Thread by @mdoukmas

🚨THREAD🚨
Two years ago my first request for Cook County eviction court records was finally answered--a decade of data, every eviction case filed in one Excel spreadsheet. As I began analyzing I saw one landlord filing a disproportionate number of cases chicagoreader.com/chicago/chicag…

And by disproportionate I mean their filings looked like this:

This story began with the simple question: what's Pangea? I wasn't able to answer that with sufficient depth the first time I wrote a story mentioning them: chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archiv…

But over the last year and a half I got a lot deeper. The company has no public financial filings, but what became clear from speaking with executives, employees, tenants, and examining court records is that Pangea saw a unique business opportunity in the foreclosure crisis

This story isn't just about one landlord tho, it's about the toll eviction takes on people. 20,000 (mostly Black) people wind up in Chicago eviction court every year, 60% are ultimately ordered out of their homes. Even if they're not formally evicted, displacement still happens.

There are a lot of assumptions about the cost of renting to low-income people, about the risks involved. But evidence suggests landlords in the poorest neighborhoods profit more than those in wealthier ones. And as things stand now we know almost nothing abt landlords in Chicago

The vast majority of poor people live in unsubsidized housing, without section 8 vouchers. The poorest Chicagoans pay more than half their income in rent. This makes eviction almost inevitable.

Yet, eviction has long been seen as a deadbeat's problem, as a sign of personal failure. I hope this story helps folks develop a more nuanced understanding. Eviction can be a financial burden on a landlord, but it can irrevocably change a tenant's life for the worse.

This project wouldn't have happened without @just_shelter's and @evictionlab's groundbreaking research on eviction. I also owe an immense debt of gratitude to the tenants who shared their stories with me, revisiting some of the hardest things they've ever lived through.

I couldn't have done this without the support and encouragement of my colleagues at @Chicago_Reader, esp @rsamer @jakemalooley @davenewbart @ChiefRebelle and @sue_kwong and the editors who made this story into something worth reading: @amysilvermanaz @superanne and @Sujay721

Deepest thanks to @MedillSchool and @karilydersen1 for the @SJNNChicago grant that funded this work. And to the young up and coming journalists who provided hours of invaluable reporting assistance: @grace_m_stetson @NaomiWaxman @MattheMajor and @libbyaberry

Last but not least thanks to @PUSHA_T without whom this data analysis would never have been finished
chicagoreader.com/chicago/chicag…