'Our Health or Our Homes:' Tenants Facing Eviction Help Introduce New 'Keeping Renters Safe Act'

As the Delta variant continues to surge across the United States, so too has the housing and eviction crisis, with more than 11 million households now behind on rent. Most of those evicted are Black or Latinx, and the majority are single women with children. "Democracy Now!" speaks with a single mother and a high school student who have faced eviction and went to Washington, D.C., this week to help Congressmember Cori Bush and Senator Elizabeth Warren introduce the Keeping Renters Safe Act to reinstate the federal pandemic eviction moratorium. "We need the eviction moratorium and the National Tenant Bill of Rights," says Vivian Smith, a tenant activist with the Miami Workers Center.

"Democracy Now!" also speaks with Faith Plank, a 17-year-old housing activist in Morehead, Kentucky, who was evicted in March and says she has felt "the pain of that eviction" every day since. "I can't focus on school when I'm worried about how I'm going to go to bed tonight," says Plank.