For years there has been an evictions crisis in the United States. The pandemic has made it more acute.

On today’s episode, our conversations with a single mother of two from Georgia over several months during the pandemic. After she lost her job in March, the bottom fell out of her finances and eviction papers started coming. The federal safety net only stretched so far.

And we ask, with Congress seeking to pass another stimulus bill, what do the next few months hold for renters in the United States?

Guest: Matthew Desmond, a Professor of Sociology at Princeton University and contributing writer for The Times Magazine.

For an exclusive look at how the biggest stories on our show come together, subscribe to our newsletter. You can read the latest edition here.

Background reading:

Emergency pandemic funding to help renters must be distributed by Dec. 30. But getting the money to those who need it is no small task.
Residents of weekly rentals worry they will be kicked out if they can’t pay the rent. It’s unclear if the federal moratorium on evictions applies to them.

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

Pascal Sévérac

The AI-powered Podcast Player