They used their car to stay warm when a winter storm brought down the Texas power grid. In a state that doesn’t require carbon monoxide alarms in homes, they had no warning they were poisoning themselves.
Ren Larson
Ren Larson was a data journalist at The Texas Tribune from March 2020 through December 2022. Before joining the Tribune, she reported on elections, immigration, environmental contamination and wildfires at The Arizona Republic. Her 2019 project "Ahead of the Fire," which analyzed nearly 5,000 Western communities for wildfire hazard and human vulnerabilities, won a 2019 EPPY award for innovation, the MIT Knight Science Journalism's Victor K. McElheny award and was a finalist for the Philip Meyer Award. She holds a masters of public policy and an M.A. in international and area studies from the University of California, Berkeley. Before entering journalism in 2015, she worked as a city planner, a case manager and a data analyst.
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The Texas Tribune-ProPublica Investigative Unit
A Texas lender sued thousands of low-income Latinos during the pandemic. Now the feds are investigating.
Oportun Inc., a small-dollar loan company, disclosed to investors that it is the subject of a probe by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau following reporting by The Texas Tribune and ProPublica.
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The Texas Tribune-ProPublica Investigative Unit
A lender sued thousands of lower-income Latinos during the pandemic. Now it wants to be a national bank.
Oportun, which lends in only a dozen states, applied for a bank charter late last year. Consumer and Latino civil rights groups are pushing back, citing the findings of a joint investigation by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune.
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The Texas Tribune-ProPublica Investigative Unit
South Texas restrictions were meant to protect people from COVID-19. Then the handcuffs and ticket books came out.
Governments along the Texas-Mexico border took a hard line to limit the spread of the new coronavirus. Police were key to the public health response, resulting in hundreds jailed and nearly 2,000 people ticketed.
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Coronavirus in Texas
This loan company was founded to help Latino immigrants. It has sued thousands of low-income Latinos during the pandemic.
A monthslong investigation revealed that Oportun Inc. routinely uses lawsuits to intimidate a vulnerable population into keeping up with high-interest loan payments — even amid COVID-19.
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The Texas Tribune-ProPublica Investigative Unit
Oportun Inc. has filed nearly 10,000 lawsuits this year against lower-income Texans. This is how we found out.
Justice of the peace courts, where a majority of debt claims are filed in Texas, aren’t required to report case-level information. Here’s how ProPublica and Texas Tribune reporters got around it to reveal one company’s aggressive tactics.
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Coronavirus in Texas
This Silicon Valley-based lender sued thousands of Texans during the pandemic. It stopped when we started asking questions.
The company didn’t say exactly how many pending lawsuits it would drop in Texas and elsewhere, but it confirmed that “several thousand cases” would be impacted.
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Coronavirus in Texas
Gov. Greg Abbott is limiting enforcement of COVID-19 orders, but many cities already took a lax approach
Texas cities and counties have dramatically different interpretations of the state’s COVID-19 emergency orders. Complaint data from a dozen cities shows that disparate approaches to enforcement, particularly among businesses, have been incredibly common.
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Coronavirus in Texas
Coronavirus put her out of work, then debt collectors froze her savings account
Kim Boatswain’s tax refund could have helped her get through the coronavirus slowdown. But debt collectors seized it. There are few options for Texans like Boatswain whose money was taken just before the state temporarily banned such garnishments.