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mamanrees's review
4.0
Much like “The Color of Law,” this was not an easy or fun read but it was certainly thought-provoking.
alexkerner's review
4.0
There is some irony that on the release day of Barack Obama's much feted memoir I finished Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor's history of race and housing in the 1960s and 1970s. After all one of the most powerful criticisms of the Obama presidency was his administration's handling of the housing crisis, choosing to bailout the lenders largely responsible for the financial collapse while offering nothing to borrowers facing foreclosure of their mortgages. This facilitated the greatest destruction of wealth among African-Americans, a demographic heavily reliant on home ownership as a savings vehicle.
Taylor gives us a meticulously researched and persuasive account of how federal housing policy has largely failed African-Americans. Situating her account between the Johnson and Nixon administrations, Taylor argues that even the more liberal and aggressive attempts to reshape housing in the United States under Johnson failed to make significant strides in achieving equal access and opportunity for Black home ownership, beholden and influenced by private real estate interests whose drive for profit made them unwilling to break with racial norms to desegregate housing. The early years of the Nixon administration showed some promise under Housing Secretary George Romney to continue at least in principle aggressive attempts to desegregate housing, but reelection aspirations quickly pushed Nixon to break from these efforts to appease his base among white homeowners in the suburbs.
Taylor has produced an incredibly important history of the politics that destroyed the liberal attempts to end housing segregation and ushered in neoliberal hegemony that handed the market unfettered power to manage access to quality housing in the United States. While most lavish Obama today as he releases Promised Land, its important to not forget how his presidency continued a long line of administrations failing to address inequality in a realm so essential to American identity, home ownership
Taylor gives us a meticulously researched and persuasive account of how federal housing policy has largely failed African-Americans. Situating her account between the Johnson and Nixon administrations, Taylor argues that even the more liberal and aggressive attempts to reshape housing in the United States under Johnson failed to make significant strides in achieving equal access and opportunity for Black home ownership, beholden and influenced by private real estate interests whose drive for profit made them unwilling to break with racial norms to desegregate housing. The early years of the Nixon administration showed some promise under Housing Secretary George Romney to continue at least in principle aggressive attempts to desegregate housing, but reelection aspirations quickly pushed Nixon to break from these efforts to appease his base among white homeowners in the suburbs.
Taylor has produced an incredibly important history of the politics that destroyed the liberal attempts to end housing segregation and ushered in neoliberal hegemony that handed the market unfettered power to manage access to quality housing in the United States. While most lavish Obama today as he releases Promised Land, its important to not forget how his presidency continued a long line of administrations failing to address inequality in a realm so essential to American identity, home ownership
booklightexplorer's review
challenging
informative
sad
slow-paced
4.5
This is one of those books that reminds you how little you know about the social history of this country and I'm so thankful that I picked it up. It is a dense read and I'm still processing it but I would highly recommend this for anyone interested in understanding how the implementation of what I'd like to believe were well-meaning policies to increase social equity through home ownership were corrupted by racist systems at all levels of the process - the regulatory system, banking industry, and the real estate industry. It also shows how the cultural narrative shifted the blame to the victims of these predatory practices - blaming the individuals swindled into buying unsafe, completely dilapidated homes for being unable to maintain them instead of the regulators, realtors, and bankers that sold these unlivable homes.
This book challenges me to look beyond just passing social programs to how we go about implementing them to ensure that they benefit those who need it rather than provide another avenue of exploitation for private industry to just make more money at the expense of the exact people the law is supposed to help. It has given me so much to think about.
This book challenges me to look beyond just passing social programs to how we go about implementing them to ensure that they benefit those who need it rather than provide another avenue of exploitation for private industry to just make more money at the expense of the exact people the law is supposed to help. It has given me so much to think about.
mattrohn's review
informative
medium-paced
5.0
An essential addition to the canon of modern urban\housing history along with Crabgrass Frontier\The Color of Law\A World More Concrete\Origins of the Urban Crisis. Follows the failure of FHA enforcement during the 1960-70s and the transition away from Great Society liberalism in fighting housing segregation and unaffordability to late 20th century neoliberalism, largely through the career of Michigan governor and HUD secretary George Romney. The book is tightly edited and its strongest conceptual contribution is on "predatory inclusion" of Black buyers in the midcentury mortgage market, being pushed into substandard or collapsing houses in order to generate mortgages and meet FHA production numbers
themshelves's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
mohawkm's review
5.0
An important and tough read about how the private-public partnership in creating better housing options (and pushing home ownership) for the poor and for Black Americans in the 1960s and 1970s was severely flawed and taken advantage of. Particularly disappointing to read how much the real estate industry determined to keep two markets: one for white customers, who would pay more to keep separate, and one for Black customers, to trick them into homes that were falling apart. Great detail on appraisals (although infuriating) and on the markets in Michigan especially.