Reporting with Data

WNC Poverty: A look behind the numbers
ASHEVILLE - Regional economist Tom Tveidt was a bit befuddled when he saw poverty numbers rise in Western North Carolina's metro area despite drops elsewhere. Those who work with the poor day in and day out, however, weren't as surprised. Nearly 17 percent of the population in Asheville lived in poverty in 2015, a 32 percent gain from the previous year, despite drops statewide and nationally, according to the U.S. Census American Community Survey data released in September. 
Read more at Citizen-Times.com or by clicking here. 

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WNC Poverty
While poverty levels in North Carolina were dwindling, they were expanding in the mountains and not where people assumed. It was the urban centers not rural Appalachia where people were suffering the most. Staff at the Census Bureau taught me how to set up tables using various indicators, geographic regions and surveys which allowed me to compare aspects of poverty across social markers, such as race, age and gender. I then found sources to interview and profile based on the Census tracks highest in need. I used enrollment data from public welfare agencies such as the Housing Authority of the City of Asheville and North Carolina's Department of Health and Human Services to further show this struggle. The series, supported by the Marguerite Casey Foundation, would have never come to be had I not been assigned to write a daily story on the region’s growth when new Census data was announced.

Buncombe close to ending veteran homelessness
Local agencies say that by January no veteran will be forced to live on the streets
The smell of cornbread wafts through the two-bedroom home off Mullberry Street in Woodfin. Bobby Lewis is making himself dinner. He has pork chops marinating in the refrigerator, baked sweet potatoes in the oven and collard greens on the stove. At 6 feet 5 inches tall, Lewis is a lanky man who speaks emphatically about his faith in Jesus Christ and the misgivings of his past. His wiry arms wave about as he tells the tale of his coming of age. His mother raised seven boys in the small town of Emporia, Virginia. Lewis was the shortest of the lot, he said, with a goofy grin spread across his face.
Read more at Citizen-Times.com or by clicking here. 

Homeless Veterans
The state of North Carolina, with the support of the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Agency, counts all people it can identify as homeless each year and catalogs the data publicly. In Asheville, these numbers were constantly rising due to gentrification and an unwieldy housing shortage. One year, however, I noticed a subgroup within the data where homelessness was rapidly decreasing. Homeless veterans were being prioritized for services, and the number of veterans living on the streets was edging toward zero. Using data from the Point In Time Count and from nonprofit agencies offering shelter and bed space, I was able to tell this story.  Again, this is an example where I was reviewing data for a daily news story and was able to take it a step further and turn a larger, enterprise piece.
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Asheville's Minority Business Program lags
Asheville's Minority Business Program lagsASHEVILLE – With millions in government contracts at stake in a sweeping riverfront redevelopment, advocacy and community development organizations are questioning whether the city is doing enough to ensure local businesses owned by African-Americans share in the work.  The city is set to accept bids soon for jobs tied to the East of the Riverway Multimodal Network project— a $36 million River Arts District makeover to improve roads, build greenways and add sidewalks linking thousands of homes with businesses, parks and schools. 
Read more at Citizen-Times.com or by clicking here. ​

Municipal Contracting
A line item buried within the city’s expenditures one year led me to write a piece on municipal contracting. Despite a program in place to encourage business with minority and female vendors, racial minorities had been loosing out on their share of the work for years. Through public records requests, I compared millions of dollars in city spending across departments and by contractor type. I then matched that to spending targets. The investigation revealed numbers as dismal as $260 spent with black construction vendors in 2016--a year of unprecedented growth and development in Asheville. ​

Upgrades needed: What's the fate of Asheville's pools?
​ASHEVILLE — For now, they sit empty, the large concrete boxes that during the hot, summer months are overflowing with chlorine-infused recreational fun. But during the summer, city pools provide not only a refreshing place to take a dip, they also serve as a public place for families to gather and children to play. In Asheville, these places are in bad shape. They're timeworn, and they don't meet federal standards. The city's pools are all more than four decades old. One, Malvern Hills in West Asheville, was built in 1921. None is in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and all are sorely in need of upgrades, said Roderick Simmons, director of parks, recreation and cultural arts for the city.
Read more at Citizen-Times.com or by clicking here. ​

Municipal Spending 
A story about a petition to save a pool in a poor part of town turned into an investigation of the safety and viability of all the pools in Asheville after I reviewed data from attendance logs, expenditures and city budgets over time. Despite spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on the public recreational facilities year after year, none of the pools were in ADA compliance, and many were falling apart. Whether or not they would open come summer was in doubt. ​

Asheville's YMI: A neglected dream?
Has the historical landmark lost its roots? Is there money to save it?
ASHEVILLE - There was a time when the YMI was the only place Marcell Proctor felt safe. The 1955 graduate of the then-all-black Stephens Lee High would meet uptown with his friends every Sunday. Doors to the Young Men’s Institute on the corner of Eagle and Market streets were rarely locked. The boys would play basketball and shoot pool in the three-story, 18,000-square-foot masonry building accented with stone, brick and wood inflections. They’d hangout at the soda fountain in the drugstore on the main floor, drinking Coca-Cola and enjoying ice-cream sundaes before walking to catch a show at the nearby Plaza Theatre. There, they would have to use the back door.
Read more at Citizen-Times.com or by clicking here. 

Municipal Grants, Nonprofit Budgeting
​A public records request to review city grants to nonprofit agencies allowed me to discover something wasn’t right with the financing of a historic nonprofit. For years, the YMI Institute received the same amount of financing from the City of Asheville, yet there were no program evaluations or audits on file. Other nonprofits would receive varying amounts of funding based on need and performance year by year and would have to account for their spending of public funds. The YMI, it turned out, was the beneficiary of an outdated city partnership and didn’t receive such scrutiny. The nonprofit had been operating in the red for years and longtime volunteers and members feared the building, which once stood as a beacon of hope to the black community, would be shut down.

More stories with a data focus

• Battling for the right to work while pregnant in NC (U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission data)
• Journey for young immigrants often ends with deportation (U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement data)
• A citizen of nowhere living in Asheville (U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services data)
• Hope for peace emerges after deadly time in Deaverview (Municipal crime data)