inewsource’s investigative journalism exposes wrongdoing and inequities – and gets results.

Tenant protections promised to thousands of low-income San Diegans

More than 30,000 low-income families across San Diego County now have been promised the same protections from excessive rent increases guaranteed to other California tenants. The change came after our investigation revealed that San Diego’s housing commission wasn’t checking to ensure rent increase requests from Section 8 landlords complied with state law. Using public records requests and data analysis, we showed how several agencies likely were approving rent increases above caps set in state law. Several agencies’ policies changed in the weeks following publication.

Facing homelessness again, San Diegan remains housed after inewsource report

A once unhoused San Diegan was facing eviction due to an expired public housing voucher until inewsource investigated and found that a paperwork error by a publicly funded caseworker led to the expiration. Our inquiries to the city and county and publication of the article spurred two public agencies into action, and after our reporting, the resident, who had not been able to resolve the matter alone, received notice that his voucher had been renewed.

Family in mourning gets some answers from Border Patrol

A U.S. teen died in a car wreck after Border Patrol chased him. More than a year later, the family had many unanswered questions. Why did agents chase him? What crime — if any — was he accused of? The federal immigration agency never released any information. inewsource spent months investigating the chase, including the events that led up to it and the agency’s response after. Our reporting revealed that the teen’s only suspected crime was failure to yield. The project provided the family with some answers, many leading to additional questions, and highlighted accountability issues within the federal immigration agency.

San Diego County officials stopped sending clients to Veterans Village of San Diego for seven months, following multiple deaths at the nonprofit’s rehab center and ongoing concerns about its operations. Since June 2021, inewsource has been reporting on illegal drugs sales, overdoses and deaths at the facility, which once was a nationally known model for its veteran’s assistance programs. California members of Congress have reached out to VVSD leadership for answers.

County stops turning San Diegans without IDs away from vaccine clinics

San Diego County changed its public COVID-19 vaccine policy to say its vaccine clinics will accept a broad range of documents to verify identity after an inewsource investigation found health staff turned away individuals who wanted a vaccine but could not provide a photo ID.

The San Diego Association of Governments now has new policies meant to limit staff’s lavish restaurant spending and credit card misuse after a scathing audit, first reported by inewsource, flagged these expenses. inewsource exclusively dug further into the spending revealing lavish, improper spending.

We published a story that found most police agencies spend thousands of dollars every year to collect drivers’ location data by scanning license plates on people’s cars. Our reporting revealed that five departments in San Diego County were sharing that information illegally with hundreds of other law enforcement agencies across the country. We found that the vast majority of information collected had nothing to do with solving crime or protecting the public.

We published a story revealing that California farmers in high fire-risk areas like San Diego County’s backcountry were being dropped by insurance companies at increasingly high rates, seriously threatening San Diego County’s $1.8 billion agricultural industry. As a result of our reporting, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law Senate Bill 11, which made farmers eligible to insure their buildings against fire damage. Introductory language for the bill cited inewsource’s original reporting.

Our investigative reporting chronicled the struggles veterans have faced trying to access critical medical treatments outside the VA, the federally funded health care system for veterans. Our work caught the attention of members of Congress who called the findings “shocking” and “disgraceful.” One lawmaker pointed to the story during a Senate Veterans’ Affairs committee hearing, quoted the article and asked the head of the national VA to address the findings.

A national VA spokesperson told inewsource that following our reporting, the San Diego VA had submitted requests for additional staffing to better meet customer service demands and began an audit process to ensure veterans get access to needed health care. The story was published in partnership with USA TODAY in November 2021, where it was featured on the front page of newspapers across the country.

Thousands of racist housing covenants made public

Our investigation into housing deeds shed light on racial covenants that once were common tools used to exclude people of color from living in homes across San Diego. Covenants became popular in the first half of the twentieth century and continued to be added to property deeds, even after their enforcement was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1948. Our reporting unveiled more than 10,000 real estate documents across San Diego County with clauses that excluded people of color and other groups, such as Jews and Hindus.

As a result of our reporting, the county worked with a vendor to make digitized historic property records more easily searchable by the public. Our reporting was featured on NPR’s website, and the story was developed in partnership with its investigations team.

County audits COVID hotel program after serious issues with mental health services revealed

At the beginning of the pandemic, San Diego County began using hotels and motels to isolate people who came in contact with COVID-19. In early May of 2020, we published the first of fourteen stories shedding light on mismanagement of the facilities. Our reporting found that county staff were overwhelmed by the level of care needed for people in isolation, many of whom were unhoused and struggling with mental illnesses or substance-use disorders. County officials had hired an unqualified contractor, leading to serious safety issues including lapses in mental health care, overdoses and a death by suicide in a hotel room that we discovered went unnoticed for five days.

Eight days after our first story published, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors ordered a review of the program. San Diego State University was brought in as an independent auditor and confirmed our findings in a scathing 154-page report. Weeks later, officials said most of the problems had been resolved.