“Facing Eviction” reveals how the Covid-19 eviction moratorium impacted landlords, sheriffs, judges, lawyers and social workers to give a holistic view of how tenants navigate a possible eviction.
This introduction to “Facing Eviction” takes viewers inside the unfolding housing crisis during the Covid-19 pandemic. Our unprecedented access to people struggling to stay in their homes shows how the promise of a ban on evictions played out against the reality for the tens of millions of Americans at risk of homelessness.
While “Facing Eviction” emphasize the tenant’s experience, it also shows how complicated it is for almost everyone involved. Landlords don’t like to evict tenants because, among other things, they lose rental income and sheriffs often feel compassion for the people they’re putting out.
We discovered that rather than a uniform national housing policy, there was a patchwork of approaches that varied state by state, and outcomes often came down to what county, or even city, a tenant lived in.
The unfolding housing crisis was practically invisible to the public. Retro Report and PBS Frontline invested the time and resources to document the stories of the most vulnerable who were hidden behind closed doors. “Facing Eviction” provides a rare and intimate look at a basic human right, housing, in a way that hasn’t been seen before.