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At Liberty

Why Evicting Millions During a Pandemic is Bad for Our Democracy

At Liberty

At Liberty

News

4.8585 Ratings

🗓️ 3 September 2020

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

As the COVID-19 pandemic stretches on, people across the country face the economic devastation left in its wake. Along with staggering unemployment numbers, millions of renters now face eviction — a situation made even more dire by the global health crisis. Congress responded by instating an eviction moratorium for more than 12 million rental units across the country. But that moratorium expired on July 24th. This week, the Center for Disease Control introduced another moratorium, protecting certain renters in certain circumstances until the new year. But that still leaves many unprotected, and those who are protected remain burdened with a hefty bill due in 2021. ACLU Senior Staff Attorney Sandra Park has monitored this situation since the start of the pandemic and has litigated discriminatory eviction policies in the U.S. for almost two decades. She joined us this week to explain the current crisis. A BIG ANNOUNCEMENT! Starting on September 15, we’re launching a special 2020 voting series called At the Polls. This will be in addition to our normal At Liberty episodes. Each week, we’re answering a new question about voting rights in the lead up to the presidential election. If you have a question you’d like us to answer, call us and leave a message at 212-549-2558. Or, email us podcast@aclu.org. We look forward to hearing from you. ACLU Senior Staff Attorney Sandra Park has been monitoring this situation since the start of the pandemic. She has litigated discriminatory eviction policies in the U.S. for almost two decades, and she joined us to explain the latest. A BIG ANNOUNCEMENT! Starting on September 15th, we’re launching a special 2020 voting series called At the Polls. This will be in addition to our normal At Liberty episodes. Each week, we’re answering a new question about voting rights in the lead up to the presidential election. If you have a question you’d like us to answer, call us and leave a message at 212-549-2558. Or, email us podcast@aclu.org. We look forward to hearing from you.

Transcript

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0:00.0

From the ACLU, this is at Liberty. I'm Molly Kaplan, your host for this episode.

0:09.0

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought economic devastation to people across the country. And in the

0:15.0

face of staggering unemployment numbers, millions of renters now face eviction, a situation made

0:20.5

even more dire by the global health

0:22.1

crisis. Congress responded by instating an eviction moratorium for more than 12 million rental

0:27.2

units across the country, but that moratorium expired on July 24th. Experts now say that 30 to 40 million

0:35.8

renters across the country are at risk of losing their homes.

0:39.6

ACLU senior staff attorney Sandra Park has been monitoring this eviction crisis since the start of

0:44.4

the pandemic. She's litigated discriminatory eviction policies in the U.S. for almost two decades,

0:50.0

and we're excited to have her here today to explain the latest. Sandra, welcome to the podcast.

0:54.7

Thank you, Molly.

0:55.4

It's great to be here.

0:56.9

Sandra, I wanted to start at the beginning of the current crisis that we're in with COVID-19.

1:02.2

So basically talking about what it looked like from the start in March and how evictions sort of came into your sites.

1:10.2

Sure.

1:10.7

Well, as you mentioned, I've been working on

1:12.8

evictions as an issue, as a gender justice and racial justice issue for many years at the

1:17.8

ACLU. But once the pandemic hit, we knew that we were facing a crisis of mass evictions.

1:25.5

We saw lockdowns in many parts of the country starting in March,

1:30.3

and those lockdowns were immediately shutting down businesses and schools and causing people to

1:35.2

lose their jobs. And once that happened, we knew that evictions were sure to come. Even before the

1:41.9

pandemic, we had 20 million rental households spending way more than their

...

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