Okay, And...?

Corporate Landlord Evicts Black Renters At Far Higher Rates Than Whites, Report Finds. Hmm. Okay, let's read the article and see what it says.

It's unclear why the report on Pretium's eviction filings apparently found an even higher disparity — more than four times the rate in mostly Black counties as in mostly white counties.

What good is a study that doesn't provide any information that helps contextualize the finding? This article is something of a missed opportunity, mainly because it reads like a press release from the outfit that put it out. "PANDEMIC EVICTOR: Don Mullen’s Pretium Partners Files to Evict Black Renters, Collects Billions From Investors" seems like the sort of thing that's calibrated to get a response, as people on the prowl for racial injustice pick up on the headline, but without any real information beyond the raw numbers, I suspect that there's a different story here.

Presuming that the story that NPR opens their piece with is accurate, one could make the case that Pretium Partners companies are pretty quick on the trigger to evict people from rented homes, but maybe the real story here is the lack of money available to Black renters to weather job losses and other emergencies. Of course, either way a story like this tends to be journalism about problems, but if the focus is on why Black renters are in less stable positions, rather than "Private Equity Bad," perhaps it can inform policies that might be helpful in improving things.

The thing about human interest stories with clear villains is that they pretty much write themselves. Single mother with a child in school versus an evil private equity company that's bought up houses and is now kicking people out of them as quickly as it can is a simple narrative and will easily appeal to the left-of-center National Public Radio audience. But it's the sort of piece that allows people to mistake anecdote for useful information and righteous anger for actually doing something.