|
Nonprofit, investigative journalism on a mission to hold the powerful
to account.
|
Donate
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Hello, newsletter readers, and happy Saturday to you. This week, let me take you outside of the national political discourse and all things Trumpworld. |
| Logan Jaffe, newsletter reporter |
|
|
Sure, we cover the federal government — including, most recently, how a proposed law enforcement overhaul led by Stephen Miller would give the White House and the Department of Homeland Security greater influence — but at ProPublica, we also investigate local and statewide issues that directly affect people who live in those places. Sometimes, those stories are overshadowed by the constant barrage of the news cycle. If you want to understand what’s happening in your backyard or how those local issues impact our national agenda, keep reading.
|
|
|
The big headline out of New York was Zohran Mamdani’s unexpected victory in the Democratic mayoral primary. But did you know that outside the city, nearly half of all people in the state who are receiving emergency shelter were placed in privately owned hotels and motels? That’s a problem, reported Spencer Norris of New York Focus (a member of ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network), in part because hotels aren’t required to provide the services families receive in shelters, such as food, help finding housing and sometimes child care. An analysis by the news organizations found that between 2018 and 2024, New York state’s spending on hotels to shelter people more than tripled.
|
|
|
Data source: Analysis of Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance data on emergency shelter payments. Years are fiscal years. (Lucas Waldron/ProPublica)
If you live in New York, that’s your tax dollars. And if you care about solutions to homelessness, you should read the story to get an idea of how ineffectual that spending is at pulling people out of the circumstances that led them there. “If our ultimate goal is to get people moving back toward independence, sticking them in a hotel on a hillside away from services, away from schools, away from transportation networks is not a great strategy,” said Adam Bosch, CEO of Hudson Valley Pattern for Progress, a policy research nonprofit.
But don’t take the policy guy’s word for it. Norris spoke with a woman named Jasmine Stradford, who, along with her partner, three children (then ages 3, 12, and 15) and four dogs, was placed in a room with two beds at an Econo Lodge in Broome County, near Binghamton.
“Going to the hotel, I originally thought, ‘OK, this gives a little bit more leeway, a little bit more comfort, hospitality, all of that,’ only to find out that it’s not that at all,” Stradford said. “If you are a [Department of Social Services] recipient, you’re nothing. You are the bottom of the pit.” |
|
|
Are you, like many Americans, in debt? Perhaps this next story will ring familiar if you’ve made desperate decisions and ended up trapped owing more than you ever anticipated.
Andrea Heady, pictured above, was sued by payday lender Advance Financial in Knoxville, Tennessee, for over $7,300, despite having paid the company nearly double what she ultimately borrowed. Reporter Adam Friedman of Tennessee Lookout, in collaboration with ProPublica, spoke with more than a dozen people who told him that Advance encouraged them to borrow more money after making minimum payments. The lender went on to sue them once they couldn’t pay back the loan.
Cullen Earnest, the senior vice president of public policy at Advance Financial, said that the company has an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau and that data from the Tennessee Department of Financial Institutions reflects the satisfaction of the vast majority of Advance’s customers. Advance isn’t operating in a vacuum. In Tennessee, borrowers used to be protected from this type of accumulating high-interest debt because reborrowing or rolling over payday loans was against the law. A 2014 law allowing Flex Loans changed that. Friedman’s story explores how state lawmakers passed a law that failed to protect borrowers. |
|
|
In July 2023, Georgia became the only state in which people who receive Medicaid must prove they are working, studying or volunteering. The federally subsidized health insurance program is supposed to cover nearly a quarter-million low-income Georgia residents. But, as Margaret Coker of The Current reported in collaboration with ProPublica, only 6,500 participants have enrolled in the first 18 months of the program — roughly 75% fewer than the state had estimated for year one.
A spokesperson for Gov. Brian Kemp told The Current and ProPublica that the program, known as Georgia Pathways to Coverage, was never designed to maximize enrollment. Kemp, a Republican, has long advocated for Medicaid reform, arguing that the country should move away from government-run health care. And many GOP lawmakers agree: Congressional Republicans are now seeking a similar law that would require millions of Americans to prove they are working in order to receive Medicaid.
Coker’s story this week uses Georgia as an example that shows how the GOP’s efforts to require proof of work could threaten health care for nearly 16 million Americans and cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. Coker dissects three proposals from Congress and frames them each by how that played out in Georgia, and what that might mean for your state, too.
|
|
|
|
