This program is a co-production from NPR, IRW and FRONTLINE. Poverty, Politics and Profit: The Housing Crisis investigates the lack of affordable housing and whether government programs are working as they should.
The full program can also be watched on FRONTLINE’s site.
More working Americans are struggling to make rent than at any time since the Great Depression. In “Poverty, Politics and Profit: The Housing Crisis,” FRONTLINE and NPR investigate the crisis in affordable housing and why so few are getting the help they need. The program was produced in association with the Investigative Reporting Workshop.
The nine-month investigation took the team from Dallas to Miami, to an upscale resort in Costa Rica. NPR’s Laura Sullivan and FRONTLINE’s Rick Young (who previously collaborated on an investigation of the Superstorm Sandy relief effort, “Business of Disaster”) found just one in four households eligible for Section 8 assistance is getting it.
The money trail raised questions about the oversight of a program meant to aid low-income people. “Poverty, Politics and Profit” also explores the inseparability of race and housing programs in America, tracing a legacy of segregation that began more than 80 years ago.
The program is co-produced by the Investigative Reporting Workshop, which paired graduate researchers/reporters Kate McCormick, Jerrel Floyd and Josephine Peterson alongside Young and co-producers Emma Schwartz and Fritz Kramer. Floyd also worked as a production assistant in Washington.
MORE IN THIS SERIES:
- Patrice Taddonio’s overview on FRONTLINE‘s site.
- Learn more about how the low-income housing program works today —with fewer units being built and four-year waitlists — by Laura Sullivan and Meg Anderson, on NPR’s site.
- See how we determined that the federal housing program has led to fewer units being built by reading our methodology.
