Mom of 3 facing eviction receives over $200K in donations after CNN segment
Dasha Kelly was interviewed by CNN on Monday, where she said she and her daughters were facing eviction.
A woman facing immediate homelessness as the national eviction mandate ended raised more than $170,000 in an online campaign that launched just moments after her family was set to be pushed out of their home.
Dasha Kelly was interviewed by CNN on Monday, where she said she and her three children were facing imminent eviction.
She told the camera crew from the network that they “freaked (her) out” when they knocked on her Las Vegas apartment door. “I’m not going to lie,” Kelly said, “because I’m really thinking they’re coming at any moment.”
Within hours, during an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett, Kelly, a former casino card dealer who had been unemployed during the pandemic, was told how much money was raised on her behalf.
“I just want to tell everybody thank you so much,” Kelly said as she cried. “I’m still in denial.”
She and her three daughters — 8-year-old Sharron, Kia, who’s 6, and Imani, 5 — had been featured in an in-depth story about the end of the eviction moratorium the previous day following the successful efforts of California Rep. Maxine Waters and Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri. The White House pressured the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to issue new guidance for communities struggling with rising positive coronavirus testing rates due to the delta variant.
About 90% of the country will be covered by the ban, according to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said in a statement Tuesday evening that it’s “imperative that public health authorities act quickly to mitigate such an increase of evictions, which could increase the likelihood of new spikes in SARS-CoV-2 transmission.”
As previously reported, Bush stated that she would sleep outside of the U.S. Capitol building after Congress adjourned without voting to extend the national moratorium on evictions.
The congresswoman and others camped outside for consecutive nights before the new order came down.
Before her protest, Bush wrote in a letter to her Democratic colleagues, “We cannot in good conscience leave for August recess until the Federal eviction moratorium has been extended. We must do everything possible to protect the nearly 6.2 million households at risk of eviction.”
As for Kelly and her daughters, her GoFundMe campaign is nearing $200,000 in donations.
She told Burnett the response to her situation gave her hope.
“And I just want to make sure I do the best that I can,” Kelly added, “to help the next person that is in my same situation.”
TheGrio’s Matthew Allen contributed to this report.
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