and laura gottesdiener is with us, author of, "a dream foreclosed: black america and the fight for ae to call home." she's an editor and her most recent piece for tomdispatch is called, "when predatory equity hit the big apple: how private equity came to new york's rental market -- and what that tell us about the future." we welcome you both to democracy now! laura, tell us about this particular case. >> thanks for having me. as we've been looking at the growth of the single-family rental empire across the country, what we hear over and over again is this is an utterly unprecedented phenomenon, that nothing like us has ever happened in the history of the united states. in many ways, that is true. in other ways, in new york city we have this case study of what it looked like over the last decade when private equity firms have gone in and seen what they consider to be opportunities and housing markets make a lot of money quickly. i know you have covered this extensively thomas juan. what is important see in both this case that richmond is living through and 1600 other families are livi