Before writing Need rental assistance? These 3 routes are available for metro Atlantans for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, I already had an idea where the story would go. The AJC had written several stories chronicling Georgia’s disbursal of rental assistance money received through federal relief efforts. Progress was slow, but the Georgia Department of Community Affairs, the City of Atlanta and several metro Atlanta counties had provided tens of millions of dollars in rental assistance over the past two years.
Still, according to the United Way of Greater Atlanta, the most-searched service on its 2-1-1 nonprofit referral website was rental assistance. Clearly, people were still seeking help, and this piece was meant to be an updated resource guide to help readers find it. So, I tried to take a practical approach to reporting and writing the story.
I got in touch with the Department of Community Affairs, which oversees state-wide distribution of federal rental assistance funds. I received contextual information about the amount of money still available, average wait times to receive assistance, and I confirmed the criteria and documents the state requires from applicants. It was important to spell out all the requirements in the story so it would be a comprehensive resource. Otherwise, people might spend time gathering information and applying for assistance when they aren’t eligible.
Since metro Atlanta counties directly received federal funds, I looked through county websites to see which still operated rental assistance programs and how people can access them. We included plenty of links and phone numbers to help direct readers to the resources listed. Aside from government agencies, past reporting had shown me that nonprofits were another key source for assistance.
The United Way and Impact46, a nonprofit in Lawrenceville, taught me about the limitations different organizations face in distributing rental assistance. Fraud was a concern for the government and nonprofits alike, which in part explains the extensive documentation requirements. Nonprofits providing assistance through a federal Emergency Solutions Grant, such as Impact46, have more restrictions in place than those using donations or other types of funding. I also spoke with a past source who directs a food pantry and financial assistance nonprofit in DeKalb County to better understand trends in need from his perspective and the relative efficiency of different groups in providing assistance. Speaking on background let me sort through the remaining questions I had in a more casual setting, and our conversation helped untangle the complicated web of government and non-government assistance options.
My reporting resulted in a list of resources and recommendations about how to find help paying rent, mortgages and utilities in the metro area. I tried to write the story with accessibility in mind, knowing that style wasn’t as important as substance and clarity. The biggest lesson I learned was that receiving help requires time and a lot of paperwork. It’s important to learn what’s required before applying to prevent as many potential delays as possible.
I carved out a beat within the Covering Poverty space, focusing mostly on nonprofit groups. I followed what I learned up with the AJC piece, Rental market boom hinders housing nonprofits. Covering Poverty’s housing beat guide provides resources in terms of datasets and questions to consider. For that story, I dug into data about fair market rents and interviewed individuals with housing nonprofits in metro Atlanta to focus on the current impact and what is possibly to come.
William Newlin is a graduate student at the University of Georgia with work appearing in Georgia Health News, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The Red & Black.
Sean Keenan’s work can be found in The New York Times, Atlanta Magazine, The Daily Beast and Vice — just to name a few places. Sean is a freelance reporter and he also covers housing for the Atlanta Civic Circle. He joined The Lead podcast, another project with the Cox Institute for Journalism Innovation, Management, and Leadership to talk about why housing reporting is essential, the importance of holding public officials accountable, balancing accountability with objectivity and what drives him to keep covering housing.
Sean Keenan also shared his insights on covering evictions for this piece on our website: How to Cover Evictions, and you can find more information about covering the intersection of housing and poverty with our Housing Beat Guide.
Hear freelance and housing reporter Sean Keenan discuss why housing reporting is essential and more.
Kyra Posey is a graduate student studying journalism at the University of Georgia.
This article aimed to discuss the prevalent and often overlooked issue of student food insecurityand provide resources for students in Athens-Clarke County.
We expanded our focus past just the University of Georgia’s campus and researched the University of North Georgia’s Oconee Campus, Athens Technical College and campus ministry groups.
We observed several of the food pantries to better understand how they operate and take appropriate photographs. Brieanna Smith said this observation method was new to her and she enjoyed the hands-on approach. Something I have noticed through doing in-person observation is the learning curve of the group I’m working with and myself. Often the organization is not used to during interviews or having reporters come and observe and vice versa. Therefore, reporters should go in with a short list and game plan of what they need and want to accomplish at the organization to put both parties at ease.
This article also taught us about obstacles with obtaining information due to organization’s policies and protection of people’s information. We had to continually follow up and do several rounds of iterations to make sure we included all the necessary information. We also learned to put the newest and most relevant information at the beginning. Initially, we primarily focused on college food pantries that have been functional for several years, but we then switched the focus to the newer Presbyterian Student Center Food Pantry to make it most informational to our readers.
Learn more about food insecurity on college campus and how to cover it here:
Allison Caso is a fourth-year finance and journalism student at The University of Georgia. She has reported for The Athens-Banner Herald, The Borgen Project, and Grady Newsource.
Brieanna Smith is a fourth-year journalism student at the University of Georgia with work appearing in the Athens-Banner Herald, The Red & Black, Infusion Magazine and 90.1 WABE Atlanta.
The goal of this project was to provide an extensive list of resources available to food and shelter insecure residents in Athens-Clarke County. We also wanted to factor in COVID-19 and how it affected these populations in Athens. To gain background information we looked at data from the U.S. Census Bureau, The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and several articles discussing the COVID-19 in relation to Athens-Clarke County.
This article was an extensive project that involved researching and calling various locations around Athens to gain information about programs offered. This type of project was different that other articles because it relied less on a few in-depth interviews, and the information came from a wide variety of shorter confirmation phone calls. We worked through several iterations of this article, trying to figure out the best way to present the information to make it available and useful. This process led to the suggestion of including nearby bus lines, so people had a way to get to the organizations listed.
One challenge I experienced in working on this article was finding the balance of how much information to include about each organization. Additionally, some services at certain organizations changed as we continued working on the article, and we had to continuously update and make sure the information we had was up to date.
Brieanna Smith said working on this article forced her to “step into other people’s shoes to report on this,” and ask what the population needed to know. She also brainstormed ways to make it accessible offline.
Foster Steinbeck visited Timothy Baptist Food Bank several times and found several other sources through going in person. He also said going in person allowed him to better understand the work they do and ultimately take better photographs.
The most important part of working on an article like this is to follow up with sources and attempt to get out in the field to really see the work these organizations do.
Check out these resources on the Covering Poverty website about how to report for service journalism.
Allison Caso is a fourth-year finance and journalism student at The University of Georgia. She has reported for The Athens-Banner Herald, The Borgen Project, and Grady Newsource.
Brieanna Smith is a fourth-year journalism student at the University of Georgia with work appearing in the Athens-Banner Herald, The Red & Black, Infusion Magazine and 90.1 WABE Atlanta.
Foster Steinbeck is a fourth-year journalism student at The University of Georgia with the Covering Poverty Institute.
No matter one’s economic status, raising a child is expensive. But for parents and guardians in poverty, these expenses can be even more challenging to regularly afford. When I received the pitch to cover diaper need in Atlanta, I wasn’t aware how costly disposable diapers could be for the average family. Looking into data and reading stories of baby supply insecurity in Georgia was eye-opening, especially at a time where inflation is at a record high across the country.
I began my research looking into the problem of “diaper need” directly. I browsed the National Diaper Bank Network website for national and statewide statistics to understand the enormity of the issue. I was shocked by the statistics I found; so many families depend on creative methods to stretch out their diaper supplies to ensure they last as long as possible. I wanted to shift my thinking to why diaper need had grown to such a big issue. This led me to research the global supply chain shortage and explain how it impacts store shelves and prices all over the country. I also highlighted the prices of disposable diaper packs at different grocery stores in the area to further place into perspective how these supply shortages affect local communities as well as larger markets.
I then looked up nonprofit organizations in the metro Atlanta area working to provide free resources, which is how I discovered Helping Mamas. The organization has grown immensely over the past 6 years and adjusted its method of outreach to better suit metro Atlantans during the pandemic. I spoke with Jamie Lackey, founder and chief executive officer of Helping Mamas, about how her organization plays a role in diminishing diaper need. I also spoke with Maria Henriquez, director of Medicaid plan marketing at Amerigroup Georgia about the initiatives she and her team take to help needy families.
Diapers, disposable or otherwise, are necessary for babies to remain healthy as they grow to become toddlers, which makes diaper availability an issue connected to health care. The health care beat on the Covering Poverty website gave me great questions to ask myself as I carried out the reporting and writing process.
Janelle Ward is a senior at the University of Georgia.
Covering Poverty has compiled some of the most interesting reporting from 2021, from video stories, to features, to photography. Read why we chose them below.
This story was produced as part of “Barren Mile: COVID-19 and the fight against food apartheid,” which was a Report for America initiative that brought together four Black-owned newsrooms — New York Amsterdam News, the Atlanta Voice, St. Louis American and Black Voice News — to look at how COVID-19 impacted food security in their communities. This specific piece features photographs from various towns in America to document what food insecurity looks like from Sitka, Alaska to Athens, Georgia.
This ProPublica piece examines welfare funding’s frequent requirement that women identify who fathered their children and when they became pregnant, among other deeply personal details. This practice has deep roots in U.S. history — back to the bastardy laws of colonial times. The contemporary, less violent arrangement requires states to “go after fathers of children whose mothers had applied for welfare, in an attempt to get them to pay child support to the government as repayment for those welfare dollars.” This piece makes our list because of its deep examination of the welfare legislation and its focus on the affected mothers.
In 2013, the story of Dasani Coates took up five pages in The New York Times. With eight siblings, Dasani and her family lived in a city-run homeless shelter in Brooklyn. This original piece provided a rare look into how homelessness affects the course of one’s life.
In September 2021, The New York Times Magazine published another piece — When Dasani Left Home. New York Times writer Andrea Elliot was allowed to follow Dasani’s family for almost 10 years, and in the follow-up piece, Dasani separates from her family at 13 years old to attend Milton Hershey school – a boarding school that tries to rescue children from poverty. This makes our list because of the author’s dedication to telling this story, and the attention to carefully tell Dasani’s story. (The author has also published a book: “Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City”).
This piece tells the story of an employee walk-out in Bradford, Pennsylvania, a town with a 30 percent poverty rate. McDonalds’ employees from a Bradford location, tired of low wages, 60-hour workweeks and an emotionally taxing job, banded together and walked out of the McDonald’s in protest. This story examines the aftermath of the walkout and provides context on the working conditions and low wages of the corporate fast-food industry.
This story was produced as part of “Barren Mile: COVID-19 and the fight against food apartheid,” which was a Report for America initiative that brought together four Black-owned newsrooms — New York Amsterdam News, the Atlanta Voice, St. Louis American and Black Voice News — to look at how COVID-19 impacted food security in their communities. This particular piece looks at how Black people, who were affected by food insecurity at higher levels than white people during the pandemic, took to urban gardening as “home-grown solutions to the redlining-induced problem of limited access to healthy foods.” This piece also addresses how “food deserts,” or what activists call sites of “food apartheid,” systemically affected Black communities.
This video examines how Pheonix’ urban design contributes to extreme heat in the city. The city is looking to trees as part of its heat mitigation strategy, but trees are distributed unevenly across the city. There are fewer trees in the south and west, which is where many lower-income neighborhoods are located. This piece does an incredible job at explaining how trees could be a solution, and at exploring the promises – and gaps – of the city’s “tree equity” plan.
This reporting from CNN’s International Correspondent Clarissa Ward details how extreme flooding in south Sudan displaced hundreds of thousands, pushing many into poverty. This illustrates how climate change will affect everyone, and those in poverty are the most vulnerable.
This story follows nonprofit outreach and resource navigator Susan Adock as she builds relationship with Nashville’s homeless population. Adock also is a photographer, and uses her photography to advocate for those affected by poverty. This deeply personal piece follows Susan’s work and also details how Nashville’s homeless have become increasingly vulnerable, from a tornado and bombing in 2020 to the city’s clearing of homeless camps.
This piece examines housing support in the economically depressed Missisippi Delta, a majority-Black rural region in the South. It tells the story of one woman’s home renovation after her house had decayed throughout her years of occupancy, and the piece also shines a light on housing injustice in the region. Photos document how the home renovation — made possible from a state grant — improved the woman’s home.
This story describes why vulnerable students, often living in poverty, were the hardest hit from school disruptions amid the coronavirus pandemic. Families often don’t have the resources to deal with breakdowns in the public education system, and can’t educate their child when they are exposed to COVID-19 and have no access to online schooling.
Kyra Posey is a graduate student studying journalism at the University of Georgia.
Climate change affects many aspects of society, such as human health, agriculture and food security, water supply, transportation, energy and ecosystems.
These aspects are expected to become increasingly disruptive as the century continues.
As global temperatures and sea levels rise and as the oceans acidify, research shows that people living in poverty are the most severely impacted.
Climate change affects everything from where a person can live to their access to health care, and it will be difficult for people in poverty to adjust.
Up to 132 million people will be pushed into extreme poverty by 2030, according to research.
Research Guide
Here is a list of databases, essential reading and institutions with information to help you form the right questions about poverty and climate change.
Aren’t finding what you need? Check out our list of essential studies, data and tools.
If you’re feeling stuck, use the resources below to help answer these questions. They might help you get started on a story or expand on an idea about climate change and poverty.
What percentage of families in your county live below the poverty line?
What is the unemployment rate?
What is the poverty rate in your county?
Is extreme heat affecting my city’s poorest communities?
What questions should I ask government officials about how they’re combatting the effects of climate change?
How could climate change affect people in poverty in my state?
How could climate change affect people in poverty in the future?
This resource by American Forests, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit conservation organization, provides a map of tree cover in cities and towns across America. The Tree Equity Score calculates a score from 1-100 based on how much tree canopy and surface align with income, employment, race, age and health factors in the U.S. This resource provides a score for 150,000 neighborhoods and 486 urbanized areas in America.
The Annual Greenhouse Gas Index, produced by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, measures the capacity of Earth’s atmosphere to trap heat as a result of the presence of long-lived greenhouse gases. This data provides information about how human activity has affected the climate system.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP) collects Greenhouse Gas (GHG) data from large emitting facilities, suppliers of fossil fuels and industrial gases that result in GHG emissions when used, and facilities that inject carbon dioxide underground.
This data from the U.S. Census Bureau provides detailed information about the U.S. population, including housing, economics, and demographic information. This data set will be useful in stories which examine climate issues in certain communities and neighborhoods.
This investigation from NPR and the University of Maryland’s Howard Center for Investigative Journalism uses NASA/U.S. Geological Survey satellite imagery and U.S. Census American Community Survey data to show the link between heat and income in U.S. cities. They detail their methodology and share the link to their open-source computer program for journalists and organizations who want to replicate their investigation.
This NASA report the origins and development of the “heat island” concept. The “heat island” effect was discovered when scientists first observed cities growing warmer than surrounding rural areas.
This federal program researches the forces shaping the global environment and their impacts on society. There you can access the National Climate Assessment, view reports, examine the physical science behind climate change and more.
The EPA’s climate change website provides climate change facts, information about what the EPA is doing, and datasets and reports such as the Social Vulnerability Report which examines how climate change specifically impacts socially vulnerable populations based on income, education, race and ethnicity.
Covering evictions can be a challenge for reporters. Shelter is a basic human need, and an eviction is a traumatic event for individuals. There are multiple angles to cover this topic, from how difficult it is for people to recover from an eviction to how to explain the complex eviction process.
When Sean Keenan reported on the U.S. Supreme Court’s rejection of the Biden administration’s nationwide ban on evictions in August 2021 due to the financial turmoil caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, he wrote these words:
“For more than a year, Atlanta renters have dreaded the crash of what Terri Lee, the city’s chief housing officer, called a ‘tsunami’ of evictions — a tidal wave of displacement in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now, it seems that wave is cresting.”
He wrote these words with such gravity because he knew that millions of people across the U.S. were suddenly at risk for eviction after the Supreme Court struck down the protections originally mandated due to the economic effects of the pandemic. Keenan reports on housing for the Atlanta Civic Circle, an online news platform that provides in-depth reporting on the most critical issues facing metro Atlanta.
“I was just like, so many people are going to become homeless, and a lot of those people will die,” Keenan said.
More than 8 million U.S. adults live in households that are behind on rent payments, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey. Over 4 million Americans have no confidence that they won’t be able to pay next month’s rent.
“Housing is central to almost every aspect of your life. Where you live dictates where you can go to school, where you can get a job, the safety of your environment,” Keenan said.
Even after the Supreme Court rejected the nationwide ban on evictions, counties and states still were legally allowed to have an eviction ban. But with no federal mandate, some of those bans, such as the ones in DeKalb County and in California, expired in September 2021, putting hundreds of thousands of more renters at risk of eviction.
Housing and government reporters have useful tips to remember while reporting on evictions.
Holdgovernment officials accountable.
Reporters can hold government officials accountable by asking questions about how government entities are working to prevent evictions, and exploring whether the government’s actions match their promises in their reported stories.
Linked to the issue of ensuing evictions is states’ slow distribution of money from emergency rental assistance programs, such as in DeKalb County, which only distributed a portion of the $21 million provided by the federal government for renters in need when the county’s eviction moratorium expired.
After the Supreme Court decision came down, slow distribution made Keenan check in on what counties were doing to prevent evictions.
When Fulton County officials said that they were protecting evictions and they had their own rental assistance program to aid in this, Keenan asked whether the county would enact an eviction moratorium.
The county judge said that Fulton would not extend an eviction moratorium, even though at the time DeKalb had one in place. This proved that Fulton, in fact, was not doing everything in its power to prevent evictions.
“A lot of this job is putting fire to the feet of public officials,” Keenan said. “All you can do is ask the questions.”
At best, holding officials accountable affects change after they confront how their decisions are actively affecting at-risk citizens, and at the very least, this reporting can inform audiences about which officials are responsible for the issues at hand.
“Public officials can almost always do more to help people,” Keenan said.
Also be sure to write how government actions — or inactions — to prevent evictions are affecting people at risk of eviction along with the accountability approach.
“Once you have an eviction on your record, it’s 100 times harder to find another apartment or another house to rent,” Tyler Estep, a reporter covering DeKalb County for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, said. “So it’s kind of a balancing act of doing that government accountability piece, but not losing sight of how it’s affecting real people.”
Utilize other sources besides those being evicted.
It can often be difficult to speak with renters who are at-risk for eviction, as often talking with a reporter when they’re facing homelessness is the last thing on their mind.
Through collaboration with the Poynter Institute, Street Sense Media has created a guide for covering the homelessness crisis.
Estep recommends developing relationships with local nonprofits, housing advocates and homeless shelters.
“A lot of times, those are the trusted people in the community,” Estep said. They can either speak on their perspective on the housing crisis as a community leader, or connect reporters with people affected by eviction.
Janice Yu, a reporter at Fox 5 Atlanta, said reporters can explore what those at risk of being evicted are experiencing, but can also look at the issue through the perspective of landlords, realtors, eviction attorneys and more.
“There’s going to be stories for days because you can tell it from the tenants’ angle, you can tell it from the landlord’s angle,” Yu said. “At the rate that they’re coming in, there will be more evictions that are served, so how many can these law enforcement officers handle in a day? Another thing is, how long is it going to take for these people to get kicked out of their homes? There are so many other arms of the story that you can get that might not be what everyone else is doing.”
Understand the reality of the people who are most affected by evictions.
During the reporting process and the production process, work to understand what people affected by evictions are actually experiencing, including renters and landlords. This process can sometimes lead to a service journalism approach.
“At the end of the day, you have to think about how what you’re producing is impacting and who it’s about,” Keenan said.
To better understand what people at risk of eviction had to go through in order to receive federal rental assistance, Keenan filled out the complicated paperwork required for receiving rental assistance in Georgia. Georgia differs from some other states, like Texas, where only a legal attestation is required to receive relief funds.
“They required all of this paperwork, and especially for those affected by poverty, or old people who don’t have technical skills, or people who just don’t have access to computers or cell phones, it was incredibly difficult to even apply for it,” Keenan said.
This process allowed him to better understand the barriers to access to receive federal funding.
Keenan also received emails from people who were at risk for eviction or who applied for assistance asking for his advice. While he can’t help in every case, there have been a few instances where he’s been able to get responses to people’s questions from his connections in local governments. This fits in, too, with Atlanta Civic Circle’s solution journalism approach as it ramps up outreach to affected communities.
Yu also recommends becoming familiar with the process that leads to an eviction and what happens after an eviction notice is issued. When she reported on the Supreme Court decision in August 2021, she learned that many tenants facing eviction are unaware of the steps they need to take when an eviction notice is issued. She reported a story about what people need to do if they receive an eviction notice.
“As a journalist covering these topics, it’s good to know the background,” Yu said. “And maybe the background becomes your story.”
Maintaining a human connection to what people at risk of eviction might be experiencing and having empathy can ensure sensitive and ethical coverage.
“You have to talk to real people differently than you would to some county commissioner that you’re trying to hold accountable for a vote on some issue,” Estep said. “It’s a different tone, and you have to remember that you’re a human, too. Sometimes journalists try to separate themselves from the story, but at some point, you have to maintain that human connection with them.”
Kyra Posey is a graduate student studying journalism at the University of Georgia.
Covering Poverty reporters Hayley Croke, Janelle Ward and Allison Caso joined a Twitter Spaces chat on Friday, Nov. 12 to discuss their tactics for covering poverty, share approaches to service journalism pieces and reflect on what they’ve learned since they began working with the Covering Poverty initiative.
The discussion, moderated by site coordinator and contributor Kyra Posey, brought up important insights about the process behind service journalism stories, serving your audience and letting your sources drive the story. You can find some of the most important takeaways below.
When writing service journalism stories, take yourself out of the equation and consider what your audience actually needs to know.
“When we’re at UGA, there is such a divide between us and the Athens community. And we don’t normally interact with people in the community a lot. Sometimes we stay in our UGA bubble. And so I think it’s really important to find the pieces that serve the community, because they’re here all the time, and we’re just here for a couple of years. It’s kind of our duty to, you know, bring them into that equation and kind of shine a light on that.” -Allison Caso.
“For me, finding newsworthy service journalism stories is relatively easy, honestly, especially in this socio-economic climate that we’re living in with the housing crisis and food insecurity kind of everywhere, especially in Athens. It’s almost as if there are potential stories everywhere you look, but it’s the question of how to ensure those pieces serve your audience that’s most challenging. For example, for a piece that I’m working on now about where to find diapers in metro Atlanta and how to afford them. There’s so much useful information that I’ve gathered on my topic, but I obviously cannot include it all or else the article would be way too long. So deciding what to keep and how best to arrange it ultimately affects how effectively the audience understands what you’re reporting.” -Janelle Ward.
There are many statistics and historical facts to consider when writing about poverty. Consider including what the reader will benefit from the most.
“I usually will put it all down and then go back and reread and think to myself, ‘what’s important for context, versus what’s a number that I want to put in there, just because it’s something I think that’s important to the story?’ So being able to take yourself out of it, and say, ‘what does the reader need to know versus what would I ideally love to have in the story,’ just making sure the numbers you have in there are necessary and easy to follow.” -Hayley Croke.
“It can be kind of hard for me to determine how many statistics is too much to include in one story. So I start with the info that I think I’ll absolutely need to include, and then I’ll branch out from there if necessary. And for me, the same thing goes for historical context. I’m a history major, so I love historical background, I love facts and figures. So I start with enough information to fill the reader in on something that they might not know.” -Janelle Ward.
Click here to listen to Janelle’s insights.
Let your sources guide your story.
“This project has really made me change the way I look at my relationship with sources. These are issues that obviously I do research before I talk to sources, but something really important I learned when dealing with sources for these stories is to really listen to what they’re saying. Ask them to expand upon things that they’re talking about, they have difficulties with, or things that they’re saying are working really well. It’s really important to hear them out more, because they’re coming from a place where they have more experience about the story that you’re covering, so it’s so much more important to understand their perspective than to just write about the research you’ve done. You want to create a good balance between the two, to make the story both empathetic and informational.” -Hayley Croke.
Click here to listen to Hayley’s insights.
When heading into interviews with people affected by poverty, and writing for an audience affected by poverty, do your research.
“You don’t want to make anyone that you’re interviewing or anyone that’s going to read what you’re writing uncomfortable. And so I think the best thing to do with that is just researching prior to interviewing anyone, and reading a lot of other pieces, maybe about the same topic and figuring out how you can be the most direct with the information that is still sensitive to the people that are going to be reading it or that you’re going to be interviewing. Include what is necessary, but not anything for the shock value or just to kind of get a reaction out of people.” -Allison Caso.
If you’re just starting to cover poverty related issues, be patient with yourself.
“Be patient both with yourself and with the piece that you’re working on. And by that I mean don’t expect to nail the writing style all at once. It takes time to perfect, to hone your craft. But at the same time, you know, it’s easy as you know journalism students to feel like oh, you’re just hammered with deadlines, you have to finish this story and that story. But really understand that isn’t just another deadline for you to check off your to-do list. This is real journalism that directly affects the community. It affects people who come from all different types of backgrounds. This is literally people’s lives, for some it might be life or death, or you know, it might be an issue of starvation or diapers. These are very, very important issues and you should handle them gently and you should just really put forth the most effort in making sure that all of your reporting is accurate and very informative. Welcome mistakes that you make along the way, and don’t be too hard on yourself. Because ultimately, that’s how you learn — by making mistakes and correcting them.” -Janelle Ward.
Similar to my and Carolyn Crist’s previous Atlanta Journal-Constitution story, I began gathering information for “How metro Atlanta housing groups adapted to COVID-19” by looking for organizations. Rather than take a broader look at the finances of various nonprofit groups, this story focused on the physical and organizational changes within homeless shelters and affordable housing groups due to the pandemic. How did they adapt? Are things getting back to normal?
Google searches and consultations with the Guidestar nonprofit database helped me find groups within my area of focus. From emergency shelters in the City of Atlanta to a youth shelter in Marietta to an affordable housing group in Roswell, I began making phone calls. I received a lot of voicemails. Follow-up emails proved useful, and after a while I gathered a useful sample of anecdotes and experiences that informed my story.
Before I reported this piece, I didn’t know that certain types of housing carry technical definitions. For example, the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Continuum of Care Program defines transitional housing as providing “interim stability” until an individual or family can achieve a permanent home. Per HUD guidelines, people living in transitional housing must maintain a lease in their own name. The Center for Family Resources is the liaison for the Marietta/Cobb County Continuum of Care and follows federal rules to receive funding for itself and its housing partners in the area, such as MUST Ministries.
I also learned about the hotel voucher program implemented earlier this year to people experiencing homelessness in Atlanta. The American Rescue Plan passed this spring provided 202 emergency vouchers to Atlanta’s housing authority. It created vacancies at Our House’s shelter downtown, prompting the group to expand its eligibility criteria to house more families. Asking my sources about housing distinctions and programs related to their missions helped with accuracy once I reached the writing stage.
While every group and all my sources had their own stories, trends did appear. Namely, each nonprofit cut back on volunteers, rearranged how they accepted and housed clients and kept a keen eye on regulations created and updated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, it was important for me to include human emotion alongside discussions of safety protocols. All of my sources expressed fatigue regarding their work over the past 18 months and deep concern for the people they serve. I tried to select quotes that highlighted those emotional details.
William Newlin is a graduate student at the University of Georgia with work appearing in Georgia Health News, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The Red & Black.
