Margins of Error: Part I

Margins of Error: Part I is a documentary by unevictIA that examines the root causes and far-reaching consequences of housing instability in Iowa. Through compelling stories and expert insights, the film sheds light on the systemic factors driving eviction and displacement while exploring innovative approaches to address these challenges. Part I sets the stage for a deeper understanding of how housing insecurity impacts individuals, families, and communities across the state.

Margins of Error: Part II

Margins of Error: Part II is a documentary by unevictIA that examines the root causes and far-reaching consequences of housing instability in Iowa. Through compelling stories and expert insights, the film sheds light on the systemic factors driving eviction and displacement while exploring innovative approaches to address these challenges. Part I sets the stage for a deeper understanding of how housing insecurity impacts individuals, families, and communities across the state.

A Decent Home

A DECENT HOME is a feature length documentary film by Sara Terry that addresses urgent issues of class and economic inequity through the lives of mobile home park residents who can’t afford housing anywhere else. The film asks, Who are we becoming as Americans? — as private equity firms and wealthy investors buy up parks, making sky-high returns on their investments while squeezing every last penny out of the mobile home owners who lack rights and protections under local and state laws, and must pay rent for the land they live on.

Facing Eviction 

Filmed over the course of a year during the COVID-19 pandemic, “Facing Eviction” follows people and families across the country who struggled to remain housed as COVID upended the economy. The documentary examines how federal pandemic housing protections — including a temporary ban on evictions and a massive rental assistance program — played out in the experiences of people living through this precarious time: from tenants and landlords to lawyers, judges and the law enforcement officers carrying out evictions.

Life in the Heartland – Community Land Trust 

Filmed over the course of a year during the COVID-19 pandemic, “Facing Eviction” follows people and families across the country who struggled to remain housed as COVID upended the economy. The documentary examines how federal pandemic housing protections — including a temporary ban on evictions and a massive rental assistance program — played out in the experiences of people living through this precarious time: from tenants and landlords to lawyers, judges and the law enforcement officers carrying out evictions.

Owned: A Tale of Two Americas

The United States’ postwar housing policy created the world’s largest middle class. It also set America on two divergent paths — one of imagined wealth, propped up by speculation and endless booms and busts, and the other in systematically defunded, segregated communities, where “the American dream” feels hopelessly out of reach.

Owned is a fever dream vision into the dark history behind the US housing economy. Tracking its beginnings and its unbridled commoditization, the film exposes a foundational story that few Americans understand as their own.

Through the stories of a retired New York City cop, an eccentric Orange County realtor, and an aspiring real estate developer in Baltimore, Owned explores the promise of US housing policies, the systematic oppression in many of America’s “chocolate cities”, and the communities that these systems have created. The film suggests that ultimately, these communities have more in common than they might expect.