"Eight California hospitals — including four in the Los Angeles area — are among the institutions paying the maximum fine under a new Medicare program designed to reduce high patient readmission rates. Under the 2010 federal Affordable Care Act, the federal government has started fining hospitals with high readmissions rates as much as 1 percent of the money that Medicare would normally reimburse them. Working to reduce runaway costs, Medicare is now penalizing hospitals across California and nationwide for patients who must be admitted again within 30 days," according to an investigation by KPCC.

"Sutton ended up with a series of installment loans from World -- renewed one after the other -- that dragged her ever-deeper into debt, and made getting her bills paid and getting back on her feet a whole lot harder. It is a repeated pattern for low-income borrowers with low or no credit, which an investigation by Marketplace and ProPublica was able to verify from interviews with World borrowers and former World employees." Read the full investigation by Marketplace and ProPublica here.

"Change of ownership, key to reassessment, is cut-and-dried for homeowners but not businesses. It means a loss of tens of millions of dollars a year in tax revenue," according to an investigation by the Los Angeles Times.

"Thousands of Bay Area homeowners are fighting in court to save their homes from a foreclosure system rife with mistakes, mismanagement and even fraud, a joint investigation by the Center for Investigative Reporting and NBC Bay Area has found. Stephen Stock reports." Read the full investigation by CIR and NBC Bay Area here.

"Despite a state law, many Level Three sex offenders are ending up in the same few neighborhoods," the Minneapolis Star-Tribune found from its investigation.

An analysis by The Record/NorthJersey.com has found that, "in a striking reversal, growing numbers of young parents are choosing the bustle of New York City over the calm of suburban life as a place to live, a trend that is already changing the face of some neighborhoods across North Jersey and could have long-term implications for schools, the housing market and beyond."

A Star Tribune investigation of 1,330 Twin Cities real estate transactions known as contracts for deed reveals that they are beset by inflated prices, high interest rates and other terms that almost guarantee the buyer will default. In hundreds of cases, records show, sellers failed to provide mandated home inspections that would have revealed code violations and safety hazards. Some buyers said they were misled about outstanding debts attached to the properties. Others thought they were signing a lease.

“The greatest income inequality in the state was in Philadelphia and Allegheny County from 2009 to 2011, according to recently compiled Census estimates that measure the gap between richest and poorest. The chasm between rich and poor can be seen near Pittsburgh in the boroughs of Fox Chapel and Sharpsburg, a wealthy bedroom community and its economically struggling neighbor.”

“Thirty percent of claims sampled from for- profit homes were deemed improper, compared to just 12 percent from non-profits, according to data Bloomberg News obtained from the inspector general’s office of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services via a Freedom of Information Act request.”

“The low-income neighborhood of older wood-frame homes in West Dallas is a far cry from the suburb of newly built brick houses in Frisco 30 miles to the north. But the two North Texas communities share a bond: Both were contaminated by industrial lead for nearly half a century.”