Burned
For decades, major insurance companies including State Farm and Farmers have relied on a fundamentally broken system to predict home construction costs. This system has left vast numbers of California wildfire victims steeply “underinsured” — i.e., their policy limits fall far short of what they need to rebuild their burned-down houses.
In this ongoing series, Megan Fan Munce and I expose the causes, consequences and vast scale of underinsurance in California. We’ve found that most homeowners in California have policies set by faulty algorithms; that consequently, millions are likely underinsured, often by hundreds of thousands of dollars; and that the government has known about this issue for decades but has failed to regulate it effectively.
Read more:
- A broken system keeps Californians underinsured. Millions have no idea they’re at risk
- These hidden rules reveal how California insurers undercut wildfire claims, leaving families in damaged homes
- A new toxic metal has been found in homes after L.A. wildfires. No one knows where it’s coming from
- California is drafting new rules for wildfire smoke cleanup. Are home insurers calling the shots?
- Is your California home underinsured? Here’s how to find out
- Millions of Californians are at risk of underinsurance and have no idea (YouTube)
- ‘I think that’s simply fraud’: California hearing probes solutions to underinsurance following Chronicle investigation
- California, four other Western states launch probe into underinsurance after Chronicle investigation
Fast and Fatal
For two years, my colleague Jennifer Gollan and I investigated the growing death toll of police chases across the U.S. We found that more than 3,300 people died in chases over six years, far more than previously known. The vast majority died in chases over nonviolent and minor crimes; more than half of those killed were not the fleeing drivers; and more than a third of those killed were Black.
At the heart of our investigation was a database we built of pursuit fatalities, the most complete accounting of these deaths to date. We then open-sourced the data on GitHub. Local news outlets across the country have used our data to report their own pursuit stories.
Read more:
- Police chases are killing more and more Americans. With lax rules, it’s no accident
- Federal government’s undercount leaves hundreds of chase deaths hidden
- Police are deliberately ramming suspects’ cars. Dozens have died — including bystanders
- Black man’s death reveals shocking disparity in pursuit deaths
- Congressman takes aim at undercount of U.S. police chase deaths, citing Chronicle investigation
when stanford fell for Tony Robbins
In 2022, Michael Snyder, former head of Stanford’s genetics department, co-authored a study claiming that controversial self-help guru Tony Robbins — and his $4,500 “Date with Destiny” seminar — could heal depression far more effectively than antidepressants.
Why would Snyder, one of the world’s most esteemed geneticists, spend his academic reputation on Robbins, a centimillionaire who has been repeatedly accused of groping and harassing his seminar attendees? To find out, I spent several months investigating ties between the two men, uncovering a strange universe at the nexus of alternative wellness culture and “precision medicine.” I also identified flaws in Snyder’s research, prompting him to issue a multi-page correction.
Junk tech in California prisons
For at least 20 years, California’s prison system used a debunked lie detector technology, the Computer Voice Stress Analyzer or CVSA, to interrogate incarcerated people. Matthias Gafni and I highlighted a case of a prisoner whose complaint of guard abuse was thrown out on the basis of a dubious CVSA result.
Following our reporting, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) banned use of the CVSA across its institutions.
Who owns the bay area?
My colleague Emma Stiefel and I spent over a year collecting and analyzing property ownership data for the nine-county Bay Area. Our project mapped who owns what across the region, exposing some of the most prominent owners of rental properties and highlighting avenues for further reporting on housing and property ownership.
Read more:
- A Bay Area landlord says he’s rebuilding a community. Critics say he’s exploiting it for profit
- These are the hidden power players influencing the Bay Area rental market
- This map reveals who owns every property in the Bay Area
other clips
- San Francisco could be recovering stolen cars. Instead, it’s ticketing them
- The mystery of San Francisco’s car break-in crisis: Why is it so bad here?
- Are S.F. police behaving differently under new District Attorney Brooke Jenkins? Analysis finds an immediate shift
- ‘Are the police capable of changing?’ Data on racial profiling in California shows the problem is getting worse
- 627 days, just for the permit: This data shows the staggering timeline to build homes in San Francisco
- “Permit nightmares” series
- New California city: Map shows exactly how tech elites bought up land in Solano County
susie neilson 