HOUSTON’S DANGEROUS BUILDINGS
After using the open records process to obtain a list of building the City of Houston deemed “dangerous,” our investigation found they included run-down apartment complexes, a burned-down restaurant, and even an old school that the Houston Independent School District still owns. Some of these so-called dangerous buildings were still standing for years, despite numerous visits from City inspectors. This visual story takes viewers inside some of those dangerous properties and includes an interactive map Sarah created to show where these buildings are located.
TEXAS’ TROUBLED TOLL SYSTEM
Sarah spearheaded this investigation, which relied on open records requests, connections with whistleblowers and a crowdsourcing effort. She wrote this online investigation into Texas’ toll roads that uncovered a state agency that sent 2.2 million customer accounts to collections in less than a year. Those customers were charged a total of $1 billion in late fees, though many customers, and a whistleblower, claim improper billing practices.
RESULTS: Lawmakers approved a law capping late fees at $48 a year, the state agency cut ties with its collections agency and waived $1.3 billion in late fees for customers sent to collections before the new law went into effect.
VAPING AT ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS
In a groundbreaking statewide effort, Sarah sent open records requests to more than 1,000 public school districts in Texas. Within less than a month of those requests, she created her own database of responses found than 15,000 vaping incidents at elementary, middle and high schools across the state. However, not every school district tracked the incident, leaving a gap in understanding the data. When the story aired, Sarah created several maps with each district’s response and an interactive featuring hundreds of vaping devices confiscated from Texas schools.
RESPONSE: Texas Sen. Carol Alvarado, D-Houston, asked the state’s largest school district to start tracking vaping. “It is critical that doctors, researchers and parents have reliable statistics to understand just how widespread the health threat of vaping is. With 284 campuses, HISD has the potential to provide vital data needed to understand the full extent of students’ vaping tendencies,” Alvarado said.
MOTHERS ERASED: MATERNAL DEATHS
Sarah wrote this online investigation into hundreds of women die who die due to pregnancy or delivery complications every year across the United States. In Texas, the exact number of women dying isn’t clear due to errors with data collection. For this investigation, Sarah led a crowdsourcing effort, where we collected over a dozen video diaries from women who suffered pregnancy complications.
RESULTS: This investigation led to one lawmaker filing a bill calling for a data registry that tracks maternal deaths and near deaths. Several other bills related to maternal mortality are under consideration this legislative session.
Sarah Rafique 