Transportation and information barriers make cooling centers difficult to access for many people living on the streets or in cars.
Housing and Homeslessness
Employees within the Richmond County School System tell the I-TEAM say it's chaos behind the scenes when it comes to enrolling homeless and vulnerable students missing permanent addresses and transportation to school.
The I-TEAM uncovered more than 11,000 students were chronically absent from schools across Augusta since the start of the pandemic.
"I worked with a lot of seniors facing a tremendous amount of stress and housing insecurity and, you know, deciding between feeding your pets, yourself, or paying your rent," said one Bay Area director of senior housing.
The reporting team uncovered nearly 3,000 students in the Richmond County School System are unaccounted for this school year.
About 400 unhoused people stay at Hotel Whitcomb, and many deal with substance use disorders. That means staff who work at the hotel are fighting to keep guests alive.
Amid plenty of praise for the nonprofit’s hard work, there‘s also a troubling allegation, an explosion under investigation, and inflated claims.
The homegrown nonprofit has risen fast in four years, from managing portable toilets to running hotels. Now it has national ambitions.
New Tenderloin Site Highlights Challenge of Connecting People to Drug Treatment and Housing Services
The new site opened amid mounting pressure on city leaders to reduce open-air drug use and skyrocketing overdose deaths in the neighborhood.
Many vulnerable Minnesotans have no idea that their county can place a hefty lien on their home to recover expenses for long-term care.