Zachary Oren Smith joins Starting Line

Iowa Starting Line’s new Iowa Political Correspondent Zachary Oren Smith says journalism works when it’s part of the neighborhood.

In 2019, a news tip led me to a mobile home park along a busy highway in North Liberty. A resident showed me a flyer taped to her door: overnight, a private equity had decided to hike her rent. Door after door, I heard the same story from single parents, young families and retirees. Their new owner, Havenpark Communities, was poised to devour even more of their hard-earned dollars.

It was a winter day. I remember because I was freezing. A Mississippi transplant to the Midwest, I still wasn’t dressing for the cold. A 65-year-old man named Don Lund saw me shivering in his doorway and invited me in. At his table, he shared fears of losing his “forever home.” 

Twenty years prior, Lund’s parents helped him move in, hoping to secure his future despite his significant mobility challenges. They helped him plant pallets of grass and ash trees in the yard. With some thrift, he would come own his home outright—though never the land beneath it.

“This was the place I wanted to grow old in,” Lund told me.

But Havenpark’s 58% rent increase threatened that dream. We crunched the numbers: after bills, he was left with little more than $100 of his disability check.

“McDonalds? A five-dollar Little Caesar’s pizza? And try to save for an emergency?” he asked. “You just can’t do it.”

Lund became a vocal critic of these changes, highlighting rising rents amid park deterioration. He questioned how a Utah-based company could upend the lives of Iowans they never even met.

I covered every twist and turn of that story. Even as Lund faded from the headlines, our friendship remained. We’d talk over the phone about the goings-on in the park and about his treasured Iowa Hawkeyes. He rarely needed help, but he sometimes needed a ride. And I was happy to oblige.

Last year bookended my friendship with Don Lund. At a celebration of his life, surrounded by residents who also fought back, we said our goodbyes. I felt compelled to note: his struggle for fairness, for dignity, is one we are still facing today.

I’m proud of my and the Iowa City Press-Citizen’s work exposing private equity’s exploitation of Iowa’s poorest residents. But I’m even prouder of the neighborhood that built these stories with me.

Journalism’s greatest joys lie in writing about—and for—our neighbors. We affect change and face immediate feedback, even (and maybe especially) on misspelled names. It’s a two-way street, a neighborhood of shared words and hopes for this place we live.

This week, I joined Iowa Starting Line to lead its political coverage. Meeting my new colleagues, a word kept coming up. The real challenge, they kept saying, isn’t one person or party: it’s cynicism.

There’s real pain here caused by real problems, perpetrated by real people. And when everything is pointing us to unplug, to turn off, the whole ball game becomes about investing in our people, in our power, in neighborhoods like the one Lund built around him. A neighborhood I aim to build with you.

At Starting Line, we tell stories of today’s challenges, linking them to people on the ground doing the work of stewarding our democracy. And we stand firmly for democracy, fighting cynicism by showing up for each other.

This is my invitation to you: Show up with me.