DOCSLIB.ORG

Home Inequity: Race, Wealth, and Housing in St. Louis Since 1940.*

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Home Inequity: Race, Wealth, and Housing in St. Louis Since 1940.* Home Inequity: Race, Wealth, and Housing in St. Louis since 1940.* Colin Gordon, University of Iowa (History) [email protected] Sarah K. Bruch, University of Iowa (Sociology) [email protected] * The authors thank Kyu Young Lee, Jennifer Marks, and Ashley Dorn for research assistance, Matt Nelson of the Minnesota Population Center for help with the 1940 full-count Census, and participants at the Race and Space Seminar, Hall Center, University of Kansas, for comments on an earlier version. Funding provided by a University of Iowa, Office of Vice President for Research, Internal Funding Initiative. Direct correspondence to Colin Gordon, Department of History, University of Iowa, 280 Schaeffer Hall, Iowa City, IA 52242 [email protected]. Manuscript Home Inequity: Race, Wealth, and Housing in St. Louis since 1940 There are few starker measures of economic inequality, in terms of either distributional outcomes or historical implications, than the racial wealth gap. The black-white wealth gap has persisted despite the promise of Reconstruction, the Great Migration, and the legal and political gains of the long civil rights movement. Wealth, in turn, is not just a distributional marker; it is also a key determinant of economic security, mobility, and opportunity (Spilerman 2000; Conley 1999; Oliver and Shapiro 2006). Wealth allows individuals and families to smooth out short-term volatility in income (O’Brien 2012; Hacker 2008;), to bolster future income through education and other investments in human capital (Pfeffer 2011; Conley 1999; Altonji and Doraszelski 2005), and to offer the next generation a “starting gate” advantage in the form of both home ownership (a “de facto purchase of educational resources” [Pfeffer 2011] in the U.S. setting) and in vivos transfers (assistance buying a home, paying for college, or starting a business) or inheritances (Pfeffer 2016; Avery and Rendall, 2002, 1303; Conley 1999; Charles 2002; Henretta 1984). The racial wealth gap is both the outcome of a long history of racial inequality and a key mechanism sustaining it across generations (Conley 1999; Pfeffer 2011). Oliver and Shapiro (2006) characterize the racial wealth gap as a “sedimentary” strata of inequality—a metaphor that captures both the endurance and hardening of past forms of discrimination, and its imperviousness to solutions. Slavery, of course, created a singularly dismal starting point for black wealth (Ransom and Sutch 2001), a disadvantage sustained by the labor, penal, and credit institutions of the Jim Crow South (Nier 2007; Alston and Ferrie 1985), the deeply-segregated labor and housing markets of the urban North (Fox-Gotham 2002; Hirsch 1983; Sugrue 1996; 1 Author 2008; Boustan 2016), and the sharply disparate racial impacts of deindustrialization (Wilson 1990), wage stagnation (Austin 2013), and mass-incarceration (Petit and Western 2004; Schneider and Turner 2015; Sykes and Marato 2016). For most Americans, home equity is the single most important component of family wealth (Federal Reserve 2016). African-Americans rely disproportionately on home equity as a source of wealth, and yet home ownership stands out—across this history—as an arena of sustained and pervasive racial discrimination (Squires 2007; Pager and Shepherd 2008; Rothstein 2017). Formal legal restrictions, including racial zoning ordinances and race-restrictive deed covenants, sharply constrained African-American housing opportunities in the first half of the twentieth century (Gonda 2015; Boustan 2016; Author 2008; Fox-Gotham 2002). As these instruments fell to “equal protection” legal challenges, they were replicated and reinvented by both private realty (Helper 1979) and public policies—including local zoning, and the now- infamous embrace of “redlining” by federal housing and mortgage programs (Rothstein 2017; Katznelson 2005; Greer 2013, Hillier 2003, Jackson 1980; Author 2008). African-Americans, as a result, have been substantially excluded from both opportunities for homeownership, and its benefits (Killewald and Bryan 2016). “Race and property” as Conley (1999, 5) underscores, “are intimately linked and form the nexus of black-white inequality.” While the role of housing segregation and discrimination in creating and sustaining the racial wealth gap is widely recognized (Oliver and Shapiro 2006; Conley 1999; Krivo and Kaufman 2004: Shapiro 2004), there is a gap in our understanding of this process, stemming from the temporal and spatial limits of national survey data on housing and family wealth. This data, available from the early 1980s, picks up the story only after a half-century of private and state-sponsored segregation, federal housing and mortgage policies, and dramatic demographic 2 change (black migration and white flight) had shaped African-American neighborhoods and African-American assets. And it offers only a national glimpse of a story shaped largely by local practices, patterns, and policies. In this paper, we examine the historical process of wealth accumulation through home equity for a sample of homeowners in St. Louis from 1940 to 2016. To do so, we draw on three resources: the newly-available full-count census for 1940 (Ruggles et al 2015); the archival records of the St. Louis Assessor’s Office; and a close historical understanding of local housing patterns and policies (Author 2008). We use our understanding of the St. Louis setting and the 1940 full count decennial census to draw a stratified sample of black and white homeowners; we use the Assessor’s records to assemble data on housing values, transactions, and tenure for the sample properties from 1940 through 2016. The result is a descriptive portrait of racial wealth inequality across this era – pointing to household and neighborhood processes that affect wealth accumulation through home equity for blacks and whites. We find stark and sustained racial segregation in local housing markets, short housing tenure and dynamic patterns of mobility for white homeowners to neighborhoods with increasing housing values, and long housing tenure for black owners in neighborhoods marked by disinvestment and declining home values. The consequence is a dramatic erosion of wealth and equity for the 1940 black owners and their heirs, contrasted with an accumulation of wealth and equity for the 1940 white owners. Racial Gaps in Wealth and Homeownership The racial wealth gap, as measured by the triennial Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) and earlier surveys, has changed little over the last half-century. Median white wealth grew nearly 3 fourfold between 1962 and 2010 (Urban Institute 2017), before slipping during the Great Recession. The median wealth of black families, by contrast, is essentially flat across this era, peaking at just over 16 percent of white wealth at the end of the 1990s, falling back to barely half that in 2013, and settling in at just over 10% in the latest (2016) survey (Bricker et al 2017). This gap far exceeds the gap in median income (62 percent) or median wages (75 percent) (Census Historical Income Tables; Wilson and Rodgers 2016). Estimates based on other surveys echo these patterns.1 The racial wealth gap is shaped largely by patterns of inequality in housing, a fact attenuated by the fact that home equity makes up a much greater share of the wealth of black homeowners than of white homeowners (Oliver and Shapiro, 2006; Wolff and Gittleman 2004; Burds-Sharp and Rasch 2015). Indeed, for most lower-income households, assets other than home equity are rare, and often negative (Boehm and Schlottman 2008). Even as African- Americans rely heavily on home equity as a source of wealth, their access to homeownership has been constrained by an array of factors. The black homeownership rate has stubbornly trailed the white homeownership rate by about 25 points since 1900 (Collins and Margo 2011; Buist et al 1994), a gap that persists across the income spectrum (Horton and Thomas 1998; Jackman and Jackman 1980). Where black homeownership did gain a foothold, often in neighborhoods undergoing racial transition (Boustan and Margo 2013), home values slipped and the benefits of 1 We use the SCF series, with estimates for 1962 using the Survey of Financial Characteristics of Consumers 1962 and Survey of Changes in Family Finances 1963 (Urban Institute 2017). The Survey on Income and Program Participation (SIPP), a longitudinal panel survey of households, has included a supplemental survey on wealth since 1984 (Eggleston and Klee 2016). The Panel Study on Income Dynamics (PSID) has also collected detailed information on wealth since 1984. Scholars have used the SIPP and PSID for estimates of the net worth of demographic subgroups (Shapiro and Oliver 1996; Conley 1999; Altonji et al 2005), and for historical trends (Shapiro, Meschede, and Osoro 2013; Wolff and Gittleman 2004) that cover roughly the same chronological span of the SCF. 4 homeownership—as a tax deduction, as a hedge against inflation, as a source of forced savings— evaporated (Buist et al 1994; Kain and Quigley 1972; Parcel 1982). When black borrowers surmounted the high denial rates in private credit markets, they were saddled with higher interest and insurance rates (Chiteji 2010). Understanding Racial Inequality in Wealth and Home Equity To understand the mechanisms by which housing wealth is created (or destroyed), we need to trace black and white homeownership in their local contexts; in the settings where distinct patterns of housing segregation, residential development, and opportunities for
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Black Flight: Racial Shuffling in American Metropolitan Areas (Orly
    Population Association of America(PAA) Extended Abstract-2013 Meeting September 21, 2012 Black Flight: Racial Shuffling in American Metropolitan Areas (Orly Clerge & Hilary Silver) Scholars usually refer to "Black Flight," or the rapid geographical mobility of African- Americans, as the return migration of African-Americans to cities in the American South (Frey 2011). Black population gains from 2000 to 2010 mostly occurred in the metropolitan areas of the South, led by Atlanta, Dallas, and Houston. In contrast, black population in metropolitan New York, Chicago, and Detroit fell for the first time. In addition to this black inter-metropolitan mobility, there is evidence of intra-metropolitan movement as well. In line with Chicago School theory (Frey 1979; South & Crowder 1997a, b), urban sociologists have applied the conventional term “white flight” to middle- and working- class African-Americans who move out of neighborhoods where the black poor move in and who move into neighborhoods from which whites fled. For example, Woldoff (2011) demonstrates that after white flight, the initially "pioneering" blacks flee to other neighborhoods or adjust to the new segregated residential environment into which an incoming second wave of black neighbors arrive (see also Patillo-McCoy 2000). Patillo (2007), Hyra (2008), and Freeman also discuss how all black neighborhoods have gentrified, creating class conflicts within the same areas. The class-selective understanding of Black Flight can be confused with “black suburbanization" more generally.
    [Show full text]
  • The Bankruptcy of Detroit: What Role Did Race Play?
    The Bankruptcy of Detroit: What Role did Race Play? Reynolds Farley* University of Michigan at Michigan Perhaps no city in the United States has a longer and more vibrant history of racial conflict than Detroit. It is the only city where federal troops have been dispatched to the streets four times to put down racial bloodshed. By the 1990s, Detroit was the quintessential “Chocolate City-Vanilla Suburbs” metropolis. In 2013, Detroit be- came the largest city to enter bankruptcy. It is an oversimplification and inaccurate to argue that racial conflict and segregation caused the bankruptcy of Detroit. But racial issues were deeply intertwined with fundamental population shifts and em- ployment changes that together diminished the tax base of the city. Consideration is also given to the role continuing racial disparity will play in the future of Detroit after bankruptcy. INTRODUCTION The city of Detroit ran out of funds to pay its bills in early 2013. Emergency Man- ager Kevyn Orr, with the approval of Michigan Governor Snyder, sought and received bankruptcy protection from the federal court and Detroit became the largest city to enter bankruptcy. This paper explores the role that racial conflict played in the fiscal collapse of what was the nation’s fourth largest city. In June 1967 racial violence in Newark led to 26 deaths and, the next month, rioting in Detroit killed 43. President Johnson appointed Illinois Governor Kerner to chair a com- mission to explain the causes of urban racial violence. That Commission emphasized the grievances of blacks in big cities—segregated housing, discrimination in employment, poor schools, and frequent police violence including the questionable shooting of nu- merous African American men.
    [Show full text]
  • Race and Assimilation During the Great Migration
    DISCUSSION PAPER SERIES IZA DP No. 14371 From Immigrants to Americans: Race and Assimilation during the Great Migration Vasiliki Fouka Soumyajit Mazumder Marco Tabellini MAY 2021 DISCUSSION PAPER SERIES IZA DP No. 14371 From Immigrants to Americans: Race and Assimilation during the Great Migration Vasiliki Fouka Stanford University, CEPR, and NBER Soumyajit Mazumder Harvard University Marco Tabellini Harvard Business School, CEPR and IZA MAY 2021 Any opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but IZA takes no institutional policy positions. The IZA research network is committed to the IZA Guiding Principles of Research Integrity. The IZA Institute of Labor Economics is an independent economic research institute that conducts research in labor economics and offers evidence-based policy advice on labor market issues. Supported by the Deutsche Post Foundation, IZA runs the world’s largest network of economists, whose research aims to provide answers to the global labor market challenges of our time. Our key objective is to build bridges between academic research, policymakers and society. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. ISSN: 2365-9793 IZA – Institute of Labor Economics Schaumburg-Lippe-Straße 5–9 Phone: +49-228-3894-0 53113 Bonn, Germany Email: [email protected] www.iza.org IZA DP No. 14371 MAY 2021 ABSTRACT From Immigrants to Americans: Race and Assimilation during the Great Migration* How does the arrival of a new minority group affect the social acceptance and outcomes of existing minorities? We study this question in the context of the First Great Migration.
    [Show full text]
  • HISTORIC BLACK RESOURCES a Handbook for the Identification, Documentation, and Evaluation of Historic African-American Properties in Georgia
    HISTORIC BLACK RESOURCESA Handbook For the Identification, Documentation, and Evaluation of Historic African-American Properties in Georgia - � ..:.:::i.._-- -r-- \' -==; 1- tt flf ___ , Illt II flrlf ff 111 11 1,lh . '1! Carole Merritt Historic Preservation Section . Georgia Department of Natural Resources HISTORIC BLACK RESOURCES A Handbook For the Identification, Documentation, and Evaluation of Historic African-American Properties in Georgia Carole Merritt Edited By Carolyn S. Brooks Historic Preservation Section Georgia Department of Natural Resources 1984 Hi.sfori1· Hlack Rc.so111'<'<'-' has been funded with the assistance of a matching grant-in­ aid from the United States Department of the Interior. National Park Service, through the Historic Preservation Section, Georgia Department of Natural Resources, under provisions of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966. Copyright© 1984 by the Historic Preservation Section, Georgia Department of Natural Resources Cover Photo: James R. Lockhart for the Historic Preservation Section Contents Preface /5 Introduction /6 1. Historical Overview /8 2. The Resources /12 Residential /12 Institutional /25 Commercial /4 7 3. Identification /59 4. Documentation /67 5. Evaluation for the National Register of Historic Places /76 Appendix A: Checklist of Historic Resources /84 Appendix B: National Register Properties in Georgia Significant in African-American History /86 Appendix C: Agencies and Organizations Providing Preservation Assistance /90 Bibliography /94 This page was left blank. Preface The benefits that historic preservation can offer to minority com­ munities have only recently begun to be recognized. Along with this awareness, an appreciation of the importance of the historic resources of these communities, whose historical significance has long gone unnoticed, is developing.
    [Show full text]
  • The NAACP and the Black Freedom Struggle in Baltimore, 1935-1975 Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillm
    “A Mean City”: The NAACP and the Black Freedom Struggle in Baltimore, 1935-1975 Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By: Thomas Anthony Gass, M.A. Department of History The Ohio State University 2014 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Hasan Kwame Jeffries, Advisor Dr. Kevin Boyle Dr. Curtis Austin 1 Copyright by Thomas Anthony Gass 2014 2 Abstract “A Mean City”: The NAACP and the Black Freedom Struggle in Baltimore, 1935-1975” traces the history and activities of the Baltimore branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from its revitalization during the Great Depression to the end of the Black Power Movement. The dissertation examines the NAACP’s efforts to eliminate racial discrimination and segregation in a city and state that was “neither North nor South” while carrying out the national directives of the parent body. In doing so, its ideas, tactics, strategies, and methods influenced the growth of the national civil rights movement. ii Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to the Jackson, Mitchell, and Murphy families and the countless number of African Americans and their white allies throughout Baltimore and Maryland that strove to make “The Free State” live up to its moniker. It is also dedicated to family members who have passed on but left their mark on this work and myself. They are my grandparents, Lucious and Mattie Gass, Barbara Johns Powell, William “Billy” Spencer, and Cynthia L. “Bunny” Jones. This victory is theirs as well. iii Acknowledgements This dissertation has certainly been a long time coming.
    [Show full text]
  • SSN Basic Facts Gordon on Understanding Ferguson
    HOW LEGACIES OF URBAN RACIAL SEGREGATION SHAPE TODAY’S CONTROVERSIES OVER POLICE KILLINGS OF BLACK PEOPLE by Colin Gordon, University of Iowa As racial tensions smolder in Ferguson, Baltimore, Charlotte, and beyond, it is important to look beyond the episodes of police violence that struck the match in each setting. The deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Freddie Gray in Baltimore, and Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte punctuate a long history of discrimination and segregation – a legacy that is especially stark in border cities like St. Louis and Baltimore, but present in many other places as well. Legacies of racial segregation ensure that the tinder is dry; that people in affected communities see the death of a young Black man at the hands of the police as a symbol of something much bigger. A close look at St. Louis reveals the dynamics at work. Racial Segregation in St. Louis Racial segregation in St. Louis and its suburbs originated in private action but was then sustained, embedded, and reinvented by public policies. In the early and middle decades of the twentieth century, realtors, developers, and white property owners erected elaborate obstacles to Black property ownership and occupancy. These restrictions were, over time, adopted and formalized as ethical obligations for private realtors, lenders, and insurers. They served, too, as organizing principles for local zoning and federal housing policies and as key determinants of value whenever property was taxed or declared “blighted” for redevelopment. None of this was unique to St. Louis, but for a number of reasons it played out there in a particularly stark and dramatic form.
    [Show full text]
  • Evidence from the Great Migration∗
    Racial Heterogeneity and Local Government Finances: Evidence from the Great Migration Marco Tabelliniy Harvard Business School July 18, 2018 Abstract Is racial heterogeneity responsible for the distressed financial conditions of US cen- tral cities and for their limited ability to provide even basic public goods? If so, why? I study these questions in the context of the first wave of the Great Migration (1915- 1930), when more than 1.5 million African Americans moved from the South to the North of the United States. Black inflows and the induced white outflows ("white flight") are both instrumented for using, respectively, pre-migration settlements and their interaction with MSA geographic characteristics that affect the cost of moving to the suburbs. I find that black in-migration imposed a strong, negative fiscal exter- nality on receiving places by lowering property values and, mechanically, reducing tax revenues. Unable or unwilling to raise tax rates, cities cut public spending, especially in education, to meet a tighter budget constraint. While the fall in tax revenues was partly offset by higher debt, this strategy may, in the long run, have proven unsustain- able, contributing to the financially distressed conditions of several US central cities today. JEL Codes: H41, J15, N32. I am extremely grateful to Daron Acemoglu, Alberto Alesina, and Heidi Williams for their invaluable advice and guidance. Special thanks to David Autor, Maristella Botticini, Leah Boustan, James Feigenbaum, Nicola Gennaioli, and Francesco Giavazzi for their many comments and suggestions. I also thank Abhijit Banerjee, Alex Bartik, Sydnee Caldwell, Enrico Cantoni, Michela Carlana, Leonardo D’Amico, Christian Dustmann, Dan Fetter, John Firth, Nicola Fontana, John Friedman, Chishio Furukawa, Nina Harari, Greg Howard, Ray Kluender, Giacomo Magistretti, Bob Margo, Arianna Ornaghi, Jonathan Petkun, Jim Poterba, Otis Reid, Jósef Sigurdsson, Cory Smith, Jim Snyder, Martina Uccioli, Nico Voigtlaender, Daniel Waldinger, and Roman Zarate for useful conversations and suggestions.
    [Show full text]
  • America's Middle Neighborhoods: Setting the Stage for Revival
    Predicting Municipal Fiscal Distress: America’s Middle Neighborhoods: Setting the Stage for Revival Working Paper WP18AM2 Alan Mallach Center for Community Progress November 2018 The findings and conclusions of this Working Paper reflect the views of the author(s) and have not been subject to a detailed review by the staff of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. Contact the Lincoln Institute with questions or requests for permission to reprint this paper. [email protected] © 2018 Lincoln Institute of Land Policy Abstract In this paper, I attempt to provide a comprehensive framework to encourage thinking about the growing challenges faced by the middle neighborhoods of the nation’s legacy cities and their inner-ring suburbs. Beginning with a discussion of alternative ways of defining and measuring middle neighborhoods, I propose a typological framework that links a neighborhood’s trajectory to five factors: market trends, racial and ethnic characteristics and transitions, physical form, and location. That is followed by an exploration of the challenges these neighborhoods face today and those they may face in the future, with particular emphasis on the distinct challenges facing predominately African-American middle neighborhoods. A closing section offers a number of key strategies for revival of middle neighborhoods, while an appendix outlines a future middle neighborhoods research agenda. About the Author Alan Mallach is a senior fellow at the Center for Community Progress and a visiting professor in the Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment at Pratt Institute. His latest book, The Divided City: Poverty and Prosperity in Urban America will appear in May 2018.
    [Show full text]
  • Melting Pot Cities and Suburbs: Racial and Ethnic Change in Metro America in the 2000S
    JkXk\f] D\kifgfc`kXe FEK?<=IFEK 8d\i`ZX C@E<JF= Melting Pot Cities and Suburbs: Racial and Ethnic Change in Metro America in the 2000s William H. Frey “The historically FINDINGS sharp racial and An analysis of data from the 1990, 2000, and 2010 decennial censuses reveals that: ■ Hispanics now outnumber blacks and represent the largest minority group ethnic divisions in major American cities. The Hispanic share of population rose in all primary cities of the largest 100 metropolitan areas from 2000 to 2010. Across all cities in between cities 2010, 41 percent of residents were white, 26 percent were Hispanic, and 22 percent were black. and suburbs in ■ Well over half of America’s cities are now majority non-white. Primary cities metropolitan America in 58 metropolitan areas were “majority minority” in 2010, up from 43 in 2000. Cities lost only about half as many whites in the 2000s as in the 1990s, but “black fl ight” are more blurred than from cities such as Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, and Detroit accelerated in the 2000s. ever.” ■ Minorities represent 35 percent of suburban residents, similar to their share of overall U.S. population. Among the 100 largest metro areas, 36 feature “melting pot” suburbs where at least 35 percent of residents are non-white. The suburbs of Houston, Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. became majority minority in the 2000s. ■ More than half of all minority groups in large metro areas, including blacks, now reside in the suburbs. The share of blacks in large metro areas living in suburbs rose from 37 percent in 1990, to 44 percent in 2000, to 51 percent in 2010.
    [Show full text]
  • The Alton Park Connector Creating a Pathway to Alton Park’S History, People and Culture
    The Alton Park Connector Creating A Pathway to Alton Park’s History, People and Culture Written by Maria Noel Table of Contents Letter from Tennessee State Director............................................................................... 3 Prologue: A Labor of Love................................................................................................... 4 The Alton Park Story............................................................................................................. 5 More Than A Traditional Trail............................................................................................ 6 From Suburbs to Industrial Hub....................................................................................... 7 The Fight for Environmental Justice Begins.................................................................... 9 More African Americans Migrate to Alton Park............................................................ 12 A Black Middle-Class Emerges............................................................................................ 14 Growing Up with A Sense of Pride.................................................................................... 17 Others Take Notice of the Community’s Health............................................................ 20 Giving Back to the Community.......................................................................................... 23 A New Generation Advocates for Change........................................................................ 26 Epilogue:
    [Show full text]
  • Our Segregated Capital: an Increasingly Diverse City With
    Our Segregated Capital An Increasingly Diverse City with Racially Polarized Schools Gary Orfield & Jongyeon Ee February 2017 2 Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles Our Segregated Capital, February 2017 Table of Contents LIST OF TABLES ....................................................................................................................................................... 4 LIST OF FIGURES ...................................................................................................................................................... 5 FOREWORD ............................................................................................................................................................... 6 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ....................................................................................................................................... 11 BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT .......................................................................................................................... 15 WHY IT MATTERS: RESEARCH SHOWS POWERFUL INTEGRATION EFFECTS .................................................................... 16 THE HISTORY OF THE ISSUE IN WASHINGTON ...................................................................................................................... 19 CIVIL RIGHTS AND WASHINGTON SCHOOLS .......................................................................................................................... 21 THE JUDICIAL EFFORT: SERIOUS BUT TOO LATE .................................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Continuing Dilemmas of Housing, Race, and Place
    Folkways and Stateways 27 Review Essay Folkways and Stateways: Continuing Dilemmas of Housing, Race, and Place Clarence Lang ROCHDALE VILLAGE: Robert Moses, 6,000 Families, and New York City’s Great Experiment in Integrated Housing. By Peter Eisenstadt. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 2010. RACIAL BEACHHEAD: Diversity and Democracy in a Military Town—Seaside, California. By Carol Lynn McKibben. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 2012. WHITE FLIGHT/BLACK FLIGHT: The Dynamics of Racial Change in an American Neighborhood. By Rachael A. Woldoff. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 2011. 0026-3079/2013/5203-027$2.50/0 American Studies, 52:3 (2013): 027-038 27 28 Clarence Lang The collapse of the home mortgage system has left working- and middle- class Americans buried alive in the wreckage, but there may yet be a silver lining. If so, it is that the disaster provides policymakers and scholars an occasion to critically evaluate the inner workings of the private housing market, examine the effects of a deregulated financial services industry, reclaim forgotten social democratic legacies of cooperative housing, and call upon the federal government to rejuvenate its commitment to guaranteeing its citizens affordable, stable, and quality shelter. We potentially also have a teachable moment to again consider the tightly interwoven politics of housing and race. Indeed, the proliferation of subprime mortgages to people of color (which precipitated the larger housing crisis in the first place) illustrated that the issues of economic injustice embedded
    [Show full text]