My reporting and writing

Shelterforce •

Missouri Tenants Sue Owners Who They Say Broke Rules in Exiting Tax Credit Program

Ramona Teeter planned to live at the Rosewood Estates, her home for nearly two decades, for the rest of her life. The 79-year-old is bold, direct, and does not fear asking questions.

So six years ago, when the Springfield, Missouri, subdivision became eligible to leave the federal low income housing tax credit program, Teeter asked management if they had plans to opt out. Teeter says she was reassured that her affordable housing was safe.

Now, she’s a leader in a Springfield tenants union suin...
Next City/Shelterforce •

A Missouri Tenant Union’s Uphill Battle Against Millennia Housing

This story was co-published in collaboration with Shelterforce, the only independent, non-academic publication covering the worlds of affordable housing, community development and housing justice.When the second elevator in Jenny Lind Hall stopped working in early 2024, Elvester Kennedy thought he could wait it out. The first elevator had broken down years before and disabled residents relied on the one remaining to access the outside. Kennedy’s sister urged him to get out of his fifth floor apa...
Next City •

Private Equity Is Turning Mobile Homes Into Health Hazards. What Can Governments Do?

This story is the first in a series on manufactured housing and solutions to help mitigate threats facing mobile home residents, from private equity ownership to climate change.Four years ago, Valeria Steele’s West Virginia mobile home park was purchased by Homes of America, a subsidiary of well-known “vulture fund” Alden Global Capital. The private equity giant has become infamous for buying distressed newspapers, cutting staff, offloading assets and loading them with debt.

“They don’t make a...
KBIA •

Tick season poses a problem for Columbia's homeless community

Holding up a tick-removal tool the size of a dental floss pick, Cat Armbrust described it as “fantastic.”

“They’re really inexpensive so we can just hand them out like candy,” she said.

Armbrust, the director of the CoMo Mobile Aid Collective, said that tick season has hit hard for Columbia’s homeless community this summer. The group has been seeking donations for bug repellant and tools to safely remove ticks.

During one of the group’s recent med clinics, which are held twice weekly at Wilke
Street Sense Media •

Encampment cleanup paused for a day; residents resist

The woman climbed on top of a stack of furniture, determined. She lived on a dead-end sidewalk for three years and built it into her “apartment without walls” in a tunnel between Capitol Hill and Navy Yard. On June 28, she wanted to make it as hard as possible for employees from the Office of the Deputy Mayor of Health and Human Services (DMHHS) to move her home. She gave her name as Tiny.

Service providers, waste removal trucks and DMHHS workers began arriving at the underpass at 8:30 a.m. on
Street Sense Media •

Rally for poor and low-income people brings thousands to DC

Thousands of people gathered in downtown D.C. on June 18 to call on the U.S. government to do more to support the lives of millions of poor and low-income people living across the country.

The Poor People’s Campaign has a long list of demands to include: a federal $15 minimum wage, universal health care, expanded COVID-19 relief and guaranteed housing.

“This level of poverty and greed, in this — the richest nation in the history of the world — constitutes a moral crisis,” Bishop William. J. Ba
Street Sense Media •

West End encampment sweep displaces ‘staple of the community’

A man living in a tent on the edge of D.C.’s West End got up around 9:30 Thursday morning and gathered his belongings at the curb of M St. NW.

By 10:50 a.m., workers from the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services (DMHHS) and the Department of Public Works (DPW) pulled down the umbrella roof and plastic sheeting walls of the tent and loaded them in the garbage truck.

They had disposed of the man’s possessions: a sculpture of foam insulation and glitter, a soup pot and a fuchs