RANEY ARONSON-RATH, HOST: As the coronavirus pandemic swept the country in 2020, tens of millions of Americans struggled to make rent and were at risk of being evicted.
TERESA TRABUCCO: Since September, I have not paid my rent, so I’m looking at eviction
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: To keep people in their homes, the federal government ordered billions in rent relief and a ban on evictions.
NEWS ARCHIVE: the Federal Cares Act halted evictions nationally
NEWS ARCHIVE: The CDC labels eviction as detrimental to public health.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: In Facing Eviction, FRONTLINE and Retro Report examined how the protections were carried out on the ground, and found that the effectiveness depended almost entirely on how local officials enforced them.
BONNIE BERTRAM: We started to see that there was a patchwork approach. There really wasn’t a wholesale ban.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Director Bonnie Bertram worked with local filmmakers in different parts of the country, who met with the people living through this precarious time – from tenants and landlords, to lawyers and judges, and the law enforcement officials tasked with carrying out evictions. Bonnie Bertram joins me today to talk about the film and where the tenant protections stand today. I'm Raney Aronson-Rath, editor-in-chief and executive producer of FRONTLINE, and this is the FRONTLINE Dispatch.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Bonnie, thanks so much for joining us on the Dispatch.
BONNIE BERTRAM: Oh, my pleasure.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: So it's incredible what your team did, your team's reporting brought us to Texas, New Jersey, and California. It was all during Covid. So talk to me a little bit, first and foremost, like how did you all pull that off?
BONNIE BERTRAM: Well, it's so easy to forget, but in those first months of the pandemic when you couldn't travel anywhere, it was like somebody tying your hands behind your back when you wanna go out into the field and produce and report. And we knew this was like a historic moment and we wanted to capture it and we realized that the only way to do it was to tap people from their own communities who were interested like us in telling this story.
So we got a grant from the Pulitzer Center and we started making phone calls and, and reaching out to friends of friends or colleagues, people who were filmmakers, but could also sort of function as reporters and producers in the field in addition to, to capturing, you know, images on camera. So they were sort of filmmaker, producer types, and like us they felt compelled to capture this moment in time cuz it was so strange to be living through the pandemic and to be like reporting on it in real time. So I feel like I was really lucky that so many people shared a passion for this story. And also the thing that is easy to forget is that it was kind of scary to go into strangers houses. The whole health issue was one that we were navigating to in terms of protocols with tests, because we were started reporting, I think it was before the vaccines were out, So there was that added element of danger that made people's commitment to the story even more impressive and amazing.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: So early in the pandemic, the government ordered a ban on evictions. You're hearing that. You hear the freeze. What are you thinking you all should do and are you thinking right away ‘Okay, Now we need to tell the story of what happens with evictions?’
BONNIE BERTRAM: From the earliest days of the pandemic, we realized this was a historic moment And when we drilled down on the eviction moratorium and the CARES Act ban on evictions, we started to see that there was a patchwork approach, that it really wasn't a wholesale ban the notion of there being a nationwide ban on eviction sounded so great. But then you came to realize it was only on properties that had federally backed mortgages and that it was incumbent on the tenants to figure out what kind of mortgage their landlord had. So you could see already that there were things that weren't quite happening in practice that matched up to the theory. And it was remarkable that we had this nationwide edict, but the way it actually played out had so much to do with where you lived and like on a really micro level, like who your constable was or what judge you got assigned to. I mean, so much happened depending on the judge's sympathies in your case when you went into housing court.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: So, okay. You decided you had to be in multiple states. How did you all choose the states that you did end up filming in?
BONNIE BERTRAM: We followed people in different cities, and the people who made it into the film were in Newark, New Jersey, in Dallas, Texas, and Menifee, California. But in addition to them, we felt like Virginia was going to be an interesting place to follow how the housing policy played out and Ohio. And while it was true, those stories became a little bit more muddled in our telling, and we felt like we captured a good representation in New Jersey, Texas, and California. Dallas has, uh, historically been pretty landlord friendly. And we also looked at California, which historically leans sort of more heavily on the tenant side. And, and it turns out that those places did end up as the, the months that we followed this, that they really did sort of fall under that, that pattern.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: I noticed right away when I saw a lot of the rough footage how many women you profiled and how many mothers you profiled. So can you talk to me about that too? Did you start to see that emerge as a theme or did you go out and try to find those characters?
BONNIE BERTRAM: It was weird, Raney, how it all sort of happened organically. Like these, these problems that you see nationwide were like case studies and what we were finding as we went out and reported this. So, yes. Single mothers of color are disproportionately impacted, and we mostly found a lot of them by reaching out to legal aid organizations across the country and that, you know, that 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.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Right. So let's talk about the knock on the door for Alexys Hatcher. So she's the first person that we meet in the film. Um, she lives in Texas. She's a mom, uh, at the time of a five year old girl. Um, and they're being evicted from their home and we watch her as she's packing up and, and really trying to, um, have all of her, of her belongings put in the back of a truck. So tell me about Alexys and her options at that moment when that's happening.
BONNIE BERTRAM: Alexys is a bit unusual in that she had a lot of support. She had her uncle and she had her grandmother, so she had a bit of a safety net. Um, but even so, she, she was still evicted during the pandemic and it was one of those weird moments where she thought she was protected because of the national eviction moratorium and the date that was put out there. But in fact, Texas had this weird anomalous situation where, the judges were kind of freed up to interpret the law as they wanted to, and she was one of the first people to be evicted under that weird moment in time in Texas. So she and her daughter, Aaliyah, um, went to her grandmother's house and then she started making phone calls to find a hotel room. And then she was in a hotel for I think two weeks. And then, uh, with some assistance from the Salvation Army, she was able to get an apartment. She was remarkable in that despite her, her work situation, she had been laid off because of the pandemic. She was so organized and she was able to keep track of receipts and calling social workers and trying to get all the help that she needed. She was very resourceful and very organized, and that really helped her. She, she pretty much landed on her feet.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Right. And so she landed on her feet. But talk to me about, Alexys and her daughter, what was the experience like for them both as they were going through this?
BONNIE BERTRAM: Well, she was just bewildered and distraught because she didn't think, she thought she was covered by the eviction moratorium. So she went to her grandmother's house with her daughter and she started making phone calls and. She tried to protect her daughter from the horrors of what they were experiencing by making it like an adventure for her young daughter.
And she came up with this story that was just so moving where she told her daughter that their house was broken and that they were going to find a new house. And you can see her daughter just lights up when they go to this hotel room. That's, you know, sort of like a desperate situation. They're just looking for a bed to sleep in for the night and her daughter is skipping and happy.
And for Alexys to have the wherewithal to, to not only be experiencing the trauma of what she's experiencing, but to be able to build a story that protects her daughter from the reality was just so moving.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Yeah. Okay. So who was the person who was chronicling that story? The story of Alexys. Tell me about that Filmmaker.
BONNIE BERTRAM: When we wanted to capture the story out of Dallas, we contacted a reporter named April Kirby, who is an amazing cinematographer and just a great storyteller and she lives in Dallas, and she does a lot of independent work, and she was one of the people that I called when I first suggested the bizarre request of, you know, could you, would you be willing to follow somebody over the course of months not knowing where the story will take you, and would you be willing to go in her home during a time when going into a stranger's house represented some health risks? Um, and April was just all in and we called, we called her when we first heard that Alexys was getting kicked out and April dropped everything and went over and talked to her and just really struck up a rapport with Alexys that you can sort of feel that trust that she had established to share her story with us. I mean, she was going through one of the worst moments of her adult life and to allow somebody to be there to witness it, was just a real act of faith on Alexys's part.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: So let's talk about June Robinson. She's from New Jersey. Tell me a little bit about New Jersey first.
BONNIE BERTRAM: So New Jersey historically has laws that are pretty protective of tenants.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Mm-hmm.
BONNIE BERTRAM: It was, again, an extraordinary time, and some of the lawyers that we talked to there were really worried because every time an eviction moratorium was about to expire, judges and and lawyers were terrified that the courts were going to be flooded. Every time we were at the sort of cliff hanger of a moratorium ending, there was this panic that there was gonna be, you probably remember the, the reporting that there would be a tsunami of evictions.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Right, right.
BONNIE BERTRAM: So it was very interesting, too, because we kept thinking the tidal wave's coming, it's gonna be a, you know, lines around the courthouse and it's gonna be so crowded and, and it never happened. So it was very weird to report this in real time over such a long period because what we had thought was gonna happen really didn't.So June, June Robinson, uh, is a mom who lived in Newark and she had an 11-year-old daughter who June was afraid she was going to be evicted. So she quickly sent her daughter away to live with relatives because she didn't want her daughter to be exposed to what was likely to be an unpleasant confrontation with constables, where they would forcibly remove her from her apartment in Newark. So she had removed her daughter, and June was one of those people who was working any job she could get and time and again, we would go out to film June and she would've picked up an extra shift at the warehouse where she was working, So there were often times, June being so resourceful and, and wanting to work so much, just her schedule was erratic. So we got to know June and experienced a little bit of her life and and how challenging it was when you work overnights and you're exhausted all the time and you're facing the constant threat of eviction and you're worried about your daughter. And June had a hard time with the technology. It's easy to forget, but we were doing Zoom hearings
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Right. She attends a hearing over Zoom to try to desperately stay in her apartment. Can you tell us about that scene and, and what actually ends up happening to June?
BONNIE BERTRAM: Right, so, so many housing courts moved online and it was a challenge for someone like June who was struggling working overnights and picking up odd shifts and just hanging in there to try to make money wherever she could to try to manage the court system on top of that, just kind of proved too much for her. So the day that her court hearing was happening, she had gone out to run an errand and so she was stuck in her car to do the Zoom hearing on her phone, and the whole thing was very confusing to her and she didn't really understand what was happening. And there was a moment where it was over. And she looked at our photographer and said, That's it? It's, it's done? I'm, I'm out? And she just kind of didn't grasp what was happening. And it's heartbreaking because a lot of these solutions that people feel like help people like June are actually just more than they can manage.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Hmm. Okay. So moving from New Jersey to California. In California, um, the state also passed a moratorium on evictions before the federal government did. What was it like there for tenants overall? And then talk to me about Teresa.
BONNIE BERTRAM: Right. Teresa Trabucco is a single mom and she was a waitress. And so, of course restaurants were one of the first things to, to close during the pandemic. And, and eventually they, they, they were doing takeout, but she couldn't get the hours that she needed. So she started to fall behind in her rent, which she had never done before. And the management company was posting notices on her door, reminding her that she owed rent, reminding her what the stakes were and that she could be facing eviction. And she said every time that happened, she just hit a wall of crisis, not knowing whether she and her son Liam were gonna be able to stay there. She's from California, her parents are there. So every time that happened, it was like a punch in the gut. What's interesting about Teresa's case, is that the management company really helped her, and even though they were posting those notices, they were the ones who ultimately months down the road worked with her to file, to get the rent relief, to make them whole and to keep her housed in, in Menifee, California where she lives.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: So in the state of California they went ahead and they passed the moratorium and then what ended up happening to most tenants there?
BONNIE BERTRAM: So, One of the things that we realize is that there's a national policy, there's a state policy, there's a county policy, and there's a city policy, and San Francisco's housing situation is well known across the country, and we decided that we wanted to look at what was happening in Southern California. Our instincts proved to be good ones because little did we know, but the city of Los Angeles. Was so, um, protective of not wanting people to get homeless and lose their homes that they really enacted extraordinary measures to, to keep tenants housed. Nationally, they have some of the tightest protections for tenants, and in fact, I think they're the only place in the country that still have an eviction ban, and they're now trying to lift that. But it won't be, I think, until February 1st. So for people, for landlords there, it was tough. I mean, we talked to people who had lost thousands of dollars and, you know, a livelihood.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Well, okay, so, So the other thing that we found really interesting was that you decided to tell it from the people's perspective who were tenants, but also the landlords. Can you talk to me about your editorial process and why you decided that was important too? Especially the small business, um, landlord. So the people who had maybe one apartment or a building, but, but not multiple buildings.
BONNIE BERTRAM: I know, Raney. One of the biggest surprises in reporting this is so much of the affordable housing stock in this country is owned by the quote unquote mom and pop landlords. So these are people who are retirees or people who, who rent out a room or or have an apartment building to get rental income, but they aren't those big corporate entities that you might have imagined. So we were surprised to find that so much of the affordable housing falls under the mom and pop category. And it was interesting because going into this, I felt like there was a big paradigm between landlords and tenants. And then as the months of the eviction moratorium and the pandemic wore on, sympathy started to sort of move towards the landlords because they couldn't collect rental income. So we wanted to capture that. And it was a, it was a really, in a way, crystallizing moment. And I think something that has helped people when they look at housing writ large, that this dynamic between a landlord and a tenant is really critical to help staving off evictions. So, so we were following the, the story in real time and noticing that the sort of sympathy started to lean more towards the landlord, include the landlords, and that was something that we wanted to capture.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: The landlords are really an interesting part of the story. Can you tell me about one or two of them? Let's, let's talk about the, the landlord who was in California.
BONNIE BERTRAM: Dyan Golden. Um, Dyan Golden had this beautiful home that her mother had given her, and she renovated the upstairs apartment. Into a rental unit. So she was basically living with her tenant. She was in the downstairs and he was in the upstairs and she had sympathy for him early on. And she said there was just so much confusion of, of course I wasn't gonna ask him to pay rent. And of course I understood that he was having financial hardship because everybody was struggling to, to keep their jobs and to just, It was such a bewildering time and. And to this day, she feels like her hands are tied in terms of her ability to collect rent because of city ordinances that protect the tenants.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: What kind of protections did the landlords get during the pandemic?
BONNIE BERTRAM: Well, they got rent relief. It's really expensive for landlords to turn over a property to kick somebody out and to find somebody new, so it's in their best interest to collect rent that is owed to them. So when the government got that, you know, upwards of $46 billion in rent relief. Um, the final installment, which came in March of 21, it took a while for them to figure out how to distribute that. So if landlords and tenants could sort of hang in and, and wait and feel like this was gonna all have a happy resolution with the landlords getting their money, it tended to work out. But the pipeline was slow and I, it took a lot of, I think for landlords to feel like, Okay, this is gonna work out. I can wait this out was, I think, tough for them.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: In the film you really see the downstream effects of that rental assistance package. How would you say that that worked for people?
BONNIE BERTRAM: I think it worked tremendously well. I think that there were two levers that the government had. There was money and there was time, and this was an extraordinary moment where not since World War II had people talked about housing with the same sort of interest and energy. So it was a really great moment for the government to say, okay, we think we know we will work and now we're gonna try it. It was like an experiment. So what they first did was they pushed on the time lever. They said, okay, freeze. No, no evictions, nobody can do anything. Which is, if you think about it, it's crazy, right? Like imagine the President basically saying to landlords, okay, you can't collect a rent check. So as that wore on, people realized that landlords were getting. Stuck with carrying the financial burden of the pandemic. And that wasn't fair. So that's when Congress stepped in with this big, big bailout package and then they started to push on the lever of the money. So using those two pedals of time and money, things typically worked out. I mean, if it, It's taken this long, it hasn't been until this fall that all the money has been paid out, but I would say, by and large it did work. And it also illustrated that there are things we can do to address the affordable housing crisis.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Hmm. Okay, so the eviction moratorium has now ended. You mentioned not in the city of Los Angeles, but mostly across the country. So what is the status now of rental assistance and how are the renters doing now? How, just over overall, how are renters doing today?
BONNIE BERTRAM: Well, the money is run out. And the eviction ban has run out, as you mentioned. So now they're in this new post-covid landscape and there isn't gonna be bailout money and rental prices are rising, like everything with inflation. But statistics say that eviction filings have been cut in half than they typically are coming out of the pandemic, and I think they would point to the fact that this eviction ban did really mostly work. So they are seeing a positive upshot from the policies that were enacted during covid that are helping people stay in their homes. It does a bit fly in the face of conventional wisdom of what we are seeing with rising rental prices. So I think a lot of that is still to be determined whether this experiment of housing policy during the. Will really have any real impact on housing policy going forward.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Well, it's really, really important territory. I really appreciate you and your team and all the hard work that went into it. Really glad we could make a FRONTLINE out of it as well.
BONNIE BERTRAM: Oh, Raney, we're so grateful that you tell the kinds of stories that matter and are important, so we're just grateful to be able to work with you. Thank you.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Thanks again to Bonnie Bertram for joining me on the Dispatch. Facing Eviction was made in partnership with Retro Report and Chasing the Dream. To watch Facing Eviction, head to frontline.org.
