The Housing Market and Population Vulnerabilities: Perceptions in a Fordist and a Post‐Fordist Context

Drawing on qualitative interviews and participatory urban‐appraisal tools, this paper analyzes household perceptions on the five elements of Lawrence and Su‐Yeul's market‐led pluralism (M‐LP) framework (2008). It uses post‐Fordist Columbus, Ohio, and Fordist Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as testing grounds for these household perspectives. M‐LP suggests that at the center of contemporary housing market lie five elements: developers/builders who unveil new urban spaces with culturally open communities; lending agencies that offer affordable mortgages to all; real estate brokers/agents who have moved past discriminatory practices; consumers whose preferences emphasize class‐type elements; and communities that impose development agendas. While many felt that the housing market of the mid‐2000s was racially blind, race still played a crucial role in driving home‐buying decisions, especially in Milwaukee. Columbus respondents aligned more closely with M‐LP, putting greater emphasis on class, but they also used phrases and words to blur race and class distinction. Both metropolises, though, illustrated complex intertwining between class and culture.     

An Analysis of the Relationship Between Housing Foreclosures,Lending Practices,and Neighborhood Ecology: Evidence from a Distressed County

Residential foreclosures increased sharply during the 1990s and in the first years of the twenty-first century. These foreclosures have profound impacts on the households and neighborhoods involved. Although foreclosures occur everywhere, the geography of foreclosures displays a pattern tied to a metropolitan area's social, fiscal, and economic geography. We examine these correspondences as they exist within Summit County (Akron), Ohio, between 2001 and 2003. Foreclosures themselves often result from unfortunate financial events that can affect any household, but we found that the geography of foreclosures corresponds primarily to Summit County's racial distribution, above and beyond any correspondence with income levels and housing fiscal stress. There also exists a clear coincidence of foreclosures with subprime lending, itself associated with Summit County's racial patterns. Concentrations of foreclosures in particular neighborhoods can be tremendously harmful to the social and economic health of the neighborhood. These comparisons help us to better understand the neighborhood ecology of foreclosure rates and subprime lending.     

Interdisciplinary,Cross-Cultural Research: Double Trouble∗

U.S. housing policy strengthens the local specificity of capital through support for homeownership and the mortgage lending industry. As access to capital and homeownership rates have grown, predatory lending has emerged as a significant danger to homeowners and their surrounding communities. The geographic distribution is not well understood, likely due to the unavailability of mortgage data to identify instances of predatory lending. This article examines the spatial distribution of predatory lending in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, using public mortgage and property data. Predatory lending is spatially clustered within the city, suggesting a spatial component of abusive lending patterns not previously addressed. U.S. housing policy and intervention strategies designed to prevent and reduce the incidence of predatory lending should address the spatial aspects of predatory lending to target efforts and prevent weakening local connections between capital and communities.     

Residential Security,Risk, and Race: The Home Owners' Loan Corporation and Mortgage Access in Two Cities

The Residential Security Maps produced under the aegis of the Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) are often regarded as significant evidence that the federal government was complicit in expanding segregated housing patterns. This paper suggests a different direction for the analysis of the agency's role and the impact of their maps regarding patterns of real estate appraisal and mortgage credit allocations. It is argued that: (1) whereas the broadly asserted relationship between race and residential security areas can be demonstrated, there are important variations that should drive further research in this sphere, including the significance of other demographic, socioeconomic, and housing variables; (2) despite uniform guidelines, the appraisal surveys and assignments of grades by HOLC were not identical across cities; (3) the approaches utilized by HOLC were not identical to those implemented by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), making it unlikely these agencies had a cooperative relationship; and (4) the relationship between grades and the distribution of mortgages varied by lender type and between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, suggesting the importance of local context in examining HOLC as a public policy instrument and its subsequent impact on racial segregation.     

Place-based social exclusion: redlining in the Netherlands

'Redlining' is a form of place-based exclusion. It is widely documented in the US, but not in Europe. This paper focuses on a comparative analysis of redlining practices in the two largest cities of the Netherlands: Amsterdam and Rotterdam. It shows that redlining was common practice in Rotterdam in 1999. In 2001, no signs of redlining were found in Rotterdam. However, 'yellowlining' (lower loan-to-value ratios) was still common in some parts of Rotterdam. In Amsterdam, no neighbourhoods were faced with redlining in either 1999 or 2001. However, in 1999 some neighbourhoods were yellowlined. This paper aims to get a better understanding of the nature and the institutional context of redlining in the Netherlands by explaining how the differences in redlining practices between Amsterdam and Rotterdam, and between 1999 and 2001, can be explained. The National Mortgage Guarantee as well as socio-historical, and housing and mortgage market differences and changes, are instrumental in explaining these differences in redlining practices.     

Visibly in trouble: Northern Rock, a post-mortem on a financial crisis

Here we seek to spatialise aspects of the Northern Rock Bank crisis of 2007 by marrying two radically different approaches. We combine a discussion of financial lending practices with an articulation of herd behaviour in conditions of uncertainty. Both were part of the still-unfolding picture of a traumatic episode in the geography of finance but also convey lessons on the behaviour of society in situations of shortage.