This Thanksgiving Harmons Neighborhood Grocer held its annual turkey giveaway in collaboration with the low-income advocates of the Crossroads Urban Center, who helped distribute over 3,000 turkeys to needy families. The Utah Investigative Journalism Project was honored to contribute to the event by having our recent “How to erase your eviction record” guide included in...
Category: Housing
Public help needed identifying suspects from video for SLC Cold Case
The Utah Investigative Journalism Project has obtained video of two suspects of a hotel robbery in Draper, on October 11, 2021, who may have knowledge of the murder of Joseph Salas. The Utah Investigative Journalism Project reported on Salas’ death this summer in an article exploring the lack of trust between Salt Lake City’s unsheltered...
How to erase your eviction record in Utah (in English and Español)
By Eric S. Peterson, Silvia Nuila and Frank Regalado The following story was supported by funding from The Economic Hardship Reporting Project and reported by The Utah Investigative Journalism Project in partnership with Salt Lake City Weekly. (Para leer el texto en español vaya a la mitad del artículo.) Have you ever been evicted? Do...
Renters facing eviction don’t get enough help from new expungement law, advocates say
The following story was supported by The Economic Hardship Reporting Project and reported by The Utah Investigative Journalism Project in partnership with The Salt Lake Tribune. Utah renters can now erase past evictions off their records. If they paid their debt to their landlord and can file some paperwork to prove it, then they no...
Taxpayers spent over half a million dollars to clean homeless encampments in 2021
The following story was funded with support from The Economic Hardship Reporting Project and was reported by The Utah Investigative Journalism Project in partnership with The Salt Lake Tribune. On July 7, dozens of people experiencing homelessness in Salt Lake City frantically gathered their belongings from a camp along 150 North and 700 West. As...
Critics say a lack of trust between police and the homeless community is to blame for an unsolved homicide
The following story was funded with support from The Economic Hardship Reporting Project and was reported by the Utah Investigative Journalism Project in partnership with Salt Lake City Weekly. Joe Salas was in a dark mood when he said goodbye to his wife at the North Temple Trax station and headed north along the Jordan...
Utah helped landlords, not renters. How that’s changing.
The following was supported by funding from The Economic Hardship Reporting Project and was reported by The Utah Investigative Journalism Project in partnership with the Salt Lake Tribune. In 2021, a spokesperson for the Department of the Treasury was surprised to learn that Utah was using federal Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) money to pay landlords’...
A tax break for Utah seniors could be a lifeline–if people knew about it
By Cathy McKitrick The following story was supported by funding from The Economic Hardship Reporting Project and was reported by The Utah Investigative Journalism Project in partnership with City Weekly, The Spectrum & Daily News, Daily Herald, Standard Examiner, The Park Record and Living and Aging With Pride. Property taxes on the dream home Darrell...
Bills helping renters face uphill battle in Legislature dominated by real estate industry
The following story was supported by funding from The Economic Hardship Reporting Project and was reported by The Utah Investigative Journalism Project in partnership with The Salt Lake Tribune. Lacey Whyte knows all about the “scarlet E” that comes with having an eviction on your record and how difficult it makes it to get into...
Salt Lake apartment complex hikes rent after receiving the most federal aid in Utah
(Eric Peterson | The Utah Investigative Journalism Project) Jeremy Arrieta broke his lease and left the Solara apartments in Salt Lake City, now named Downtown West, a year ago due to a septic leak inside and a fatal shooting outside his apartment. Now he’s facing a lawsuit from the Law Offices of Kirk Cullimore. The...