Jobs can't secure home for Adairsville family

ADAIRSVILLE, Ga. - The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier in August extended the evictions moratorium to communities with high COVID-19 numbers as the Delta variant surges. Fold in low housing inventory, and you have families who can’t find a place to live.

Millions of families are behind on rent, but what gets lost are families looking for a place to live. Out in Adairsville, a working family with three children could never have predicted the situation they are in.

Amanda Edmonds sits on her parents’ porch. It’s her day off, and she’s hunting for a place to live for her family. And it’s been hard.

"I applied for about six houses total, and after about the fourth one I realized this is harder than I think," she told the Fox 5 I-Team. 

Amanda says she, her fiancé, and three children moved back to Adairsville after transferring from South Carolina. Her parents’ countryside property is beautiful.

"Don’t get me wrong, it’s peaceful listening to the bugs, but it’s not something I want to do. I want my own bed," she says.

For more than two months she and her partner have slept in a tent in the backyard.

"I’ve always had a home. I’ve always worked and pay bills and had a home," she said.

Her three children stay inside at their grandparents’ small home. Amanda and her soon-to-be husband eat and shower inside, but a tent is where they lay their heads at night.

She says they both worked throughout the pandemic never taking unemployment. She says they’ve paid nearly $700 in rental application fees, gets accepted, then nothing. It just sits in a queue with dozens of others.

"And every time I put in an application, it’s snapped up underneath me. Go onto the next one, same thing happens again. Just over and over," she said. 

The CDC’s continued evictions moratorium is meant to protect people who are struggling to pay bills right now. Little of the $45 billion of federal funding for rental assistance has been distributed yet. Landlords are in limbo. But so are working families like the Edmondses - victims of low housing stock and an unrelenting pandemic

"When I lay down at night, the only thing that rambles through my mind is, what can I do tomorrow to get us a home?" 

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