Kelly Kenoyer

WHQR • 3rd May 2024

Granny Flats: The secret solution to the housing crisis

The affordable housing crisis is national in scope, but it’s uniquely painful in the South because of low wages and surging demand. So what are some creative solutions to this rapidly growing and intractable problem? Backyard cottages? Flipping hotels into rental housing? Or building out job training programs? We asked smart people in the housing space what they consider the most effective strategies to improve housing with help from the New Hanover Community Endowment.

WHQR • 16th February 2024

Cape Fear Conversations: Developing housing in New Hanover County

This conversation was part of WHQR's Cape Fear Conversations series, a project dedicated to improving public engagement with and discussions about important, difficult, and complicated issues.

WHQR • 13th January 2024

How the justice system hurts, and helps, the homeless people in our community

In the past year or so in New Hanover County, we’ve seen public officials pushing back on the homeless population, even as it grows because of our housing crisis. As homeless individuals are pushed into the margins of the community, and into the woods, the justice system continues to interact with the unhoused. On this week's episode, we’ll dig deep into the many ways the police, courts, and judges interact with the unhoused, in ways that help, and in ways that harm. It’s an exploration of the criminalization of homelessness, and the compassionate court systems that may offer a helping hand, and not just shackles.

WHQR • 22nd September 2023

Cape Fear Conversations: Housing and Homelessness

On today’s show, highlights from our most recent Cape Fear Conversations event, hosted by reporter Kelly Kenoyer. This is our third event, this time focusing on the issue of homelessness — looking at what factors are pushing people out of housing, what we get wrong about them and what they’re going through, and about how we might help get them back on track. Our panelists for this event were Katrina Knight, Clayton Hammerski, Karen Garcia, Katelyn Mattox, and Pastor Meg McBride.

WHQR • 2nd June 2023

The Newsroom: Conversations about Pride, identity, and finding the gay bars

Last month, WHQR hosted its second-ever Cape Fear Conversation —this time, at Waterline Brewing. We invited members of the LGBTQ Community to talk about issues impacting us in North Carolina and the Wilmington Area. We laughed, we cried, and we had a wonderful time. So now, just in time for Pride Month, panel moderator and news reporter Kelly Kenoyer brings you the highlights. • TR Nunley, Program Director, Wilmington Transgender Community and Admin for the Wilmington Pride Facebook page. • Qail

WHQR • 17th December 2022

Gentrification in Wilmington Part II: The data, the struggle, and the solutions

Wilmington's downtown was once extremely segregated, with certain neighborhoods almost exclusively Black, and others almost exclusively white. That's changing, as waves of white residents move into Black neighborhoods — but the inverse isn't happening to nearly the same degree. Black residents are losing ground, and under the current housing crisis, it's almost a zero-sum game. So what is causing this economic pressure? And what could be done to change it? Listen to Part 1: The changing face of

WHQR • 12th December 2022

The changing face of Wilmington's Northside, Pt. 1: A conversation about gentrification

Next week, we'll have an in-depth hour digging into all kinds of voices that tie into this economic phenomenon, and what solutions may exist to repair the damage. • Northside Food Co-op brings in design and architecture help to prepare ahead of opening • Data drop: Wilmington in top 12% of cities for rent increases in the country • The Newsroom Special Edition: The Northside Story - segregation, gentrification, and zoning in Wilmington (2021) • The Newsroom: Wilmington's challenges, public-priva

WHQR • 27th August 2022

CFR: projects, Grace's panel discussion, mental health trends in NHC students

This week we talk to Ben Schachtman and Kelly Kenoyer about PodLab and One Small Step, two major initiatives to involve the community with the newsroom. Podlab is a weekly journalism class teaching high school students how to do audio journalism.

WHQR • 16th April 2022

The Newsroom: What makes a city, a city?

What defines a city? It’s not all housing and transportation: sometimes it’s the very fabric and stitching that holds a community together. It's the rules, regulations, and design philosophies that decide the economic, social, and visual coherence of a city — and whether any of it is sustainable. So which neighborhoods are the most sustainable in Wilmington? And how can other neighborhoods follow suit? And why is rent so high!?

WHQR • 25th March 2022

The Newsroom: A deep dive on the science and politics of PFAS

Newsroom guest host Kelly Kenoyer draws on months of reporting to present a closer look at what's going on with PFAS, the family of 'forever chemicals' that includes GenX and thousands of others. We'll tackle the history, science, and politics of the problem — and look at what can be done in the future.

https://www.wect.com • 16th January 2022

WHAT’S NEXT?: Housing authority is plagued by mold complaints from residents and has lost its leaders. What can be done to fix the mess?

WILMINGTON, N.C. (WECT) - Mold issues in the Wilmington Housing Authority (WHA) dating back to Hurricane Florence in 2018 were ignored for years. Now, nearly 80 families — hundreds of residents — have been displaced, and the authority is in a tailspin. Costs just to house those families, stuck in hotel rooms around the city for months and months, are soaring. Meanwhile, the authority has barely even started the remediation work — and that’s just for the units they know about. It’s unclear how

WHQR • 17th December 2021

The Newsroom: What if...? A $350-million political thought experiment

On this week's episode, guest host Kelly Kenoyer gets local experts to flex their political imagination. With a massive fund behind them, how would they tackle the major issues that have defined their careers in public service?

WHQR • 19th November 2021

The Newsroom: The Wilmington Housing Authority's slow-motion mold disaster

This week WHQR launched an investigative series into the Wilmington Housing Authority, looking at systemic mismanagement and miscommunication that's led to mold infestation getting out of control. On this episode of The Newsroom, co-hosted by WHQR's Ben Schachtman and Kelly Kenoyer, we'll put the pieces together, and dig even deeper into the story.

WHQR • 16th July 2021

The Newsroom Special Edition: The Northside Story - segregation, gentrification, and zoning in Wilmington

We’ll start with a close look at the Brooklyn Arts District — formerly known as Brooklyn Heights. That historically black neighborhood in Wilmington's Northside has seen just about every element of segregationist policy known to America… and now, it’s becoming integrated. Then, a conversation with two academics who know the ins and outs of zoning, housing, and segregation. And finally, a look forward: to the proposed land development codes here in Wilmington, and what other cities and states ar

WHQR • 24th May 2021

Deep Dive: Can WAVE transit outrun its toxic past, and turn things around for public transit?

Howard Gardener drives the 301 bus for Wave transit: a 7-mile round trip from the Monkey Junction Walmart to Pleasure Island and back, with service running every three hours. Gardener has worked for Wave for nearly 2 decades, and has seen how ridership has changed over the years. “When I started in like 2004. The buses were crowded, and you had more buses running, but they didn't go that far. They went in a small little circle.” In 2005, Wave had in 2005, but that had dropped to . That’s desp

opb • 24th November 2020

Rural reporters on how their communities are handling coronavirus

As coronavirus cases and deaths skyrocket across Oregon, pandemic fatigue is setting in. In some rural areas, skepticism about the governor’s new restrictions on businesses and social gatherings is common. Reporters in rural areas have been writing about how some local officials and community members are flouting the state’s restrictions. We check in with newspaper reporters Kelly Kenoyer of The New Era in Sweet Home, Antonio Sierra of the East Oregonian and Becca Robbins of the Klamath Falls Herald and News.

ABC Weekend Breakfast Australia • 13th September 2020

Wildfires in Oregon

The New Era's Kelly Kenoyer spoke with ABC Weekend Breakfast host Fauziah Ibrahim in Australia about wildfires in Oregon. Powerful wind drove the fires to record-breaking sizes earlier this week, but the state is getting a break thanks to the weather now. Still, lives have been lost and entire towns destroyed, and resources remain limited.

IRE • 11th February 2020

Broken Breath Tests

Police rely on alcohol breath tests to convict drunken drivers. But what happens when the machines they use aren’t reliable? Stacy Cowley of The New York Times looked into the problem of faulty breath test machines and found thousands of cases where the tests were thrown out. On this episode, Stacy breaks down how she discovered unreliable breath tests and the consequences they pose for real people.

IRE • 13th January 2020

Fighting Fentanyl

Opioid addiction is a decades-long crisis that killed roughly 47,000 people in 2017 alone, largely due to the potency of fentanyl. But despite all the warning signs, Congress didn’t pass any legislation on opioids until 2016. On this week’s episode, we’ll hear how Katie Zezima of the Washington Post tracked inaction in Congress and visited a small town in rural Massachusetts to witness the consequences firsthand.

SoundCloud • 9th November 2019

BONUS: Telling an Unbelievable Story

On this bonus episode, we’re sharing audio from the 2016 IRE Conference. In a session on narrative storytelling, reporters T. Christian Miller and Ken Armstrong explain how they wrote their Pulitzer-winning story “An Unbelievable Story of Rape”. Their reporting is the basis of a new Netflix limited series called “Unbelievable".