So much is changing and so quick. Admonitions to keep sterile and separate to flatten the curve, the shuddering of workplaces, the sheltering in place.

But what if your life depends entirely on that workplace? What if there's nowhere to shelter in place? Moratoriums on evictions, ranging from

brief to indefinite, are imposed in cities including Atlanta and Baltimore, Newark, Miami,

L.A., Seattle, and the states of Virginia, New Hampshire, New York, other cities and states are calling for the same.

Meanwhile, the overburdened shelter system struggles to cope.

Matthew Desmond, founder of the Eviction Lab at Princeton, and author of Evicted, has been

following the situation.

I'm encouraged that some states and cities have acted so quickly to stop the bleeding,

but it's not fast enough, and it's not happening in the places we really need it to happen.

So let us go through some of those where it's happening and where it isn't.

And I'm going to start where you feel there's always too much emphasis, which is on the

West Coast. Seattle is one of the two epicenters of the coronavirus within the U.S.

And you have one of the highest homeless populations there, too. And so what's being done in Seattle to avoid exacerbating the

pre-existing housing crisis? From what we've been reading, the mayor in Seattle utilized public

health emergency authority to expand shelter capacity for people experiencing

homelessness in that city. Over 100 additional spaces are going to be created because of those

efforts. Seattle is also halting any power and water shutoffs due to nonpayment caused by

work stoppages or slowdowns for the corona virus emergency. King County, where Seattle is,

it's looking into purchasing hotel spaces to allow homeless families to isolate during the crisis.

You were talking about how in Seattle there are more spaces and shelters becoming available and so

forth, but that's not safe, is it?

That's right. I mean, there are this essential part of our safety net, but this is where people are eating shoulder to shoulder, where they're sleeping multiple people in the same room, where multiple people have to share bathrooms together.

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