The Associated Press seeks to understand how the recent wave of Federally allocated emergency rental assistance money is being distributed to those affected by the COVID pandemic. The primary focus is determining the profile of landlords recieving federal assistance and rates of evictions where no moratorium is present. The central hypothesis is that coporate landlords may be abusing the subsidies from the government and still evicting tenatns. The demographic profiles of tenants being evicted is also of interest to uncover any racial and economic biases.

The project is a colloaboration between Boston University's College of Communications, Spark! incubator and the AP. The initial phase involved extensive investigative work by journalism students in determining how states were allocating their federal emergency rental assistance money and the policy mechannisms and agencies that execute the process. Data was collected on evictions filings, merged with census tract information on their respective muncipalities and then further merged with emergency rental allocation for a comprehensive analysis of the questions posed. The project is currently underway and will start by focusing on the New England region. especially Massachusetts and Rhode Island.