Cecilia Reyes was awarded the August Sidney Award from the Sidney Hillman Foundation for her investigative piece, Locked Out, the lead in a three-part series unearthing hundreds of cases across eight major US cities where police did little to nothing when answering emergency calls for help with illegal evictions. Her investigation revealed that most remedies to illegal lockouts offer near impunity to landlords and little recourse to tenants.
"Illegal evictions bypass the courts, so they're extremely difficult to track. Cecilia fought for months to obtain 911 calls and other records that would shed light on the problem," said Esther Kaplan who edited the series. "Illegal evictions spiked while pandemic moratoriums were in place, and many observers thought they'd subside once housing courts reopened their dockets. But Cecilia found that in almost every city she examined, they're on the rise."
"I'm glad the series could shine a light on the destabilizing consequences for families as a result of an illegal lockout. We identified serious flaws in the enforcement of laws against this practice, and I hope this work helps to fix them," said Cecilia.
The second piece in the series shared the stories of people living on the margins of the rental market and the third piece described what happens after tenants are locked out of apartments.
Esther Kaplan and John Cook edited the story, Hannah Beckler was the story's data editor, Rosemarie Ho contributed reporting, and Annie Fu produced the data visualizations.