This week, the Economist’s cover story, "The trouble with the housing market," details the downward-spiraling "subprime" mortgage market and its potential effects on the U.S. economy. The collapsing market certainly poses problems to Wall Street traders and taxpayers in general, but what about the physical toll it's taking on our cities? Abandoned, foreclosed homes now increasingly dot the nation's inner ring suburbs, helping spread neighborhood decline out from inner cities, while developers build more homes farther into the urban periphery.
Homeownership
The 'Sword and Shield' Approach to Preventing Foreclosure Evictions
An innovative tenants-rights organization in Boston combines community activism and financial backing to force banks to sell foreclosed homes back to the previous owners.
Shelterforce
More Immigrants Moving to Midsize Cities
According to new research, immigrant homeownership is shifting from large cities like New York and Los Angeles to smaller ones like Las Vegas and Minneapolis.
Miller-McCune
Americans Spending More On Housing Than Ever
18.6 million American households –renters and homeowners alike – spend more than half their income on housing, according to a new study by Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies.
City Limits
Canadians Overinvested in Their Homes, Says Florida
Richard Florida writes that Canadians great love for homebuying (with a greater home ownership rate than even the U.S.) could be economically instable.
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
City Officials Try to Thwart Apartment Buildings
Officials in Reynoldsburg, Ohio are pushing through strict design guidelines with expensive requirements in an attempt to encourage high-end condos over rental apartments.
The Columbus Dispatch
Accustomed to Decline, One Neighborhood in Flint Bucks Trend
Take two seemingly unrelated words: Flint and Gentrification. Now put them together. What you get is an unexpected rebirth in one part of the struggling city -- a neighborhood where home ownership and community investment are actually increasing.
The New York Times
Steep Decline in Homeownership, Home Building Predicted
A new report shows that as the population of the U.S. ages, it is likely that more people will rent than own homes, causing a steep decline in the home building industry.
Calculated Risk
Affordable Mortgage Plan a Flop, Says Frank
The Hope for Homeowners Act was designed to allow foreclosed homeowners to keep their homes by drawing up new and more affordable mortgages for qualified applicants. Barney Frank is one of many proclaiming it a failure.
NPR
The American Dream in Reverse
With housing prices out of reach for many immigrants in the U.S., more and more are investing in houses in their home countries -- and their governments and local lenders are doing all they can to encourage it.
The Boston Globe
Ending the Ideology of Homeownership
Paul Krugman writes that we need to stop conflating owing a home with citizenship.
The New York Times
Who Pays for the Subprime Lender Meltdown?
Mon, 03/05/2007 - 13:24
Scrambling to grab that elusive “American Dream” of homeownership, millions plunged into the subprime mortgage market to build wealth through appreciation (if not speculation). Pundits cheered as the ownership rate crept up, lauding the pluck of aspirational minority and immigrant families.
There’s a reason it is called subprime, though. Lenders offered a smorgasborg of loan “products,” but the bottom line was that they are all very costly for the borrower – often entailing adjustable-rate surprises in the 30 percent or higher range.
