White Homeowners Research Articles

Little White Lies: Hope and Untruth in (White)Mobile‐Homeownership

AbstractFor decades, studies have shown that white households have greater access and benefit most from the racialized US housing market. Homeownership is the material realization of the American dream, and for many it is read alongside middle‐classness and normativity as cultural markers of hegemonic whiteness. Conversely, this article explores personal narratives from white homeowners that are excluded from this dominant understanding: white mobile‐homeowners. I apply the concept of “untruths” to illustrate how my interlocutors discursively situated their racialized hopes, anxieties, and aspirations against the disparaging “white‐trailer trash” trope. I then consider how I, as a white, working‐class anthropologist conducting “home‐work,” was figured into these narratives as representing this idealized—yet deeply problematic—whiteness. Bringing together anthropological perspectives on lies and sincerity, I show how white racial “untruths” reveal a more complex and fragmented whiteness that belies the dreamlike fiction of hegemonic white normativity.

THE MANY LIVES OF CONSTANCE BAKER MOTLEY

THE MANY LIVES OF CONSTANCE BAKER MOTLEY

Wealth, Race, and Place: How Neighborhood (Dis)advantage From Emerging to Middle Adulthood Affects Wealth Inequality and the Racial Wealth Gap.

Do neighborhood conditions affect wealth accumulation? This study uses the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 cohort and a counterfactual estimation strategy to analyze the effect of prolonged exposure to neighborhood (dis)advantage from emerging adulthood through middle adulthood. Neighborhoods have sizable, plausibly causal effects on wealth, but these effects vary significantly by race/ethnicity and homeownership. White homeowners receive the largest payoff to reductions in neighborhood disadvantage. Black adults, regardless of homeownership, are doubly disadvantaged in the neighborhood-wealth relationship. They live in more-disadvantaged neighborhoods and receive little return to reductions in neighborhood disadvantage. Findings indicate that disparities in neighborhood (dis)advantage figure prominently in wealth inequality and the racial wealth gap.

Suburban Restaurants as Evolving Suburban Anchors: The Sportsmen’s Lodge, Ventura Boulevard, and the Growth of Los Angeles’s San Fernando Valley

Examining the historical evolution of the Sportsmen’s Lodge, a restaurant and banquet facility located on Ventura Boulevard in Los Angeles’s San Fernando Valley, this essay argues that suburban restaurants have served as vital “suburban anchors” facilitating suburban growth and place-making. Established in the 1920s as a recreational fishing concession for the film industry, the Sportsmen’s Lodge expanded to become a renowned restaurant and banquet hall by the 1940s. Its facilities were used not only for social gatherings among politically conservative white homeowners, but also for business meetings where attendees strategized for the suburban region’s growth. Ironically, their success in recruiting suburban industry and infrastructure produced an increasingly dense and diverse suburban landscape in which the Sportsmen’s Lodge’s itself ultimately became obsolete. The Lodge’s recent demolition and redevelopment as a mixed-use retail complex signals the multiple purposes fulfilled by suburban restaurants, while highlighting the limits to their evolution in diversifying suburbs.

Rebellious Lawyers for Fair Housing: The Lost Scientific Model of the Early NAACP

Historically-rooted patterns of racial segregation in housing remain a significant contributor to racial inequities in health, intergenerational wealth, and life chances more generally. This article uncovers a powerful but long-forgotten model for rebellious lawyers in the struggle for fair housing. I draw this model from archival research into the innovative early NAACP lawyers who litigated racially restrictive covenants from the 1910s to the 1940s. Facing a hostile judiciary, and with little legal precedent on their side, these lawyers turned their attention to a fundamental conceptual obstacle to their cause: what they termed “property in a sociological vacuum.” In this view, property ownership as an entirely private manner unrelated to the public interest and social context more generally. Under the vacuum logic, segregationist lawyers had convinced the courts that supporting racial covenants was a racially innocent defense of white homeowners’ property rights. The early NAACP lawyers countered this vacuum understanding of property by radically departing from the conventional norms of legal advocacy. In their briefs and oral arguments, they refuted the vacuum view on theoretical grounds and backed up their position with social-scientific findings that mapped out the pervasive use and devastating impacts of racial covenants in communities of color. Courts had never before been presented with such an enormous trove of social scientific research in civil rights litigation. This strategy reached full expression in Shelley v. Kraemer (1948), the land US Supreme Court decision that rendered racially restrictive covenants unenforceable. Shelley is a well-studied staple of the 1L curriculum, but legal history has largely ignored the decades of legal efforts that made it possible. This article traces that history in detail. I show how NAACP affiliated lawyers identified the vacuum view of property as a central target in their litigation strategy and then worked with academics and other social movement allies to develop a vast body of empirical research. This strategy enabled these lawyers to fill the sociological vacuum around property. In this way, they forced the judiciary to see that racial covenants were more than purely private instruments of individual landowners but rather had formed a pervasive land policy of racial apartheid, slum conditions, and excluding people of color from homeownership. I conclude by arguing that this “lost scientific model” should be emulated by today’s fair housing lawyers, who continue to encounter the vacuum view of property as a core theoretical obstacle to racial integration and inclusion.

A Framework for Explaining Black-White Inequality in Homeownership Sustainability.

To explain racially differential housing outcomes, previous studies have tended to concentrate on discriminatory processes within the mortgage market while ignoring homeowning families' broad socioeconomic challenges. This study proposes a conceptual framework for understanding Black-White inequality in homeownership sustainability, which emphasizes Black homeowners' socioeconomic challenges that are external to mortgage market evaluations, with a particular focus on the mediating role of liquid assets. Based on the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the framework is put to an empirical test on the differential exit rates between Black and White homeowners in the United States during the recent housing crisis. The findings indicate that the racial gap in homeownership exit is eliminated after liquid wealth is controlled in the model alongside other covariates and that the inclusion of liquid wealth renders all mortgage-oriented variables nonsignificant with regard to their explanatory power for Black-White inequality in exit rates. Policy implications of the findings are also discussed.

Stirrings of Revolt: Regressive Levies, the Pocketbook Squeeze, and the 1960s Roots of the 1970s Tax Revolt

Abstract:In most accounts, the modern American “tax revolt” begins with Proposition 13, passed by California voters in June 1978. In this telling, the revolt represents an antigovernment, antiliberal shift among white homeowners instrumental in the “rise of the right” and the fall of the “New Deal order” that culminated in Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980 and his subsequent tax cuts. This article challenges that account by demonstrating that the revolt began more than a decade before Prop 13 as approval rates for local levies and bonds reached all-time lows. This local revolt was not limited to whites, nor did it portend rising conservatism. Instead, it was rooted in lower- and middle-income Americans’ frustrations with steep rises in unfair, regressive taxes during the post–World War II decades. The Kennedy-Johnson “Growth Liberals,” who were busy cutting progressive federal taxes at the same time that regressive state and local taxes were soaring, missed this pocketbook squeeze, thereby setting the stage for later events like Prop 13.

Looking Back at White Working-Class Racial Attitudes and Behaviors in the Late 1940s: An Updated Analysis

ABSTRACT We re-analyze quantitative and qualitative data from a study of a white, working-class neighborhood in mid-twentieth century Chicago to pursue two research goals. First, we test how attitudes toward blacks as coworkers and neighbors are correlated, and determine whether those attitudes are associated with commitment to the union and neighborhood attachment. Second, we address three timely issues in urban sociology and race relations: (1) how community efficacy is related to attitudes toward racial exclusion, (2) whether white homeowners are likely to oppose racial minorities as neighbors due to fears over property value decline, and (3) the “whitening” process by which people of southern and eastern European ancestry came to embrace a white racial identity.

Poverty and Student Homelessness at the Metropolitan Margins: Sensemaking among School and Community Leaders in a Growing Suburb

Background/ContextHistorically, the suburbs have symbolized the attainment of the American dream. In this post-World War II imagery, the typical suburban residents are White middle-class homeowners. Although to some extent the suburbs have always been diverse, recently, many have undergone racial and socioeconomic changes. Alongside these shifts, the suburbs are increasingly facing rising poverty and student homelessness. However, there is a dearth of education research that examines how poverty and homelessness unfold in the suburbs.Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of StudyDrawing from the suburban poverty literature, my purpose is to learn how school and community leaders in a growing suburb make sense of rising poverty and homelessness.SettingThis study is situated in Acreville, a pseudonym for a rapidly growing Midwest suburb. Acreville is a majority-White and relatively affluent suburb that has experienced rising poverty and homelessness.Research DesignThis qualitative case study draws from wide-ranging data, including 42 interviews with community and school leaders, analysis of school board meeting minutes, observation of school board meetings, artifact collection, and longitudinal district data on poverty, homelessness, and mobility.Findings/ResultsI identified four narratives that reflect the ways in which leaders in Acreville made sense of rising poverty and homelessness. Often times, leaders used these narratives to rationalize and justify their actions or the actions of others around matters of poverty and homelessness. The narratives reflected ideologies around community identity, poverty, and race. They also played an important role in policy and molded the educational opportunities of families and students experiencing poverty and homelessness in unique ways.Conclusions/RecommendationsAlthough historically the suburbs were associated with the American Dream, today, many confront rising poverty and homelessness without the needed infrastructure and supports necessary to meet families’ needs. Surprisingly, Acreville is home to a number of innovative programs, practices, and services. In some ways, Acreville could serve as a model to other communities—at least on paper. Yet, matters related to community identity, class, race, and geographic space often thwarted the full potential of these well-intentioned responses. Implications for theory and specific recommendations for scholars, school leaders, community providers, and leadership preparation are discussed.

Whose Harlem Is This, Anyway? Community Politics and Grassroots Activism during the New Deal Era by Shannon King

<i>Whose Harlem Is This, Anyway? Community Politics and Grassroots Activism during the New Deal Era</i> by Shannon King

Property Tax Limitation and Racial Inequality in Effective Tax Rates

In the late 20th century, two thirds of American states enacted policies to limit the growth of local property tax revenues. We examine the effects of property tax limitations on the effective property tax rates reported by homeowners of different racial and ethnic groups in the United States. We find that property tax limitations reduce the effective property tax rates of homeowners regardless of their race and ethnicity, but that most forms of property tax limitation exacerbate racial inequality, providing the greatest reduction in effective tax rates to white homeowners. In the aggregate, these inequalities result in substantially unequal tax savings that might not survive democratic scrutiny if they were distributed as direct subsidies. This inequality may be especially problematic insofar as tax privileges for property owners effectively disguise a public benefit as a private property right.

The Value of Exclusion: Chasing Scarcity through Social Exclusion in Early Twentieth Century Atlanta

In recent decades, a powerful narrative has taken shape which explores the impact of federal housing policies in shaping the highly racialized geography of poverty and privilege which forms the landscape of today's American city. Called the “New Suburban History,” it documents the racial discrimination written into the subsidized home loan policies of the federal government after WWII, based upon the assumption that property values depended upon the maintenance of neighborhood homogeneity on the basis of race and class. The discussion launched by the New Suburban History has focused almost exclusively on the effects of such policies: by lavishing neighborhoods comprised exclusively of white homeowners with federal subsidies, while targeting the neighborhoods of non-whites and renters for red-lining, these programs, it is argued, became self-fulfilling prophecies of neighborhood growth and decline. Neglected in this discussion, however, is a rigorous examination of the roots of the assumption that the value of the single-family residential home depended upon practices of social exclusion designed to “protect” it from physical proximity to non-whites and renters. The guiding assumption, occasionally made explicit, is that racism precluded a more rational approach to the assessment of property values. This paper argues that there was nothing irrational about the regulations developed to protect urban property values in the first decades of the twentieth century. These regulations explicitly sought to boost and maintain real estate values by means of artificial limitations placed on the supply of urban land, an approach which ensured that segments of the population would benefit from the scarcity-induced rise in prices, while others faced exclusion in the process of effecting it. The development of these regulations, and the crisis narratives employed to justify them, is traced here from the municipal zoning framework developed at the National Conference on City Planning to its implementation in New York City in 1916 and Atlanta in 1922. The paper concludes with an analysis of the 1938 Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) “residential security map” of Atlanta, which assigned grades to the city's neighborhoods on the basis of their place in the 1922 zoning scheme, which essentially knew two categories, “exclusive” and “excluded.” Against the standard narrative, which holds that racism distorted conceptions of property values in the twentieth century American city, what is argued here is that the institution of value, and the social categories of privilege and exclusion which it requires, has fundamentally shaped our categories of race.

Gentrification in the Revanchist Suburb: The Politics of Removal in Roswell, Georgia

Desde la crisis inmobiliaria de 2007–2009, los gobiernos de toda la suburbana metropolitana de Atlanta se han asociado cada vez más con los desarrolladores de bienes raíces en los intentos de revitalizar espacios suburbanos desinvertido. Muchos de estos desarrollos se dirigen a las comunidades no blancas de clase trabajadora ubicados dentro de los municipios predominado por los propietarios blancos ricos, desplazando a algunos de los residentes más política y social-mente marginadas de la zona. Examinamos los procesos políticos que rodean uno de esos proyectos en Roswell, Georgia, sostenemos que a raíz de la gran recesión, es probable que los suburbios históricamente blancos, ricos y reaccionarios que se enfrentan a cambios de paisajes socioeconómicos y raciales/étnicos emplearán una política revanchistas para “recuperar” espacios suburbanos primos. Por otra parte, nos argumentamos que (sub) emprendedurismo urbano y Nuevo Urbanismo se complementan y son totalmente compatibles con revanchista (sub) urbanismo. En lugar de una inversión progresiva del desarrollo suburbano convencional, nuestro análisis expone este caso del Nuevo Urbanismo como la manifestación más reciente de un largo trayecto político reaccionario característica de esta región.

Homeownership and Financial Strain Following the Collapse of the Housing Market: A Comparative Study on Loan Delinquencies Between Black and White Households

The objectives of this study were to evaluate the extent to which homeownership contributed to household financial strain as measured by loan delinquency after the onset of the recent housing market crash, and to examine if the impact of homeownership on household financial strain differed for Black and White households. Using data from the 2010 Survey of Consumer Finances, we found that, after controlling for other factors, a household's housing preferences had a potential effect on the likelihood of experiencing financial strain following the collapse of residential housing prices. In addition, Black homeowners were more likely to have experienced financial strain following the housing collapse than were White homeowners, regardless of the time period in which the home was purchased. The implications of the findings for public policy, personal financial planning and education, and further research are presented.

Subprime Loans: A Reversal of Capital and a New Means of Inequality

This article provides a socio-historical analysis of particular financial instruments in the housing market. I argue that the production and consumption of subprime loans continue to evince a pattern of racial discrimination. Whereas racialized loans in the mid-1900s were based on providing credit to whites and precluding blacks from accessing credit (Wave I), a new means of financial production was predicated by the opposite (Wave II). Although the first wave of home ownership led to real increases in wealth, the second wave led to a housing bubble that resulted in less or negative wealth. Under the subprime era, banking institutions could reap profits when homeowners paid their loans on time or defaulted. White homeowners continued to fare better than black homeowners.

Emerging Forms of Racial Inequality in Homeownership Exit, 1968–2009

Because homeownership continues to be a key mechanism underlying racial inequality in America, recent developments that led to the foreclosure crisis bring to the forefront issues concerning minority homeowners' ability to sustain ownership. This article uses longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to examine racial differences in the likelihood of homeownership exit over the last four decades. We find that black homeowners are at a significantly higher risk of transitioning to renter status than are white homeowners, even after accounting for life-course, socioeconomic, and housing characteristics, and the selection into homeownership. Most importantly, we show that the racial gap in ownership exit has widened substantially over time, especially among owners who purchased their homes in the 1990s or later. These findings are consistent with arguments that the nature of racial stratification in U.S. housing markets has shifted over time from overt market exclusion to market exploitation.

Racial and ethnic stratification in the relationship between homeownership and self-rated health

Social scientists have long demonstrated that socioeconomic resources benefit health. More recently, scholars have begun to examine the potential stratification in the health returns different groups receive for a given resource. Motivated by fundamental cause theory, this paper examines homeownership as a salient health resource with potentially stratified benefits. Homeowners have significantly greater housing quality, wealth, neighborhood quality and integration, and physical and mental health than renters. However, there are compelling theoretical reasons to expect the health advantage of homeownership to be unequally distributed across racial and ethnic groups. Regression analyses of 71,874 household heads in the United States from the 2012 March Current Population Survey initially suggest all homeowners experience a significant health advantage. Further examination finds robust evidence for a homeowner health advantage among Whites, on par with the difference between the married and divorced. The advantage among minority households is considerably smaller, and not significant among Latinos or Asians. Conditioning on a broad array of observable characteristics, White homeowners emerge as exceptionally healthy compared to White renters and all minority groups. This leads to the unexpected finding that racial/ethnic differences in health are concentrated among homeowners. The findings demonstrate the interactive nature of racial/ethnic stratification in health through both access to and returns from socioeconomic resources.

“These Communities Have the Most to Gain from Valley Cityhood”

Activists in the San Fernando Valley between 1996 and 2002 renewed efforts to secede from the city of Los Angeles. The movement mobilized many of the constituencies and grievances associated with the 1970s tax revolt and anti-busing protests in the Valley. While mostly white homeowners’ associations were the principal activists for secession, they needed to enlist the Valley’s Latino population. Though secession failed, Valley activists crafted a color-blind rhetoric of community empowerment that won support from many Valley Latinos and offers a preview of future metropolitan politics as whites retain economic privilege but lose demographic predominance.

Racial Dimensions of Property Value Protection Under the Fair Housing Act

Nearly fifty years after the passage of the Fair Housing Act, race-based residential segregation remains remarkably persistent, as do significant racial disparities in economic well-being. This Comment argues that one contributing factor to the persistence of segregation is different access to legal protections for property value enjoyed by minority and white homeowners. Historically, local land use regulations like zoning effectively served as legally permissible “race-neutral” means of replacing expressly race-based means of keeping “undesirables” out of white middle-class neighborhoods. Congress enacted the Fair Housing Act in 1968 to counter this deeply entrenched form of discrimination and to help achieve “truly integrated and balanced living patterns.” But in practice, many federal courts interpreting this civil rights statute have come to see themselves as the guardians of the property interests of middle-class and white families, overprotecting these families from perceived threats to property value caused by government efforts to promote integration. At the same time, these courts underprotect low-income and minority families from property value depreciation and displacement caused by “environmental segregation” and redevelopment. A closer look at the disparity in judicial treatment reveals a critical bias: an unquestioning acceptance of the assertion that the very presence of low-income and minority families can lead to the loss of property value. In order to move beyond the zero-sum game that pits the property interests of middle-class and white residents against those of low-income and minority residents, courts

Differences in Neighborhood Satisfaction Between African American and White Homeowners During the Early 2000s

Equal quality of life between groups is often assumed to be achieved once homeownership is attained. Remaining discrepancies are often considered to be due to income differences. This study explored whether established models of neighborhood satisfaction, in general, predict satisfaction for homeowners and whether documented discrepancies in levels of neighborhood satisfaction between whites and African Americans persisted among homeowners in the early 2000s. After controlling for respondent characteristics and perceived and actual neighborhood attributes, race remained important in explaining residential neighborhood satisfaction. The results indicate that African American homeowners were generally less satisfied with their neighborhoods, compared to white homeowners. The study is important because residential dissatisfaction might potentially lead to compromised quality of life or neighborhood instability and decline. Therefore urban planners and policy makers need to better understand the existence and the nature of any racial inequity to facilitate creative solutions to the problem.