A Memphis woman hospitalized with COVID-19 managed to recover enough to return home, only to find out she no longer had a home, WPSD-TV reported. Leslie Nelson, 56, was evicted after she was unable to pay her rent due to medical costs in the thousands, the news station reported.
To add insult to injury, a process server tasked with serving her an eviction notice allegedly had to be talked out of taking the woman's antique rifle. He said it was his right to hold on to the rifle temporarily.
Local activists who showed up to Nelson's home last Thursday to help her pack ended up having to try to stop the armed man. “Just absurd behavior,” activist Marissa Kizer told WPSD.
The man eventually said he would return the rifle but not before swinging it in front of police officers on the scene, WPSD reported. It’s unclear if the unnamed man faced any consequences for his actions, but Nelson was more than punished for an outcome she had limited control over.
The property she was kicked out of belonged to her mother-in-law who died years ago, leaving several kinks to be worked out in probate court, WPSD reported. “It’s infuriating,” activist Hunter Demster told the news station. “Collecting debt from a deceased person is more important than putting an elderly woman who is recovering from COVID out on the streets, and that’s what they’re saying. That’s what they did!”
The White House bragged Saturday that an executive order President Donald Trump signed to restrict COVID-19 evictions was one of a few "bold steps” the president took “to help renters and homeowners have safe and secure places to call home during the COVID-19 crisis." The order, however, leaves much to be desired. It only instructs the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to “consider whether any measures temporarily halting residential evictions” are needed to prevent COVID-19 from spreading, Politico reported.
House Financial Services Chair Maxine Waters dismissed the order, which fails to extend an expired moratorium on evictions, as “nothing but a political ploy … Trump lives in the WH rent free. Some congressmembers have lived in their offices rent free - the same members now refusing to support rental asst. for families w/ little or no $ during pandemic. How cruel can they be? I’m fighting to force GOP negotiators to stop the bull!” the legislator tweeted last Thursday.
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Brandon Richards, the National Press Secretary at the Democratic Attorneys General Association, responded to news that the Senate had adjourned until Sept. 8, 2020 with a reminder about how Republican legislators have repeatedly stalled Democratic efforts to help struggling Americans.
He tweeted Thursday: “Keep in mind, Democrats passed a COVID-19 aid package back in **May** Senate Republicans have now let 4 months go by without any assistance to millions of people:
- losing their jobs
- facing evictions
- on the cusp of bankruptcy
As cold hearted and unacceptable as it gets.”
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