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FEMA is opening two disaster recovery centers for flood victims in Illinois.

I'm a longtime flower smoker, pretty much exclusively. But those damn terp slurper videos on Instagram really have been getting to me. I wanted in on the fun and coughs.

Earlier this month President Biden approved Illinois’ application for FEMA aid.

FOX 2 brings you a snapshot of St. Louis area neighborhoods on Fridays.

A survey from the US census bureau says about a third of American families are still scrambling to find baby formula in September.

by Sophia Kovatch

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Nationwide, rent was up by 9% in September compared to the previous year. That’s the first time in 2022 that rent increases were in the single digits, down from an 18% increase in March, according to an analysis by the real estate company Redfin.

While supply and demand, high mortgage interest rates and other economic factors are certainly at play in rising rents, an investigation by ProPublica found another key factor: a rental pricing software owned by real estate tech firm RealPage. Here’s what we learned.

How RealPage’s Rent-Setting Algorithm Works

The software collects tons of data from its clients, many of whom price tens of thousands of units. All together, RealPage says its rent-setting algorithm holds lease transaction data for more than 13 million units across the country.

Each day, the software recommends a new price for every available unit. To determine the new rate, it draws from competitor data on the actual rent tenants paid, as opposed to the publicly advertised rent.

The use of private competitor data — though it is aggregated and anonymized — to set prices is one of the concerns experts raised. The practice could allow RealPage to stifle rental competition, they said, driving up rents across the country and, potentially, even violating antitrust laws. Experts said that RealPage also sponsors meetings that gather competitors together to talk about pricing, which could also be a warning sign of collusion.

What You Need to Know About RealPage

1. Landlords use RealPage to make more money. RealPage boasts that it helps landlords outperform the market by up to 7% — that is, its software users can expect better-than-market-average revenues, even in weak markets. Greystar, the largest property manager in the U.S., outperformed its markets by 4.8% in one downturn, according to RealPage materials.

RealPage promises streamlined apartment pricing and flexible options for renters, but the true benefit for landlords is just how far the software will push rents up — far beyond what most property managers are willing to do manually.

2. RealPage believes it is driving rents higher across the country. A now-deleted video showed a RealPage executive saying in 2021 that the company’s software was a driver of double-digit rent increases across the country. Another executive said most property managers would be hesitant to raise rents by double digits without the assistance of the software.

Take this example from Seattle: In a RealPage-priced building in a downtown Seattle ZIP code, rent rose by 33% in one year for a couple living in a one-bedroom apartment. In a non-algorithm-priced building in the same ZIP code, rent for another tenant’s studio rose by just 3.9% over a similar period.

Property managers don’t have to accept the software’s recommendations — they are free to reject the algorithm’s price if they feel it’s too high or low. But overall, about 90% of recommendations are implemented, former employees said.

3. RealPage discourages landlords from bargaining with tenants over rents. One of the developers of RealPage’s price-setting software said leasing agents have “too much empathy” with renters, which can lead them to hesitate to seek the highest rents. The software automates rent-setting calculations, leading to more revenue for landlords and property management companies.

This may be why RealPage discourages bargaining with tenants about rent. When you take the human element out of the equation, profits seem to soar.

4. Critics say RealPage may encourage pricing collusion among landlords. When RealPage acquired LRO, its main pricing competitor, in 2017, the Department of Justice’s antitrust division investigated the deal. The merger ultimately proceeded, doubling the number of units RealPage priced — and expanding its cache of data.

Legal experts have raised concerns that RealPage’s software could be facilitating collusion among clients in places where many of them use it to set rents. In particular, the company’s User Group — a forum for clients to work together and suggest software improvements — could be an “antitrust red flag,” they said. The group has more than 1,000 members and two subcommittees on pricing, which meet in private at annual conferences.

Days after ProPublica released its investigation into RealPage, a group of renters filed a lawsuit alleging that nine of the largest property management firms in the U.S. are working together to artificially inflate rents, violating federal law.

5. RealPage says it uses data in a “legally compliant” way. The company told ProPublica that it “uses aggregated market data from a variety of sources in a legally compliant manner.”

RealPage noted that landlords who use employees to manually set prices “typically” conduct phone surveys to check competitors’ rents, which the company says could result in anti-competitive behavior.

“RealPage’s revenue management solutions prioritize a property’s own internal supply/demand dynamics over external factors such as competitors’ rents,” a company statement said, “and therefore help eliminate the risk of collusion that could occur with manual pricing.”

The statement said RealPage’s software also helps prevent rents from reaching unaffordable levels because it detects drops in demand, like those that happen seasonally, and can respond to them by lowering rents.

Other Reasons Rent Is So High

Although RealPage’s software is affecting rental prices in markets across the country, it’s far from the only factor in increasing rents. Here are some other things that help explain why rent is so high.

1. Private equity-owned rentals: Since 2011, there’s been a steady increase in the number of rental units owned by private equity-backed firms, according to reporting by ProPublica. These property management firms aim to increase short-term profits by increasing rents, cutting costs, or both. By 2021, more than half of the top 35 apartment building owners were backed by private equity, likely contributing to higher rents around the country.

2. High cost of homebuying: Property values in many markets escalated steeply in the years after the Great Recession. More recently, average interest rates on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages in the U.S. have soared, now surpassing 7% — nearly double what they were this time last year. Both trends have slowed homebuying, pushing rental demand and prices higher.

3. Slow, expensive construction: Supply chain issues have slowed housing construction, reducing the rental supply as demand increases. As inflation affects every sector of the economy, the costs of labor and materials go up, making it hard to build housing people can afford. The nation has lagged in constructing the new housing units needed in most years since the Great Recession.

4. Supply and demand: With more people forced to rent, there simply aren’t enough rental units to go around — especially in some markets that saw an influx of new renters during the pandemic. Higher competition for rentals drives prices up.

Heather Vogell contributed reporting.

This story was originally published by the Kansas City Beacon.  Over the past seven years, Jackson County has seen three different county executives. After then-County Executive Mike Sanders resigned at the end of 2015 — and went to prison in 2018 for corruption — Fred Arbanas served for one week as interim executive until Frank White  Jr. was […]

The post After decades of Democratic dominance, GOP optimistic in Jackson County executive race appeared first on Missouri Independent.

The “Big U” shows how climate adaptation can succeed. It also shows how hard it is.

It will be cold with clouds to start this Friday, but skies will clear through the morning.

A student who survived the St. Louis High School shooting spoke with Fox 2 after her emotional outcry for change stunned a congressional town hall meeting, Thursday night.

Getting a handle on these "super-emitters" could yield major benefits for the climate.

St. Louis police responded to an early morning shooting in the Jeff-Vander-lou neighborhood.

by Anjeanette Damon

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

A politically connected COVID-19-testing company with a stunningly high error rate in Nevada has become a key issue in the state’s closely fought governor’s race.

In May, a ProPublica investigation detailed how Gov. Steve Sisolak’s administration fast-tracked the license for Northshore Clinical Labs, a company with ties to a family that has donated nearly $50,000 to his political campaigns since 2011, including $40,000 to his gubernatorial races. The investigation also revealed that the company missed 96% of COVID-19 cases in a sample of 51 PCR tests from the University of Nevada Reno campus, used questionable billing practices and had widespread problems with the testing it provided to five government agencies. The article also noted how the lab was allowed to continue operating in the state despite repeated warnings from public health scientists.

Now, as Sisolak, a Democrat, seeks a second term, he is fending off relentless Republican attacks labeling him “corrupt” and pointing out that he failed to notify the public of the problematic tests. His opponent, Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo, as well as the Republican Governors Association and an independent political action committee, have spent millions of dollars on mailers and television, radio and digital ads hyping the issue. Lombardo’s Republican allies in the Legislature have unsuccessfully asked for audits and investigations into Northshore’s dealings. And the two candidates for governor spent nearly 10 minutes arguing the issue this month in their only debate.

“Gov. Sisolak covered up a public health crisis for five months,” Lombardo’s spokesperson, Elizabeth Ray, said. “Sisolak knew about this crisis back in January, and he failed to alert the public. His inaction in this ‘pay-to-plague’ scandal could have cost Nevadans their lives.”

In response, Sisolak’s campaign has accused Republicans of exaggerating the nature of the testing problems and the governor’s role in it.

“Joe Lombardo and national Republicans have spent tens of millions of dollars spreading lies, misconstruing the truth and misleading Nevadans,” Molly Forgey, Sisolak’s campaign spokesperson, said. “Plain and simple: Republicans are desperate. Lombardo doesn’t have any real plans or vision so instead, he’s scraping the bottom of the barrel in an attempt to shift the narrative away from his pattern of corruption and his out-of-touch stances.”

Shortly after ProPublica published its investigation, a government spokesperson for the Sisolak administration said his office was exploring legal avenues to hold the company accountable for botched testing services that put its customers’ health at risk. This week, however, the spokesperson confirmed the administration has yet to take action beyond assisting federal investigators looking into Northshore’s practices.

“I don’t have many updates for you,” spokesperson Meghin Delaney said.

Northshore and its representatives have consistently declined to comment on ProPublica’s reporting.

As the debate has raged, both sides have bent the facts in making their cases to the voters. According to ProPublica’s extensive reporting on the issue, which included a review of more than 3,000 pages of internal emails, here is what both sides have gotten wrong.

Misleading: “Steve Sisolak’s administration fast-tracked a contract for a shady company tied to a campaign donor.” — A Republican Governors Association ad

Among Republicans’ most repeated errors is the claim that Sisolak handed a state contract to the testing company. In some cases, Republicans have accused Sisolak of giving Northshore a $165 million contract.

In reality, the state did not sign a contract with Northshore, nor did it pay the company $165 million. That figure is the total amount of money the company, which says it operated in more than 20 states at the height of the pandemic, billed the federal government for COVID-19 tests it said it provided to people with no health insurance.

The Sisolak administration, however, did let Northshore jump ahead of other companies waiting for inspections so it could more quickly obtain its state laboratory license.

Northshore had contracted with brothers Gregory and Angelo Palivos to build clientele and manage its operations in Nevada. Their parents, Peter and Vicky Palivos, have donated heavily to Sisolak’s campaign and are personal friends of the governor’s. The Palivos brothers worked with an influential lobbyist who used his ties to the administration to help Northshore with its state laboratory license.

After the lobbyist emailed Sisolak’s chief of staff, the head of the licensing bureau urged the health inspectors to move up Northshore’s inspection.

“I want to let you know how frustrating it is to have my staff schedule their inspections only to have labs use previous directors to influence or pressure us into having businesses that they represent, jump ahead of others that are patiently waiting for their inspections,” the state’s lead inspector wrote to his boss in an email obtained by ProPublica.

In a written statement earlier this year, a spokesperson for the Palivos brothers said they were unaware of Northshore’s problems when they were hired to manage its Nevada operations. The spokesperson said they were driven by their desire to help Nevada in the middle of a testing crisis and that they relied on Northshore “for standard operating procedures, licensing, compliance, test supplies, molecular lab work, reporting of test results, and billing.” She also said the Palivos brothers pushed the company to fix the problems with its tests before the state became involved.

Sisolak has repeatedly said he had no conversations about Northshore with Palivos family members. The Palivos brothers also said they never spoke with the governor about their testing business.

“This guy — on my life, on my mother, my children, my wife’s life — never asked me about this testing company,” Sisolak said during the Oct. 2 gubernatorial debate, referring to Peter Palivos. “Never talked to me. Never sent me an email. Never made a phone call. Never sent me a text. Never did anything. They followed the procedures. That’s what happened.”

The Palivos family’s political donations didn’t stop amid the Northshore debacle. On Jan. 17, three days after the state scheduled its investigation into complaints about Northshore’s operations, a limited liability company operated by Peter and Vicky Palivos donated $10,000 to Sisolak’s campaign.

Incorrect: “Now, Sisolak is under federal investigation.” — Better Nevada PAC ad

Both the Lombardo campaign and the Better Nevada PAC, which said it has spent more than $1 million on ads about Northshore, have claimed Sisolak is being investigated by the federal government.

ProPublica confirmed that the Inspector General’s Office of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services expanded its investigation into Northshore to Nevada after the initial story ran in May. An email from the OIG investigator did not indicate that Sisolak or his administration were under investigation.

“Myself and other law enforcement agencies have had a case opened regarding Northshore Clinical Lab for quite some time,” wrote Special Agent Peter Theiler, who is based in Chicago. “After reading the ProPublica article on Northshore Clinical Lab regarding Nevada patients, we are interested in obtaining records related to testing for COVID-19 for Northshore Clinical Lab rapid test results and PCR test results for Nevada.”

Spokespeople for both Lombardo’s campaign and the Better Nevada PAC point to the Sisolak administration’s comments about the OIG investigation as evidence Sisolak himself is under investigation.

But that’s not supported by public records. The OIG has declined to comment on the investigation.

Incorrect: “As soon as we found out, their license was revoked.” — Sisolak during his Oct. 2 debate with Lombardo

The state never revoked Northshore’s license. Instead, it tried working with the company to bring it into compliance before ultimately closing the license at the company’s request.

Delaney declined to address this inaccuracy when ProPublica asked about it. His campaign spokesperson also did not explain the inaccuracy.

That’s not to say Sisolak’s administration ignored the problem. The Nevada Bureau of Health Care Quality and Compliance immediately began investigating after the Washoe County Health District filed a complaint detailing errors with the company’s PCR tests.

Northshore had been conducting both rapid and PCR tests. In “several hundred”cases, the rapid test came back positive, but the PCR test came back negative, according to a Jan. 10 email from Washoe County Health District’s epidemiology manager. At state and local health officials’ urging, Northshore voluntarily stopped using PCR tests. However, state officials allowed the company to continue conducting rapid tests across the state despite it not having the proper licensing to do that.

In their investigation, state inspectors noted deficiencies with Northshore’s operations and were working with the company to correct them. During that process, Northshore abruptly announced it was pulling out of the state and asked for its license to be closed.

State officials closed the license but also reported their findings to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the State Board of Nursing and the company itself.

Incorrect: “We were cooperating in a federal investigation.” — Sisolak during the debate

During the debate, moderator Jon Ralston asked Sisolak why he never alerted the public to the problems with Northshore’s tests when he became aware of them in January 2022.

“We were cooperating in a federal investigation into the company, which we’re still cooperating with,” Sisolak answered.

According to documents obtained by ProPublica, however, the federal investigation into Northshore didn’t include its Nevada operations until May, after the ProPublica story ran.

The governor may have misspoken. (Delaney and Forgey also refused to address this inaccuracy.) At the time, Nevada health officials had launched a state investigation into the reported testing inaccuracies and told local media they could not comment on the ongoing investigation.

Sisolak’s answer drew an attack from Lombardo, who said the governor had owed the public a warning for their personal safety.

“You should have, front-facing as the leader of this state, said, ‘Hey, if you took this test, come in and get another test because we have determined they are all false, or the percentage of them, the majority of them were false,’” Lombardo said during the debate.

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The deluxe reissue of The Beatles' classic 1966 album Revolver was released Friday, October 28, in multiple configurations. Revolver originally was released in August 1966 and spent multiple weeks at…

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A new report finds Indigenous land rights are key to preserving biodiversity.

As the Rio Grande Valley has shifted away from farmwork, progressive Democrats are outmatched in their efforts to turn out voters.

Over half of the Republican nominees in competitive House races have dipped into personal fortunes to fund their campaigns.

After the Honduran government fulfilled a campaign promise by moving to end an extreme form of special economic zone, two U.S. senators threatened to withdraw foreign aid to the country.

The actual hatred and the actual threat festers on the right.