Social Polarization and the Politics of Low Income Mortgage Lending in the United States

ABSTRACT The structured inequalities of capital investment and disinvestment are prominent themes in critical urban and regional research, but many accounts portray ‘capital’ as a global, faceless and placeless abstraction operating according to a hidden, unitary logic. Sweeping political‐economic shifts in the last generation demonstrate that capital may shape urban and regional processes in many different ways, and each of these manifestations creates distinct constraints and opportunities. In this paper, we analyze a new institutional configuration in the USA that is reshaping access to wealth among the poor – a policy ‘consensus’ to expand home‐ownership among long‐excluded populations. This shift has opened access to some low‐ and moderate‐income households, and racial and ethnic minorities, but the necessary corollary is a greater polarization between those who are able to own and those who are not. We provide a critical analysis of these changes, drawing on national housing finance statistics as well as a multivariate analysis of differences between owners and renters in the 1990s in New York City. As home‐ownership strengthens its role as a privatized form of stealth urban and housing policy in the USA, its continued expansion drives a corresponding reconstruction of its value for different groups, and inscribes a sharper axis of property‐rights inequalities among owners and renters in the working classes.     

Energy geographies: thinking critically about energy issues in the classroom

Energy issues are becoming increasingly common subjects of instruction in undergraduate- and graduate-level classrooms across a variety of disciplines. The interdisciplinary character of energy studies provides geographers with a great opportunity to present different applied and theoretical approaches to help students conceptualize energy issues from a critical perspective. This article presents a class intervention as an example of how to incorporate geographic concepts and political economic theory into the classroom to help students understand the social, political, economic, and environmental implications of energy production, distribution, and consumption at multiple scales from a critical perspective.     

Invisible cities: Geography and the disappearance of 'race' from mortgage-lending data in the USA

Recent scholarship on race and ethnicity has unpacked taken-for-granted categories of difference and the processes of social construction of racialized identities. In the USA, however, legal and policy frameworks established during the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s and 1970s are based on problematic, reified categories of race and ethnicity. Yet these frameworks have opened limited opportunities for activist challenges, and among the most successful is the community reinvestment movement, a broad alliance of local groups using simple quantitative analysis of public data and strategic essentialist tactics to win major victories against racial discriminatory mortgage lenders. In this paper, we analyse recent trends that have undermined procedures used to collect the racial data used by reinvestment activists, regulators and housing researchers. The second-largest racial/ethnic group among US home loan applicants is now officially known as 'information not provided,' and non-reporting varies widely across different cities. We analyse the causes of this disappearance and its metropolitan contingency, using multivariate models to evaluate theories of consumer choice and lending industry segmentation. The disappearance of race stems primarily from structural changes in housing finance, including the emergence of a new breed of aggressive, high-risk subprime and predatory lenders; but distinctive contextual factors persist in the emergence of a complex urban system of racially 'invisible' homeowners and homebuyers. The erosion of racial data creates an accidental epistemology, threatening the progressive potential of strategic essentialism for activists and scholars while offering none of the emancipatory possibilities of social constructionist theories of race. Les récentes recherches académiques portant sur la race et l'ethnicité ont exploré les différentes facettes de la différence et les processus sociaux de formation d'identités raciales. Toutefois, aux Etats-Unis, les cadres politiques et légaux établis durant les luttes pour les Droits Civils des années 1960 et 1970 se fondent sur des concepts de race et ethnicité réifiés; ce sont pourtant ces cadres qui ont ouvert la voie à la critique des activistes. Parmi ces critiques, le mouvement de réinvestissement communautaire est celui qui a connu le plus grand succès. Ce mouvement était composé d'une large alliance entre divers groupes locaux utilisant une analyse simple de données publiques quantitatives ainsi que des stratégies d'essentialisme tactique. Ces moyens ont servi à remporter d'importantes victoires contre le racisme des prêteurs hypothécaires. Dans cet article, nous analysons certaines tendences récentes qui ont menacé les procédures de collecte des données raciales par les activistes du réinvestissement, régulateurs, et chercheurs. Le deuxième plus grand groupe racial/ ethnique chez les demandeurs de prêts hypothécaires aux E.U. est maintenant connu officiellement sous la rubrique 'information non-fournie' et le fait de ne pas indiquer sa race ou ethnicité varie énormément d'une ville à l'autre. Nous analysons les causes de ce manque d'information ainsi que son contexte métropolitain à l'aide de différents modèles d'évaluation du choix des consommateurs et de la segmentation de l'industrie du prêt. La disparition d'information ayant trait à la race est principalement issue de changements structuraux dans le financement immobilier, incluant l'émergence d'un nouveau groupe de prêteurs agressifs, prédateurs et à haut risque. Par contre, certains facteurs contextuels distincts persistent dans l'émergence d'un système urbain complexe de propriétaires et acheteurs dont la race demeure 'invisible'. L'érosion de données raciales crée une épistémologie accidentelle et menace le potentiel progressiste de l'essentialisme stratégique utilisé par les activistes et les chercheurs sans toutefois offrir les possibilités émancipatoires des théories raciales constructivistes. Reciente erudición sobre raza e identidad étnica ha deshecho las aceptadas categorías de diferencia y también los procesos de la construcción social de identidades basadas en raza. Sin embargo, en los Estados Unidos, los marcos legales y políticos que fueron establecidos durante la lucha por Derechos Civiles en los años 60 y 70 se fundan en categorías de raza e identidad étnica que son problemáticas y sustancializadas. Y, no obstante, estos marcos han abierto limitadas oportunidades por los desafíos de activistas, y entre los más exitosos es el movimiento de reinversión comunitaria, una extensa alianza de grupos locales que utilizan un sencillo análisis cuantitativo de datos públicos y tácticos estratégicos esencialitas para ganar victorias importantes contra los prestamistas de hipotecas que discriminan por motivos racistas. En este papel, analizamos recientes tendencias que han arruinado los procedimientos implementados para recoger datos raciales utilizados por los activistas reinversionistas, reguladores, e investigadores de viviendas. Hoy en día, el segundo grupo racial/étnica más grande de solicitantes de hipotecas en los Estados Unidos es oficialmente conocido como 'información no proporcionada' y este no revelación de información varia bastante en las varias ciudades. Analizamos las causas de esta desaparición y su contingencia metropolitana por el empleo de modelos multivarios para evaluar teorías de opciones para consumidores y la segmentación de la industria de préstamos. La desaparición de raza viene principalmente de los cambios estructurales en la financiación de viviendas, incluso la emergencia de nuevos prestamistas agresivos y predadores; pero factores contextuales distintivos persisten en la emergencia de un complejo sistema urbano de propietarios y compradores de viviendas racialmente 'invisibles'. La erosión de datos sobre raza crea una epistemología accidental que amenaza el potencial progresivo de esencialismo estratégico para activistas y eruditos y que no ofrece ninguna de las posibilidades emancipadoras de las teorías de construccionismo social sobre raza.     

Kin state non‐interventionism: Albania and regional stability in the Western Balkans

This article provides a comprehensive analysis of Albanian regional policy from 1992 to 2013. Situated in a conflict‐ridden region and surrounded by co‐ethnics living in Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia, Albania has successfully resisted pressure to undertake interventionist regional policies. However, there are no structured accounts as to how Albania fashioned its non‐interventionist regional policy. This article fills this gap and retraces the development of Albanian regional policy as a function of its inter‐mingled domestic politics and regional and international dynamics. The article concludes that the Albanian regional approach has been shaped by its legacy of communist isolation, pro‐Western predisposition and recognition that accommodation of Western interests would overcome its constraints and advance the rights of Albanians living in the Western Balkans. The analysis is important not just for understanding Albania's actions but also for disentangling the relationship between regional policy, nationalism and a kin state's domestic and international constraints.     

Capital's Metropolis: Chicago and the Transformation of American Housing Policy

The US economic recovery of the 1990s accelerated amidst privatization, selective devolution and the reinvention of the public sector itself. Simultaneously, mortgage finance and assisted housing policy were recast in terms of market processes, individual responsibility and private home-ownership, even as gentrification enjoyed a dramatic resurgence. The intersection of these seemingly unrelated processes signifies an important transformation of the American inner city. Nowhere are these connections more explicit than in Chicago, where newly devolved and flexible policy infrastructures are built on the ashes of prominent experiments of previous generations. In this paper we use Chicago as a context to explore the linkages between reinvestment, housing finance and the reinvention of assisted housing. We analyse local and federal developments in assisted housing policy and develop a multivariate analysis of mortgage loans in Chicago's neighbourhoods during the 1990s expansion. New constructions of scale in assisted housing, exemplifed by Chicago's Lake Parc Place and the federal HOPE VI programme, constitute a centripetal devolution mediated by the relationship between public policy and local private market forces. National changes in housing finance have altered historical processes of redlining, disinvestment, and gentrification. Mortgage capital, traditionally responsible for the creation or exacerbation of rent gaps, now lubricates the flow of capital into the gentrifying frontier of the inner city. The intensified market discipline of housing policy, based partly on theories incubated in Chicago, suggests a new regime of neighbourhood change in the American inner city.     

American home: Predatory mortgage capital and neighbourhood spaces of race and class exploitation in the United States

Predatory home mortgage lending has become a central concern for housing research, public policy and community activism in US cities. Regulatory attempts to stop abuses, however, are undermined by claims that ‘predatory’ cannot be defined or distinguished from legitimate subprime lending, and claims that the industry performs a public service by meeting the needs of low‐income, high‐risk consumers (many of them racially marginalized) who would have been denied credit in previous years. We evaluate these claims in historical‐geographical context, drawing on David Harvey's theory of class‐monopoly rent to analyse what is new (and what is not) in contemporary financial exploitation. We use a mixed‐methods approach to (1) provide econometric measures of subprime racial targeting and disparate impact that cannot be blamed on the supposed deficiencies of borrowers, (2) qualitatively assess the rationale for judging particular subprime practices and lenders as predatory, and (3) trace the connections between local practices and transnational investment networks. The fight against predatory lending cannot succeed, we argue, without a renewed analytical and strategic emphasis on the class dimensions of financial exploitation and racial‐geographical discrimination.