Reducing residential segregation is the best way to reduce racial inequality in the United States. African American employment rates, earnings, test scores, even longevity all improve sharply as residential integration increases. Yet far too many participants in our policy and political conversations have come to believe that the battle to integrate America’s cities cannot be won. Richard Sander, Yana Kucheva, and Jonathan Zasloff write that the pessimism surrounding desegregation in housing arises from an inadequate understanding of how segregation has evolved and how policy interventions have already set many metropolitan areas on the path to integration. Scholars have debated for decades whether America’s fair housing laws are effective. Moving toward Integration provides the most definitive account to date of how those laws were shaped and implemented and why they had a much larger impact in some parts of the country than others. It uses fresh evidence and better analytic tools to show when factors like exclusionary zoning and income differences between blacks and whites pose substantial obstacles to broad integration, and when they do not. Through its interdisciplinary approach and use of rich new data sources, Moving toward Integration offers the first comprehensive analysis of American housing segregation. It explains why racial segregation has been resilient even in an increasingly diverse and tolerant society, and it demonstrates how public policy can align with demographic trends to achieve broad housing integration within a generation.

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST, 2020 PULITZER PRIZE IN HISTORY By the late 1960s and early 1970s, reeling from a wave of urban uprisings, politicians finally worked to end the practice of redlining. Reasoning that the turbulence could be calmed by turning Black city-dwellers into homeowners, they passed the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968, and set about establishing policies to induce mortgage lenders and the real estate industry to treat Black homebuyers equally. The disaster that ensued revealed that racist exclusion had not been eradicated, but rather transmuted into a new phenomenon of predatory inclusion. Race for Profit uncovers how exploitative real estate practices continued well after housing discrimination was banned. The same racist structures and individuals remained intact after redlining's end, and close relationships between regulators and the industry created incentives to ignore improprieties. Meanwhile, new policies meant to encourage low-income homeownership created new methods to exploit Black homeowners. The federal government guaranteed urban mortgages in an attempt to overcome resistance to lending to Black buyers – as if unprofitability, rather than racism, was the cause of housing segregation. Bankers, investors, and real estate agents took advantage of the perverse incentives, targeting the Black women most likely to fail to keep up their home payments and slip into foreclosure, multiplying their profits. As a result, by the end of the 1970s, the nation's first programs to encourage Black homeownership ended with tens of thousands of foreclosures in Black communities across the country. The push to uplift Black homeownership had descended into a goldmine for realtors and mortgage lenders, and a ready-made cudgel for the champions of deregulation to wield against government intervention of any kind. Narrating the story of a sea-change in housing policy and its dire impact on African Americans, Race for Profit reveals how the urban core was transformed into a new frontier of cynical extraction.

Whether or not there is discrimination in the mortgage lending market is one of the most extensively debated issues in the civil rights arena. Because many early studies were flawed and the results misinterpreted on both sides of the debate, there is little agreement as to the next essential steps in either research or enforcement. This comprehensive volume seeks to clarify the debate by including rigorous review of fair lending research, applied projects, and enforcement activities to date, as well as recommendations for research needed to resolve unanswered questions. The intent of the authors is to help the housing industry, regulators, advocates, and the research community to better understand the issue of discrimination in an important area of American life -- the right to take out a mortgage to buy a home based on one's credit worthiness, not on one's race or ethnic group.

"The story of how American banks helped disenfranchise nonwhite urbanities and condemn to blight the very neighborhoods that needed the most investment is infuriating. And yet, by digging into the history of urban finance, Rebecca Marchiel here illuminates how urban activists changed some banks' behavior to support investment in communities that they had once abandoned. These developments, in turn, affected federal urban policy and reshaped banks' understanding of the role that urban communities play in the financial system. The legacy of reinvestment activism is clouded, but Marchiel's detailing of it transforms our understanding of the history and significance of community/bank relations"--Provided by publisher.

Subprime Cities: The Political Economy of Mortgage Markets presents a collection of works from social scientists that offer insights into mortgage markets and the causes, effects, and aftermath of the recent 'subprime' mortgage crisis. Provides an even-handed and detailed analysis of mortgage markets and the recent housing crisis Features contributions from various social scientists with expertise in critical social theories who have assembled and analyzed detailed empirical information Offers a unique and powerful rebuttal to many of the misleading popular explanations of the crisis and its aftermath Reveals how racial minorities and the neighbourhoods inhabited by them are more likely to be targeted by subprime and predatory lenders

Utilizing research from the U.S., Italy, and the Netherlands, Place, Exclusion and Mortgage Markets presents an in depth examination of the practice of redlining and the broader implications of contemporary urban exclusion processes. Covers exclusion in mortgage markets in three different countries - the U.S., Italy, and the Netherlands Presents an interdisciplinary perspective to the practice of redlining Connects the literature on social exclusion and financial exclusion

7. Community Reinvestment from 1988 to the End of the Twentieth Century: Struggles for Bank and Regulator Accountability -- 8. The Predatory Lending Policy Debate -- 9. The Community Reinvestment Act and Fair Lending Policy in the Twenty-first Century -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index