American Dream For Rent: Investors elbow out individual home buyers
Metro Atlanta has become ground zero for an investor takeover of the American Dream.
My Work
Housing Investigations
I've spent much of my career trying to understand and document the aftermath of the 2008 housing crisis, the consequences of which are still being felt today.
At the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, I led a team that chronicled how large investment firms are pushing homeownership out of reach for many first-time buyers. Our data analysis found that these investors disproportionately bought in places hit hardest by the subprime mortgage crisis, targeting entry-level homes in communities of color, a pattern that experts say is exacerbating the racial wealth gap. "American Dream for Rent," published in 2023, also showed how these firms exploited their market power and lax state laws to slam tenants with dubious fees, skimp on maintenance and aggressively pursue evictions when renters attempted to contest erroneous charges and hellish conditions.
The four-part series won a number of national and regional awards, including the bronze medal for investigative journalism in the Bartlett & Steele Awards and best data journalism in the SABEW Best in Business Awards. Our work has also been cited in academic studies examining the rise of investor-owned housing and by policymakers seeking reforms.
At the Indianapolis Star, our series "Abandoned Indy" uncovered waves of speculators buying homes dirt-cheap and abandoning them when they couldn’t find a buyer to flip them to. My reporting showed how our government was actively incentivizing bad actors to buy these homes, keeping neighborhoods locked in a cycle of decline. The 10-part project won the Kent Cooper Award for best news writing in Indiana in 2015.
American Dream For Rent: Investors slam tenants with fees, evictions
The growth of investor-owned, single-family rental giants has come at an extraordinary cost for many of their tenants.
Abandoned Indy: Blight Inc.
An Indianapolis Star investigation found
that, increasingly, the empty house next door is
not owned by a bank or an individual, but by one of many investors enticed by the prospects of cheap homes at government tax sales.
that, increasingly, the empty house next door is
not owned by a bank or an individual, but by one of many investors enticed by the prospects of cheap homes at government tax sales.
Abandoned Indy: The neighborhood auction block
Indiana’s convoluted tax sale system is not just delaying the recovery in Indianapolis neighborhoods; it is hastening the decline.
Accountability
I've covered state and local government in the Deep South, the Midwest and the Rocky Mountains, with a focus on holding government officials and corporations accountable.
Investor payouts put Sterigenics in tenuous financial position as pressure mounts
Years before neighbors knew the plant’s emissions could put them at risk of cancer, two private equity firms began extracting more than $2 billion to enrich their investors.
Peter Kassig's 'invisible' family suffered in silence
From the moment they met Peter Kassig, they were family. But not in the eyes of the federal government.
Warnings ignored: Why PERA is barreling toward its second funding crisis in a decade
The latest fiscal crisis was arguably self-inflicted, brought on by wishful thinking and a consistent pattern of putting hard choices off to the future.
Colorado had money to help renters. The state said not to apply.
As Colorado landlords closed in on a record 53,000 eviction filings in 2023, state housing officials told lawmakers they didn’t need rental assistance funding.
Training center costs call years of promises into question
The Atlanta Police Foundation solicits donations to the project with a pledge that the city will only contribute $30 million to the cause. But that hasn’t been true for years.
East Chicago lead pollution 'a potential catastrophe'
About once a week for much of 2015, Kamia Edwards’ son was too sick to go to school.
Misinformation, fears of development propel Lost Mountain cityhood push
The story plays on a fear shared by many West Cobb residents as they decide whether to incorporate the city of Lost Mountain. Trouble is, the story is not entirely true.
Trauma transfers could put lives at risk
A for-profit hospital in south Jackson repeatedly transferred emergency patients it was paid by the state to treat, possibly violating state hospital regulations and federal law.
Analysis and Explainers
I’ve always tried to shed light on the ways in which our government is broken — and how it can be better.
Colorado is steering affordable housing money to the middle class — and away from the working poor
In the intervening years, the project’s focus on lower-income workers vanished. Instead, many of the units will be rented out to the middle class.
Developers in the U.S. are forced to build parking no one uses. In Colorado, that’s starting to change.
While the urban sprawl resulting from the rise of American highways has been well documented, the cost of parking is less widely understood.
Two tax hikes later, Indy still has fewer cops than 2007
The city has less money, but is spending more of it on police. And the mayor wants to hire more officers, but he can barely afford to keep the ones he already has.
As the Front Range grows, rural Colorado gets less: How rising home values in Denver are crippling small fire departments
In a mobile home park where the Eastern Plains meet the Denver suburbs, the Sable Altura fire station sticks out like a sore thumb from its modest surroundings.
Race, class, partisanship loom large in Cobb cityhood votes
Each of the three new cities would be wealthier, whiter and more politically conservative than the county as a whole.
Low pay. Cuts to PERA. For some state workers in Colorado, it's like the recession never ended.
There’s one constant that hasn’t improved since the recession: an underfunded pension that keeps costing workers more for a shrinking retirement package.
As Colorado's governor, lawmakers target tax breaks, a program that covers 75% of the state's land could be in the crosshairs
A state tax break explicitly incentivizes renewable energy to fight climate change, while giving nearly twice as much to the fossil fuel industry.
TABOR faces a reckoning with Proposition CC
In 1992, Colorado voters decided state government should stop growing. But that didn’t stop them from demanding more public services.