The following was reported by The Utah Investigative Journalism Project in partnership with The Salt Lake Tribune. In a Feb. 15 committee hearing, Rep. Brady Brammer, R-Pleasant Grove, said HB328 was a common-sense approach to making sure asbestos lawsuits only truly target the guilty. The bill, Asbestos Litigation Amendments would require medical proof an individual...
Category: News
Utah set aside $10M for homelessness. Instead of services, cities tapped it for police
The following story was funded by The Economic Hardship Reporting Project and reported by The Utah Investigative Journalism Project in partnership with KUER, the Salt Lake City Weekly, The Standard-Examiner and The Spectrum News. It’s an early January afternoon and behind the Rio Grande Depot in Salt Lake City, several homeless individuals have been tediously...
Inmate challenges state law he says was meant as retaliation against whistleblowers
The following story was reported by The Utah Investigative Journalism Project in partnership with The Salt Lake Tribune. Utah law SB 242, passed in 2017, put a stop to the work of Reginald Williams. Williams, an inmate in the state prison, was known for filing dozens of Government Records Access and Management Act requests, or...
Worker shortage puts Utah’s prison in ‘crisis’
The following story was reported and written by The Utah Investigative Journalism Project in partnership with The Salt Lake Tribune. Utah’s $1.04 billion new prison was supposed to be the start of a revolution in how the state deals with incarcerated felons — with a laserlike focus on safety and rehabilitation. Instead, it’s being run...
Eviction expungement guide distributed to needy families for the holidays
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...
Legal battle over noncompete contracts may threaten mental health care for autistic kids
The following story was reported by The Utah Investigative Journalism Project in partnership with The Daily Herald and The Salt Lake Tribune. Saratoga Springs • On the worst days, Brittney Olsen remembers crawling into a closet to meet her son after school to hold him in her lap while he cried. The then-seventh grader, who...
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...
UIJP wins top watchdog reporting prize for eviction coverage
The Utah Investigative Journalism Project garnered a big win at this year’s National Association of Real Estate Editors journalism competition, winning the organization’s Kenneth R. Harney award for Best Real Estate Consumer Education Reporting. The award was for coverage of Utah’s handling of the eviction crisis, specifically how the state disbursed federal emergency rental assistance...
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...