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Ely Portillo

Stories by Ely Portillo

Project documenting evictions’ toll in Mecklenburg wins national award
June 11, 2019
Tens of thousands of people a year are evicted in Mecklenburg County, but the full impact is often hard to see. Court data on evictions is often incomplete, accessible only in paper files, or...

Charlotte Water wants to harvest fertilizer from your flushes
June 11, 2019
The world uses millions of tons of phosphorus per year in fertilizer, and almost all of that is mined. But Charlotte Water plans to start extracting the mineral from a new source: What you put down...

Do youth end up in the justice system because they disengage from school?
June 10, 2019
A UNC Charlotte professor used the integrated data system at the Institute for Social Capital, a part of the Urban Institute, to examine whether students of color are more likely to enter the...

Hoping to rebuild their downtowns, more NC cities are turning to baseball
June 5, 2019
Smaller cities and towns across North Carolina are hoping an old, familiar sound will spark new life in their downtowns: The crack of a bat. Four new downtown ballparks with capacity for about 5,000...

Regional transit gets another ‘symbolic’ boost near Charlotte
June 2, 2019
Three counties outside Mecklenburg have now expressed formal - though nonbinding - support for bringing a regional rail system of some kind across the border. That would be a first for Charlotte,...