The Latest
Tenants behind on rent in pandemic face harassment, eviction
BALTIMORE — Jeremy Rooks works the evening shift at a Georgia fast-food restaurant these days to avoid being on the street past dusk. He needs somewhere to go at night: He and his wife are homeless after the extended-stay motel where they had lived since Thanksgiving evicted them in April when they couldn’t pay their rent.
They should have been protected because the state’s Supreme Court has effectively halted evictions due to the coronavirus pandemic. But Rooks said the owner still sent a man posing as a sheriff’s deputy, armed with a gun, to throw the couple out a few days after rent was due.
The pandemic has shut housing courts and prompted most states and federal authorities to initiate policies protecting renters from eviction. But not everyone is covered and a number of landlords — some desperate to pay their mortgages themselves — are turning to threats and harassment to force tenants out.
“Every day, they tried to basically get us out of there. It was basically like a game to them,” said Rooks, who wasn’t able to make his rent at the Marietta, Georgia, motel after his employer paid him late and his wife was laid off in the pandemic. “One of us had to stay in a room at all times because they wouldn’t redo the keys for us.”
Read the full story here.
News
8:52 a.m. Curbside diploma service for Chicago high schoolers graduating in the age of COVID-19
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/20033333/WYGRAD_7.jpg "Curbside diploma service for Chicago high schoolers
graduating in the age of COVID-19 (LIVE UPDATES) 2")
Thousands of students in Chicago and beyond are marking a key milestone this weekend — and they’re finding out what socially distant celebrations look like in a world upended by the coronavirus.
That was the case Saturday morning at Whitney Young Magnet High School, which held a drive-thru ceremony for the Class of 2020 on the Near West Side campus.
Students arrived by car with their families at staggered times and, with face masks in tow, crossed the makeshift stage one by one to receive diplomas.
And instead of a handshake, each graduate got a spritz of hand sanitizer.
Check out our gallery from Saturday’s event here.
7:45 a.m. For deaf people, face masks with windows mean more than smiles
SAN DIEGO — Michael Conley felt especially isolated these past few months: A deaf man, he was prevented from reading lips by the masks people wore to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
But then he met Ingrid Helton, a costume designer who sewed him a solution – masks with plastic windows for hearing people to wear, allowing lip readers to see mouths move.
She has started a business to provide the windowed masks, and she’s not alone. A half-dozen startups are doing the same. They have been inundated with orders — and not only from friends and family of the roughly 48 million Americans who are deaf or hard of hearing.
“You can tell so much by a facial expression, so it’s proving that it can be helpful to everybody,” Helton said.
Read the full story and see pictures of the windowed masks here.
New cases
Analysis & Commentary
7:04 a.m. The NFL can guard against COVID-19 all it wants, but players still have to tackle each other
The NFL really has this pandemic thing figured out, doesn’t it?
The latest science-driven protocols will be in place when players return to team facilities in the coming weeks. Testing for COVID-19 will be a regular occurrence. Proper social distancing will be observed. Masks will be mandatory at team meetings. Locker rooms will be cleansed and disinfected so often you might mistake them for operating rooms.
We expect that from a league that prides itself on military-like precision.
But there’s one little thing that keeps tugging at the sleeve: Eventually, the players are going to have to touch each other. Touching is sort of a necessity when it comes to huddling and blocking and — this is a biggie — hitting, which is the whole point of football.
Touching goes against the concept of keeping 6 feet away from the person closest to you. Tackling sneers at social distancing and, further, would blow it up like a defenseless receiver if it could. And what’s gang tackling but a renunciation of everything we’ve learned about keeping the coronavirus at bay?
A football game is a buffet table of germs. This virus will be on the menu. There are too many people involved in the NFL for it not to be.
Read the full commentary from sports columnist Rick Morrissey here.
