State Reporter
Nick Judin began his career in journalism at the Jackson Free Press in 2019, coming on as State Reporter to cover the 2020 legislative session. That posting quickly gave way to a year leading the JFP’s COVID-19 coverage. Nick’s reports from the frontline of coronavirus have repeatedly made national headlines, as he has asked hard questions of state leadership and done critical interviews with the state’s top public-health experts.
One lesson stands out from my time reporting in the Mississippi Delta on the mass constructive evictions of residents from an apartment complex there called Sunset Village: Be there.
A judge has ordered an independent inspection of the Sunset Village apartments just outside Cleveland, Miss., to ensure no threat of gas or carbon monoxide poisoning remains after two people died there in August.
The order requires that residents of the ailing complex be provided alternative housing and adequate meals until proper repairs and inspections are completed on their units.
Residents were expected to continue to pay rent and utilities for their units at Sunset Village even though they’d been forcibly removed from their apartments, while the apartment management firm paid for their motel rooms.
A growing population of unhoused Mississippians are caught in limbo between the legally accepted definition of homelessness and stable housing.
