that's always told to me why are you here on the phone let me i'm gonna go i'm no i'm okay say joanne that's it and um could you tell me how i go about shutting it up please oh don't click on it now okay um you are stuck thank you so so much because i didn't know what to do i have a finger headed like my head is really bad they ain't never stressed [Music] on the day of her hearing she was running an errand at a grocery store and was in her car when the proceedings began [Music] [Music] oh as well as the testimony you've previously given will be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth yes okay thank you now on january the 6th uh i heard testimony i reviewed the documents and i concluded that whoever was residing through unit 2 was not there with permission of the property owner and that anyone who was in that unit needs to vacate the premises immediately so explain to me now what it is that you're asked um how am i swaddling um the apartment was rented to me since july night uh 2019. have you been paying anybody yes i have and i like i said i mean i'm yeah i didn't i i was back a month and a half and that's because i was out of work but i started getting unemployment and i was i told them that i would take and you know catch up on my rent is your yes it is yes it is your honor yes well that's it i'm in the car i went to the store your honor to get something i didn't know that i i didn't bring no leash right here in the car with me my client who is the also and legal owner of this apartment complex driver and now we're in a position where this person is reported to be a lease of this residential apartment building yet has never prepared or shown a lease agreement and never presented that to a court i'm still trying to understand what is different than what occurred when i had a hearing inject in early january nothing has been presented to me today either verbally or in the impact and the documents provided to the court who enabled me to vacate the prior order so good luck and stay safe like this is just over my my fingers it's over like hello [Music] [Music] [Music] no your brother hasn't been talking to you no okay uh we came by uh multiple times uh we i've talked to you personally multiple times i don't know why they keep well i can keep sending y'all out here and it's just a kenny manual situation he's i don't know why he'd be doing that okay so we're looking at fourth order right here so you went to corner and they gave a ruling but they didn't give you any paperwork no they did a zone thing now are you the zone thing yeah the reason why we were trying to get in contact with you to help you along with the process because we knew a certain date that was set there's nothing we can do at that time we're trying to help you to try to see if you can go back down to the core or do anything because once our hands are tied there's nothing we can do and that's why we came back here multiple times putting multiple letters on your door with the number to contact us because the only person that you need to speak with is a judge if the judge signs in order that's all you have to do is go see the judge we have no control of that he signed the order i don't have that power okay you have to talk to a judge someone over me that super sees me tells me what to do so can't tell me i'm gonna get locked out of my apartment well at the moment i don't i don't if we don't do it today we will be doing it next week we will be doing it next week so whatever affairs you need having the order by that date because i will be coming back he will be posting it on the door okay so the next time it should be an issue right now thank you very much but when i'm telling you once i get another date that is it yeah all right so we're gonna call um they're not here so you're gonna have to move forward but like i said we will be thank you talk to you and i will call you let you know come in and post it and everything thank you all right thank you thank you all god that's a blessing all right you too [Music] [Music] housing is foundational it's a pillar of resiliency in the same way that employment and education are but if you knock out that one pillar housing where you live your home you can't access any of the others tenants are protected during the pandemic they don't have to pay the rent and their landlords can't evict them while almost every state and many cities passed their own eviction moratoriums california had the longest running ban small landlords say they simply can't afford to house people for free in los angeles diane golden said her upstairs tenant stopped paying rent when the pandemic first happened in march i was like everybody else like what does this mean and as far as being a landlord i didn't project or see anything i didn't put anything together in terms of eviction moratorium what is that i mean none of that came to mind a matter of fact the first month that my tenant didn't pay i think it was in march and and i told him i said you know if i were working i wouldn't either because everything's just so uncertain next month you know he paid and then he skipped again no problem i trusted him i figured he'll pay me back i didn't know if or when my tenant was gonna pay rent so it's like having your hands tied behind your back and someone can just take and do whatever with your life with your livelihood there's so many people that think that landlords are bad that landlords are rich they have a lot of money that landlords should not make a profit that is not a business you know and and that's why we're the scapegoats in the end i lost 11 months rental income i have to eat i have to get my medicines plus now i've got legal bills because i need an attorney to know how do you evict somebody what would i do as the pandemic stretched on tenants were falling deeper and deeper into debt when the schools shut down this is when it all started for me my son was no longer to attend in-person schooling and that's where i was unable to work during the week because now i'm staying home and doing the homeschooling and our restaurant went down to take out only since this it's been a journey it's been an emotional rollercoaster since september i have not paid my rent so i'm looking at eviction if i don't have 25 percent of my rent paid but even if i do have that part paid i'm still gonna owe about 7 500 um so where's that gonna come from every couple months i get notices on my door from the apartment complex letting me know the balance of what i owe at that time and every time that hits my door it just brings me to another place and i just i cry because just seeing that rack up is just difficult because i don't know how i'm going to get out of it this apartment means a lot to me it's our safe haven it's something that i've worked so hard to keep and provide for us so it's just not an apartment it's our home to help tenants like teresa trebuco who were behind on their rent congress had allocated billions of dollars one of the largest such efforts in history congress passed federal rental assistance and that ended up amounting to over 46 billion dollars which was the amount the landlord associations and apartment associations said they needed to make themselves whole the program was meant to provide rental relief payments to tenants and landlords and cover back rent late fees and utility costs the same way that we've never had a moratorium before we have never had the national infrastructure for rental assistance so states were ill-equipped to actually disperse it to communities in fact by the end of june 2021 only 3 billion of 46.5 billion dollars had been distributed to the landlords who needed it and to prevent the housing displacement of those millions of tenants see you guys we had three tenants that uh stopped paying altogether and uh it became quite a burden now because we're talking about 10 months 11 months later now and the tenants owe me uh 39 thousand dollars in change and that's a very large sum of money um that affects you know everything about the building in california although the governor has proclaimed uh that that there's rent relief and rental relief is coming and and we've had to apply and we've applied for the the three tenants but unfortunately due to some of the administrative difficulties in in complying with the application process the money still have not come through i applied for several different rental assistance programs throughout riverside county and each program i felt like it was just a dead end they kept referring me to another place and then the apartment manager submitted the paperwork for me to get started on the rental assistance program and two weeks went by no check third week i'm like okay it's been 15 business days still no check i was like it's one hurdle after another i'm like it's not gonna come through the options i'm thinking about would be possibly to move in with my sister and rent a room from her or my parents move back in with them but you know it 43 years old you shouldn't have to be going back to live with your parents or struggling to find somewhere to live or if you're going to live on the streets [Music] alexis hatcher had also applied for the rental assistance but the money hadn't come through before she was evicted [Music] like many states texas had enlisted charitable groups such as the salvation army to help distribute the funds i first met alexis my um supervisor called me and said that she had watched a story on the news about a young lady who had been evicted from her home and she was a single mom with a little girl [Music] i think i was mad and i was frustrated because i know that you know evictions weren't supposed to be happening and how do you explain that to your child so her story touched me on different forefronts but being a case manager being a mom and just being a person my department handles court order evictions so we pay rent now we're paying mortgages just trying to make sure that anyone who needs the assistance is able to stay in their home i am preventing clients from entering into a shelter or sleeping in a car or having to go and couch surf or check into a hotel so we are trying to divert them from being at risk of homelessness do you like this one better yeah okay so guess what what we're gonna go buy groceries because guess what one thing that really sticks out was that she told me her daughter asked what was going on and she told her that their house was broken and that they had to find a new house nice and lovely she didn't want to tell her baby that they were being evicted and so she just told her that the house is broken we're gonna find another house and it's an adventure and i just think the way she handles it with her daughter i don't think children should have to worry about where they're going to sleep never what they're going to eat spaghetti why we have to get veggies too do you want corn since i've been grocery shopping it's about maybe three weeks but since all of my food ended up in black bags and i had to throw away a lot of it this is exciting so like even though i'm in the hotel like the fact that i can go buy groceries i can cook like there's pots and pans or dishwasher like it it gives me a sense of just being normal i don't feel like i'm not in my home it makes me happy it's just like i don't feel like i'm just failing like you know i feel like i'm doing something that is normal here you go would you like to sit in a chair and have it or would you like to sit at the desk okay [Music] janine smith started working with hatcher to find her a new place to live and to get the rental assistance money i think with alexis the difference between her and a lot of clients she is very organized and anything that i asked her for she had it miss smith i got records miss smith you want me to drop it off you want me to email it to you she was on top of it um hi erin i was wondering if y'all had any two bedrooms available oh do you know when you will have something to leave a message for the office or leasing please press one hi my name is alexis hatcher i was looking to move into your two bedroom town home kind of immediately hi i was wondering if you guys had any two bedrooms available it was important that she picked a place that she wanted to be in don't just get something and not want to be there take your time look at it there's a lot of resources out there but if you don't know or have someone to tell you then you don't get the help [Music] randy how are you good i don't like to ask for help so i struggled with that it wasn't a good feeling the management company they really kept on top of everything with me keeping me informed um i think they were rooting for me [Music] within i would say about six to eight weeks i heard back from them on a sunday night i got that email half tired and i'm reading it and i just sat there and i'm like what what like this is not i'm seeing too many numbers there it covered all of my past due rent and three months advanced rent and my water and sewer and trash was paid it just felt like a ton of bricks just came off of my shoulders and it was like i wasn't losing my home and liam and i had a place to stay so it was such a good feeling of all the states california received the most federal rental relief more than 5 billion diane golden and many other landlords ended up receiving money for the rent they missed [Music] across the country the money was eventually distributed to millions of people [Music] it supported people at a time of extreme crisis made it possible for them to go back to work and prevented the poor health the anxiety the mental health breaks that are associated with eviction emily benford went on to work for the white house helping implement the rental relief plan the communities that were able to distribute rental assistance had lower displacement rates they had lower filing rates in eviction courts so all of these interventions these measures they're important and they matter alexis hatcher's rental assistance money came through and ended up helping her pay for a new apartment today it's moving day yes it's really exciting even though i'm probably gonna be really exhausted by the end of the day it'll be worth it because we're not in a hotel or at my grandma's house what's your phone didn't find my um bubble blower yeah [Music] we've started to kind of go through all of our stuff because those black bags they were all mixed up i couldn't find everything this is definitely not the way it should be done especially the way the things are in the bag it's just like throwing all of your things out like trash like i know it's kind of funny but i mean it's funny now it was not funny the day i thought about it get some toys for me leah please this bag is full of christmas decorations and a monopoly game i don't know pulling my stuff out it's like some things have memories so that's just like a sense of comfort in itself is that i'm back with my things [Music] just a second i'll play with you as soon as i'm done okay to see someone with a support system versus someone without you shouldn't be surprised that those are two totally different outcomes we've got other families that are right now living in their car with their two kids are you going to buy it uh we've got other families that we've had to put in shelters that are still in shelters these are the more typical stories when we're talking about eviction [Music] june robinson was not able to provide rental receipts or a valid lease to prove she was a legal tenant and was forced to leave the apartment [Music] in august 2021 the u.s supreme court blocked the federal moratorium on evictions and state bans have since expired [Music] in the coming months the last of the government's rental relief money is expected to be paid out [Music] go ahead and show me clear set up [Music] it was a good day you know i didn't have to uh encounter the tenant being there seeing the look on their face or anger whatever the case may have been it's kind of heartbreaking that time to do it but uh it is part of the job that i signed up to do so much as i hate it you know i have to do it [Music] gracie if it was just me by myself like no pandemic i just got behind on my rent and my landlord decided to evict me i don't think anyone would have thought twice about it they probably would have kind of made assumptions like well whatever she was doing that's her problem but i'm kind of glad that it did happen in a pandemic where everyone is thinking about it and talking about it because when this pandemic is over evictions are not going to stop there's still going to be people that are going to need help regardless of pandemic or not [Music] kiss me and tell me i would never be alone kiss me and hug me and type and say i love you [Music] i never let you go let's stay right here so i can read it tomorrow [Music] [Music] for more on this and other frontline programs visit our website at pbs.org frontline [Music] frontline's facing eviction is available on amazon prime video [Music] you

Channel: FRONTLINE PBS | Official

Views: 1,813,625

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Id: XBVshMTOF08

Length: 53min 17sec (3197 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 26 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/steisandburning]

An extra house wrecker with no income? Yeah, I’m not wasting anytime with those ones.