What Is It Like Being Homeless in America? - Pulitzer Prize Winning Author Brian [5:00-6:37]

The sheriff who had left the notice in her mailbox a couple of months earlier wrote at the bottom that it was, quote, served to fire destroyed property. In Georgia, as in many other states, there are a lot to carry out. It's called a tack-and-mail dispossessory, where you don't have to be notified in person. Celeste then drove to the courthouse where a clerk told her that when she had failed to file a response to the eviction notice within seven days, a default judgment had been handed down against her. So she had been evicted without her knowledge from a home that was uninhabitable. This was crushing news for Celeste because she realized that with this eviction on her record, this scarlet E, which had also ruined her credit score, a three-digit number that's come to determine whether millions of people in this country will have access to something as fundamental as a place to live, she realized that this could end up being even more devastating than the fire itself. It could haunt her for years to come. At this point, Celeste had run out of options. She had exhausted her list of friends and contacts willing to let her and the kids stay with them, recognizing that now she wouldn't be able to get approved for any apartment, she did what countless families in similar situations, families who belong to what we might call America's credit underclass are increasingly doing. She went to an extended stay hotel where no credit check was required, just cash up front.