The newest edition of Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research discusses the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on housing markets. This issue was guest edited by William M. Doerner and R. Kevin Winkler. During the COVID-19 pandemic, various federal agencies enacted policies to promote the safety and soundness of their mission-driven activities. Strong housing markets granted early and necessary stability for wavering macroeconomic conditions, and an economic crisis was averted by providing debt payment relief and large-scale injections of financial liquidity.
Greta Li, David Low, and Judith Ricks examine borrower and mortgage characteristics among borrowers in forbearance during the COVID-19 pandemic. They determine that Black and Hispanic borrowers were severely overrepresented among borrowers in forbearance compared with their representation in the overall sample. The study offers a descriptive baseline useful for understanding the effects of pandemic mortgage poli