Two Fires Tell the Tale of the U.S. Housing Crisis

The Intercept Briefing

The Intercept

Politics, Unknown, Daily News, History, News

4.8 • 6.3K Ratings

🗓️ 9 February 2022

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The number of people experiencing homelessness decreased by 8 percent between 2020 and 2021, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. HUD suggests that the decrease could be attributed to Covid-19 pandemic relief efforts. However, many relief efforts have expired or will soon, from eviction moratoriums to expanded unemployment benefits. Meanwhile, the U.S. housing market has continued unabated, with rents rising and housing prices soaring.

This week on Intercepted: Akela Lacy, an Intercept politics reporter, talks to Stephanie Sena, the founder and executive director of the Student-Run Emergency Housing Unit in Philadelphia, about the housing choices low-income families and people face and how the recent deadly residential fires in the Bronx and Philadelphia illustrate how dire the housing crisis is. We also hear from organizers and tenants who are fighting back. join.theintercept.com/donate/now

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is intercepted.
0:30.0	I'm Akala Lacey, a reporter with The Intercept.
0:37.0	Just days after the New Year, we saw two of the country's deadliest residential fires
0:47.2	in recent history.
0:48.2	Tonight here, the image is coming in to fire breaking out in a second floor apartment
0:52.5	of a three-story row house.
0:54.4	The three-story Philadelphia housing authority Row Home, which has two separate living units,
0:58.6	was housing some 26 people, according to officials with only two viable exits available.
1:05.0	On January 5 in Philadelphia, a fire in an apartment building killed 12 people, including
1:10.2	nine children.
1:11.6	The three-story building owned by the Philadelphia Housing Authority was home to more than
1:16.0	20 people.
1:17.3	We believe with certainty, so 99 to 100 percent confidence that the first item ignited in
1:30.4	this place was a Christmas tree.
1:34.7	And four days later, 17 people dead more than 60 injured in an apartment fire in the
1:39.5	Bronx Sunday.
1:40.5	It's the deadliest fire in New York City since 1990.
1:44.8	Investigators blaming a faulty space heater.
1:46.7	The building is a 19-story high-rise in Tremont and some 200 FDNY members responded to the
1:53.8	battle of the fire.
1:55.4	17 people died in the Bronx fire, including eight children.
2:00.2	Both fires happened in low-income housing properties, in poor areas of two of our biggest
	...

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