Evictions and the Pandemic

The FRONTLINE Dispatch

GBH

News

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 7 October 2022

⏱️ 25 minutes

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Summary

As COVID-19 swept the country in 2020, millions of people in the U.S. were out of work and at risk of being evicted. An unprecedented federal ban on evictions and billions of dollars in rental assistance helped keep people in their homes — but some people were still evicted.

In FRONTLINE and Retro Report’s documentary “Facing Eviction,” director Bonnie Bertram and a team of filmmakers from across the country examined why — finding that the effectiveness of pandemic housing protections depended almost entirely on how local officials enforced them.

Bertram joined FRONTLINE editor-in-chief and executive producer Raney Aronson-Rath for a conversation about where tenant protections stand now, the process of making “Facing Eviction” and filming with people on the brink of losing their housing.

“We started to chronicle these people's lives and, as the months unfolded, saw the desperation and just the precariousness of their situation and this dreaded knock on the door that impacts all parts of their life,” Bertram told Aronson-Rath.

Facing Eviction is now streaming on FRONTLINE’s website, the PBS Video App, and FRONTLINE’s Youtube channel.

Transcript

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0:00.0	As a coronavirus pandemic swept the country in 2020, tens of millions of Americans struggled
0:08.0	to make rent and were at risk of being evicted.
0:10.7	Since September, I have not paid my rent, so I'm looking at eviction.
0:16.3	To keep people in their homes, the federal government ordered billions in rent relief
0:20.8	and a ban on evictions.
0:22.5	The Federal Care Act halted evictions nationally.
0:25.2	The CDC labels eviction as detrimental to public health.
0:29.7	In facing eviction, frontline and retro report examined how the protections were carried out
0:34.9	in the ground and found that the effectiveness depended almost entirely on how local officials
0:41.1	enforced them.
0:42.1	We started to see that there was a pat work approach that it really wasn't a wholesale
0:46.3	ban.
0:47.3	Director Bonnie Burr-Trem worked with local filmmakers in different parts of the country,
0:51.8	who met with the people living through this precarious time.
0:55.3	From tenants and landlords to lawyers and judges and the law enforcement officials tasked
1:00.2	with carrying out evictions, Bonnie Burr-Trem joins me today to talk about the film and
1:05.4	where the tenant protections stand today.
1:08.4	I'm Rainier Enson Roth, Editor-in-Chief and Executive Producer of Frontline, and this
1:13.1	is the Frontline Dispatch.
1:19.1	The Frontline Dispatch is made possible by the Abrams Foundation, committed to excellence
1:23.7	in journalism, and by the Frontline Journalism Fund, with major support from John and
1:28.7	Joanne Hagler.
	...

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