NBC Bay Area’s “The Moms of Magnolia Street”

Three Oakland mothers take over a vacant home in the DuPont-Columbia award-winning documentary, “The Moms of Magnolia Street.”

“We knew that there were going to be some unhoused mothers who took this dramatic action and were going to likely be occupying a house. From there, we had no idea what was going to happen.”

–Investigative Producer Michael Bott

The 2022 duPont-winning documentary “The Moms of Magnolia Street” follows three unhoused working mothers who stand their ground rather than leave their lifelong home of Oakland, California. In the throes of an affordable housing crisis, they and their children illegally take over a vacant property owned by a large home-flipping corporation. 

Through the mothers’ unfolding story, the NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit explores the policies that contributed to the crisis like historic redlining; today’s large corporations that furtively buy thousands of homes to “flip” them at a huge profit while eliminating affordable homes; and a lack of government transparency.

“Counties quoted us ten thousand dollars, fourteen thousand dollars for a database that they already have on a CD that could be just handed over the counter immediately,” said producer Michael Bott. “That also gives cover to a lot of these corporations who don't necessarily want people to know what they're doing.” 

In this episode of the On Assignment Podcast, members of the documentary team– Bott, Investigative Producer Sean Myers, and VP of News Stephanie Adrouny–share details of their reporting process with the J-School’s Prizes Department Executive Director Abi Wright and duPont Awards Director Lisa R. Cohen. They dissect not only tedious but critical behind-the-scenes work like navigating public records, but also on-the-ground face-to-face work like building trust, which paved the way for their being inside the house when police arrived to evict the moms. 

“Housing is an issue for everybody in the Bay Area whether you own, you rent, you're trying to rent or live here.” said Stephanie Adrouny, NBC Bay Area’s VP of News.  And not just in the Bay Area. In this deeply contextualized reporting, the team showed why what’s happening to people like the Moms is of concern to all of us.

You can watch “The Moms of Magnolia Street” online, here.