The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "high rents" ...
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The High Cost of Being Poor
This series shows how businesses and merchants in the Buffalo area prey upon people living near poverty level. Examples include corner grocery stories that illegally cash checks and charge super-high fees, predatory loans for housing and cars, and the high cost of using rent-to-own appliances.
Tags: poverty; economics; local business; tax law; interest rates
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A Future Foreclosed
This two-part investigation shows how Boshwit Brothers Mortgage Co, a longtime Memphis mortgage company specializing in loans to the poor, used Tennessee's lender-friendly foreclosure laws to take possession of 189 houses where it had made mortgages. It seized the property when the owners couldn't meet the high-interest payments. Many of the properties were converted to rentals and entered in a federal rent subsidy program that nets the firm $240,000 a year.
Tags: NAACP; real estate; rent; landlords
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Nasty Boys
Despite several high profile sexual harassment cases in the 90s, the problem still exists in some companies. Former employees of Rent-A-Center are suing for $410 million dollars over allegations. These are the stories of the women who faced this problem head on.
Tags: sexual harassment
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Payday Profiteers
A Multinational Monitor investigation exposes the practices of the so-called "predatory lending," targeted to low-income workers. Some major findings are that payday loans' interest can reach up to 2000 percent per year, and that they can be rolled over more than 13 times for a 6-month period. The article examines different anti-usury state laws that ban or restrict predatory lending. The investigative package includes also stories on high-interest mortgages, car title loans and costly rent-to-own scams.
Tags: mortgage; banks; finance; loans; credit; customers; rent-a-center; the Associates First Capital Corp.; Citigroup; National Home Equity Mortgage Association; lobbying; credit unions
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Oh, Give Me Your Home
Pitch Weekly investigates the hidden scams landlords place on tenants when they offer contract for deeds on rental properties. The philosophy of the landlord- "buy low, rent as high as possible, don't spend a dime on repairs, then bail out before the place falls down." In 1995, the government signed into law a rental-licensing program. "It requires landlords to register properties, pay a modest fee and most important- submit rentals to annual inspections. . . But the landlords figured out a way around it. They started 'selling' their properties on contract for deed-sort of a homemade mortgage program in which the owner, not a commercial lender, accepts payment for the property over a drawn-out period." Pitch Weekly reports how often buyers get the raw-end of the deal.
Tags: housing; rentals; landlords; contract for deed; leasing; Unified Government; home-buyers; Kansas Consumer Protection Act; city inspections; real-estate
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Divided Feast
When Fresh Fields opened its doors on Washington D.C.'s low-rent P Street neighborhood in December 2000 many were unsure if the opulent nationwide organic grocer chain could survive in an area known more for "Popeyes and bulletproof windows." As part of a larger revitalization of D.C.'s Logan Circle area that began in the early 1990s, Fresh Fields was lured to P Street by a concerned group of citizens determined to set the neighborhood in a new direction with high quality grocers, a bakery, a hardware store, and upscale bicycle shop. Now Fresh Fields handles 20,000 transactions a week and is transforming not only the face of the community, but also the people who live in it.
Tags: urban renewal; urban development; Washington D.C.; Fresh Fields
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Sky-high Rents
This CAR project show that rents in New York have gone up by 67% as compared to a decade ago. An average renter in a New York household in 1999 spent more than 35% of its monthly income on rent. The rising prices are not limited to Manhattan but also apply to historically less expensive neighborhoods far from Manhattan.
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From the Manor Torn: Amid High-Tech Boom, A Fight Breaks Out Over Eviction of Latinos
"Junior Leaguers Join Nuns In Effort to Thwart Silicon Valley Landlord." Skyrocketing housing prices and gentrification are reaching into East Palo Alto, once a no-man's land down in Silicon Valley. "Carriage Manor," Benyam Mulugeta, a self-made real estate broker who emigrated from Ethiopia in 1972, owns a grungy apartment complex that houses close to 50 Latin immigrant families. Mulugeta is asking market value -- $5 million -- for the place but the most Sister Trinitas and the Daughters of Charity can muster is about half that amount. Even the Junior Leaguers can't tap into wealthy benefactors who say the housing issue is a "government problem." Mulugeta says he's about to finalize a deal with a local developer for his asking price who says that he was "once in their shoes."
Tags: housing; gentrification; immigrants; eviction; high rents; Silicon Valley; Junior League; Daughters of Charity.
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Tax free, high-rent housing
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports that "Tarrant County helped a developer build apartments for low-to moderate-income people. The trouble is that poor people can't afford to live in them--and it's all perfectly legal.... State and federal law give broad power to local housing corporations to set rules governing their projects... (the) Star-Telegram examination of the Trammell Crow apartments (was) based on county housing corporation records, financial statements and other documents, as well as interviews with banking and housing finance experts and state and federal officials..."
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slum landlord
CBC Radio exposed a slum landlord in Edmonton who was using the welfare system to exploit his tenants who were on social assistance by interceting and cashing their welfare checks and charging high rent. Reporters found that the landlord supplied the social services department with false information so that the checks could be sent directly to him, among other violations, Oct. 4, 1994.