Home ownership. Is in discussion with the very acclaimed scholar. Thank you for coming. We are very glad to be here in philly to begin this project and 2008 2009 okay, mostly its about chicago and detroit and then i moved to philadelphia and found out there is a story here. And then part of rewriting this book so it is a very difficult book to read from it is dense the readable. [laughter] and so what i will do is give a narrative arc that in Broad Strokes what the book is trying to do and then the conversations between professor robbins and i. So now in a typical spasm of the tree all donald trump describes the city of baltimore as a rat and rodent infested mess it was a cruel and vote to disparage the hardship of the communities of that city and in doing so it conveyed fatalistic disregard for those conditions while expressing a lack of ambition to attend to something as serious. Despite the rhetoric black poor workingclass communities is not of africanamerican indifference but markers of substandard housing within residential segregation those that inspired ridicule it also sparked activism and appraising nearly two weeks after the rice from detroit prompted the federal true truth they burst into the chamber of the house of representatives chanting days earlier rejecting a 40 milliondollar deal across the United States the protesters sat in the gallery for 20 minutes repeating the slogan the previous attempt at passing a bill had not only been voted down but ridiculed in the process the Virginia Republican from other white representatives mister speaker i think the smart thing for us to do is right now and now with the civil rest bill no laughing matter for the people in the innercity. Thats the most visceral example of those Living Conditions forced on the black people midcentury america. In the 19 sixties africanamerican media regularly reported on the most vulnerable members of black urban household children. A single africanamerican mother complained to a reporter she stayed at the at nights because of the rats crawling in her bed which made her nervous and in her childrens bed which terrified her. They get into the bunkbed so i sit up all night i am miserable and afraid. The rat infestation of black neighborhoods was profound. When children were given a book 60 percent identified iraq as a teddy bear. A city commissioner report found 100 percent of reported rat bites happened in segregated black majority neighborhoods. Housing segregation maintained a combination of white violence in Public Policy and the exclusionary practices of the private sector ensure the dilapidated substandard conditions of black housing. By the end of the 19 sixties the Advisory Commission on civil disorders left no doubt that substandard housing evidenced by rat infestation was a Current Factor in those riots throughout the decade. Identifying segregation at the root of those conditions and adds a significant source of black rage and communities , the commissions findings call for historic changes to American Housing policy. The Landmark Supreme Court case jones versus mayer decided after the passage of the Fair Housing Act to draw upon the 1866 Civil Rights Act of the 13th amount meant amendment for segregation to slavery arguing Racial Discrimination make men in the ghettos the ability to buy property on the color of their skin and a piece of the battle to open us Housing Markets to africanamericans came with housing and urban Development Act 1968 that act with Lyndon Johnson last greatest legislative accomplishment of planned collaboration of representatives from private enterprise of what was known as the kaiser commission. The businessman who participated despite the notion of singlefamily Home Ownership the so she oh commercial Enterprise Business with a conscience. Would go on to describe the legislation as the magna carta of the city with a focus on the market and ownership of a bipartisan bill. For decades federal officials relied on Public Housing to shelter poor and low income people the by the end of the sixties Public Housing had become politically untenable with jabs over maintenance and location. Housing for the poor suffered from a mixture of government neglect and shrinking tenants and the dangerous conditions endured by residents and the constant pressure for housing to exclude anyone other than the poorest. It was a pivot away from the notion of public responsibility for housing and poor and low income people perk at the heart of the legislation the low income Home Ownership plan to transform renters into homeowners federal officials turned to Home Ownership as a cheaper program where the cost of houses were absorbed by the assistance while the federal government paid subsidies necessary to keep the prices low. This meant the federal government could take payments over time as opposed to upfront expenses necessary to develop and build and manage localities. These concerns also fit with the growing idea homeownership stabilize the anger and restlessness coursing through american cities. Freshman senator, a republican from illinois describe the benefits of expanding homeownership with the new dawn of opportunity a new National Effort to bring dignity to the slum dwellers. We can democratize our city and give people of the ghetto a piece of the action to let them be somebody and achieve something. Nixon said people who own their own home dont burn their neighborhoods. Pride and selfinterest they turn to their communities to make it livable for themselves and their neighbors. The terms of the new Homeownership Program was a 200 down payment, 20 percent of the income as their mortgage regardless of the cost of the house and Interest Rates at 1 percent. The inclusion of federal mortgage insurance for the first time meant in the worstcase scenario for closure or abandonment the federal government was obligated to give back the mortgage to the lender this kept prices low and manageable for workingclass people. It removed almost all of the risk for the Real Estate Industry is one official describe the program its like doing business in heaven you cannot lose money. The Unprecedented Program required agencies and Mortgage Bankers to supply the loans to housing and loans and these organizations that were previously excluded. With a promise of lucrative subsidies and the guarantees of mortgage insurance and the promise of profit that came with it the hostility of the private sector melted away. The same conditions opened new pathways for corrupt real estate practices. Speculators and brokers abide out cheap Dilapidated Properties hoping to flip them for higher prices and sell to those who qualify for the program. It was in the hands of the real estate operatives of head and those of Eligible Properties when Real Estate Brokers matched a person with a house they connected with a Mortgage Lender they consulted with head to determine if the person qualified forgot no time did an individual speak with a representative of the federal government or any state agency. That only could money be made by flipping cheap properties but they found it easy to bribe federal housing administrators and appraisers to deflate the value of the houses in the new urban market they made money on the front end of the deal to secure the loan in the first place and then they made money on the backend with extensive closing cost associated with selling the property. Everyone made money except the poor black families that were disproportionately saddled with homes across the country. One homeowner turned activist describe the collusion as the out right murder of our neighborhoods aided and abetted by the fha and the mortgage industry and the unscrupulous Banking Industry these four institutions are working together to dramatically destroy what is left of american cities. What so long has been considered a natural phenomenon changing neighborhoods and deteriorating cities are not natural. Is an outright plan and the government and the realtors and the big money people are making a lot of money taking neighborhoods out of communities that we call home. The federal government returned to Home Ownership with the consummate expression of liberalism has that inclusion of american democracy the vehicle of citizenship and law in freemarket capitalism is the key to unlocking equality and social mobility for black citizens as it has been for white americans through the new deal and the g. I. Bill with world war ii. But to narrow their focus to access the loan those racist practices were embedded in those institutions it is shockingly clear banks in the Real Estate Industry had played a central role to create the urban housing crisis exemplified by the persistent presence of houses so the sudden involvement of these forces to come up with a policy solution was a recipe for disaster in the 19 sixties with racial segregation and substandard housing and a catalyst for the rebellion throughout the sixties the subsidized homes also by black families in the seventies punctured the delusion that simply transforming into the Housing Market built upon the benefits of Racial Discrimination and segregation could in and of itself produce a just outcome. And instead with minimal oversight and a steadfast sensitivity to the bottom line the search for safe and sound housing houses and foreclosures and abandonment this is the experience of Janice Johnson bought her first home in philadelphia with a mortgage guaranteed by the fha. While previous standards johnson was in a typical buyer and black single mother living with her yearold son one that was condemned by city officials. In northeast philadelphia. Now facing eviction johnson needed to quickly find a new place to live when her mother called her for an apartment for rent she talked to the landlord in anticipation but hopes were dashed when he said he could not render the apartment because she was a welfare recipient but then to suggest that she buy a house in the same neighborhood that then within weeks she purchased a home and then came to realize it was not the fulfillment of the American Dream but the american nightmare. Within days of moving into her new house the sewer line broke putting wastewater all over the basement floor and the electricity for the house was haphazard. Holes and other irregularities in the foundation of the home the structure of the house was not the worst on halloween night she woke up to find a rat in the bed she saw the rats throughout her house including the kitchen and bathroom the holes in the basement harbored nests of rats that regularly enter the house because she called the agent who sold the house to complain and he said sent workman out and even patch the plaster at her dining room but soon after the Real Estate Agent reminded her the problems in her house are now her own that is homeowners business. So the new terms of her and other women like her to buy a new home were predatory inclusion. In the Real Estate Market was evident when they were granted access but i had more expensive and unequal terms. That disproportionate conditions of poverty poverty and dilapidation produced by years of public to private institutional neglect became evident by black buyers are risky and treated differently within the Housing Market. Black buyers are vulnerable to ongoing predatory practices because of the way segregation persisted to maintain African Americans to make them vulnerable and with those banking practices when it came to securing and more ways that africanamericans would welcome into institutions practices that they were formally excluded because there were new ways to be extracted and be financially exploited. Miserable and dangerous Housing Conditions led people to walk away from homes they had recently purchased in the number of defaults and foreclosures begin to rise by the end of 7310 percent of section 235 homes in the 68 housing act went into foreclosure. And thousands with more to congressional investigations impropriety and Homeownership Program showed the federal appraisers were taking and fighting the value of homes by three or four times their actual worth. The mortgage were accused of accepting lead, ignore consistencies and paperwork in order to authorized loans for these homes. Newspaper report and hundreds of federal indictments identified local fha officials, appraisers, Real Estate Agent more Mortgage Lenders were all involved in this. They were not only scandalous but they were crimes made against poor and workingclass black people. Diverse as chicago, detroit, philadelphia, seattle, san jose, columbia, south carolina. Real estate brokers, Mortgage Bankers were arrested, invaded for criminal conspiracies to commit fraud. 1974, 28 officials had been indicted for their role in the housing scandal along with other mortgage Real Estate Brokers. The fbi and invite your had 1930 open investigations into the Homeownership Program. Instead of focusing on the corrupt practices of the private sector at the heart of these programs, policymakers scrutinized the homemaking skills and housekeeping abilities of black women. The discourses of onset black mothers, marshaling the domestic dysfunctions in black household, guaranteed the ease with which blame for the decline of the Homeownership Program could be attributed to the apparent ineptitude of black single parent led households. Elected officials, media and racial white public were more than willing to listen. Even as hundreds of mostly white men were arrested for criminal acts of fraud and corruption within the homeownership progr program, the former governor of michigan and secretary of hud in the early 1970s insisted that housing by itself cannot solve the problems but people particularly those people he added who may be suffering from bad habits, laziness, unemployment, enacted to it education, low working skills, ill health, poor motivation and negative self image. The secretary, he imposed the National Moratorium on all subsidize housing programs, right in the midst of the end of the u. S. Long economic boom of the post world. And onset of the worst economic recession since the great depression. Nixon used the hud crisis toward a new Section Eight Program that has the federal government from low income ownership. More generally, the best practices of the Real Estate Industry made resistant change in adhering to new legislation. The Publicprivate Partnership obscured the ways of the federal government became complicit with private sector practices that promote residential segregation and racial determination, selling dilapidated homes report women who could not afford repairs like johnson, reinforced the idea of black owners who posed a threat to the quality of the neighborhood and its property value. When the federal government guaranteed johnsons mortgage, it became implicated in the shoddy Business Practices of private sectors from the desperate desperation of low income residents, racially informed real estate practices were not the actions of an industry to change. Instead, Racial Discrimination depicted in the new market because it was good for businesses. In closing, Ronald Reagan became president in 1980, he called for hud to convene a special commission on housing policy. More than 30 years, after pledging to provide decent homes for its citizens, the government and its department of housing and urban Development Continues to fail to achieve its goals. The latest commission kenneled by reagan called its report to house a nation and it began with criticism of the 1968 hud act. Its legacy, the policy of government program. Reagans commission on housing promised the opposite. The genius of the market econo economy, free from distortions forced by Government Housing policy and regulations but erratically from hospitals to provide housing far better than the federal government. It was a conclusion that could only be reached by ignoring the actual origins of the hud act and reasons behind it. Lyndon johnson had also promised the genius of private industry and the key to unlocking the mystery of perpetual housing prices. The management, erratic legislation, Racial Discrimination, combined with redlining and rapacious inclusion of formic exclusion allows the industry to believe in the city. It was not government intrusion that sank the lo