For the past year and a half, we've been watching the numbers: Covid cases, ER beds, deaths, and, more recently, immunization rates. There's another set of numbers, however, that has gotten less attention but is just as connected to this pandemic as any of these other figures: housing. The pandemic has been a huge test for our nation's ability to house its residents, and so far we are failing miserably - experts estimate that 40 million Americans are vulnerable to losing their housing. The federal moratorium on evictions was lifted by the Supreme Court in September, and the vast majority of states have no protections in place to help people hold on to their homes. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak with Shamus Roller, the Executive Director of the National Housing Law Project, about housing challenges, evictions, and homelessness. We also discuss potential solutions to advance housing justice.

Narrator  0:01  This is Sea Change Radio, covering the shift to sustainability. I'm Alex Wise.

Shamus Roller 0:19  We're under-funding these programs. So such a dramatic extent when you look at a lot of Western Europe where the there's not really a problem with homelessness because they know, you know, like we do in this country that homelessness is very expensive. It's much more expensive to leave somebody on the streets than it is to find them housing, but we just pay for it out of 10 different pockets.

Narrator 0:40  For the past year and a half, we've been watching the numbers, COVID cases, ER beds, deaths, and more recently, immunization rates. There's another set of numbers. However, that's gotten less attention, but it's just as connected to this pandemic as any of these other figures, housing. The pandemic has been a huge test for our nation's ability to house its residents. And so far, we're failing miserably. Experts estimate that 40 million Americans are vulnerable to losing their housing. The Federal moratorium on evictions was lifted by the Supreme Court in September, and the vast majority of states have no protections in place to help people hold on to their homes. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak with Shamus Roller, the Executive Director of the National Housing Law Project about housing challenges, evictions and homelessness. We also discuss potential solutions to advance housing justice.

Alex Wise  1:47  I'm joined now on Sea Change Radio by my friend and neighbor Shamus Roller. He's the Executive Director of the National Housing Law Project. Shamus, welcome to Sea Change Radio.

Shamus Roller 1:58  Great to be here with you, Alex.

Alex Wise  1:59  So explain the mission of your organization, the National Housing Law Project.

Shamus Roller 2:05  We're a National Legal and advocacy Support Center. So we help Legal Aid attorneys and other advocates around the country, do housing law, protect tenants protect low income homeowners, and then we do a fair amount of advocacy at the federal level around housing law,

Alex Wise  2:20  What stimulated your interest in the issue of housing?

Shamus Roller 2:24  I started my career working on doing direct street outreach with homeless youth and adults. And so I was doing work on the streets helping people find access to services get basic first aid. So I really understood kind of what how do you end up being homeless? And what are the barriers to getting off the streets? What are the things that happened to people that that result in them being homeless? And so I really wanted to think about how do you? How do you deal with the upstream problems, and I went to law school, and I've been working on housing for my entire career.

Alex Wise  2:53  Before we dive into some of the solutions,