Dismissed: Tenants Lose, Landlords Win in Baltimore's Rent Court

ABOUT THE PROJECT

Sun Investigates team members Doug Donovan and Jean Marbella spent a year examining Baltimore’s court system for landlord-tenant disputes. They spent dozens of hours observing court proceedings and touring tenants’ homes, interviewed dozens of tenants, landlords, officials, and analysts, and reviewed thousands of pages of court filings and other documents.

MY ROLE

Visuals Journalist & Editor, 360 Video Producer
In this project, I photographed and shot video of several subjects and locations, served as the main producer for the video elements and produced The Sun’s first ever 360 video story. As visuals editor for the project, I was responsible for the presentation of visual elements online and in the paper.

Baltimore leaders created the nation’s first housing court seventy years ago in response to the slum conditions spreading in the city. Rent court was supposed to foster safer, cleaner and better housing in Baltimore. However, a yearlong investigation by The Baltimore Sun found that the system routinely works against tenants, while in many cases failing to hold landlords accountable for not meeting minimum housing standards.

Made possible by a grant from the Solutions Journalism Network, we were able to purchase the necessary equipment and software to create a 360 video. I wanted to show the real impacts of the rent court system by taking the user on a tour of a house with multiple code violations. This tenant had been trying unsuccessfully to get the landlord to fix the issues, but faced difficulty when in court. As the user enters each room, they can “move” around and graphics will highlight the various code violations. Each scene is also narrated with descriptions of the violations to encourage the user to utilize the 360 features.

The page utilized the template that I designed during the “Unsettled Journeys” project which allows for integration of rich multimedia and interactive features.

VISIT THE PROJECT