KCET-

In recent years, the American public has been treated to a number of films about the 2008 housing crisis: the insightful documentary “The Queen of Versailles”, the dark, simmering “99 Homes”, and the Oscar nominated “The Big Short” to name a few. For all the critical acclaim bestowed upon each, with the exception of a couple of short scenes from “The Big Short”, none portray the travails of working-class black and brown homeowners or the ways in which a historically racially biased system of home financing contributed to the 2008 debacle.

Nearly a decade after the housing crisis, public policy professionals and academics have worked to unravel the complex factors that led to the catastrophe and why minorities and women proved particularly vulnerable. The intersection of racially constructed housing markets; changes in banking and housing finance, notably the securitization of mortgages; and the proliferation of subprime loans explain why the 2008 crash devastated communities of color.

University of California, Davis sociologist Jesus Hernandez, who grew up in Sacramento’s Oak Park neighborhood, has spent years studying the housing crisis nationally, but also the more specific experience of metropolitan Sacramento homeowners. In addition to the devastating losses of private homes, the housing bubble cost the city dearly. According to the California Reinvestment Coalition, in 2007 Sacramento residents faced with foreclosure lost, in addition to their homes, $54 million collectively. Administrative costs related to foreclosure extracted $40 million from city coffers, and the city’s Gross Municipal Product suffered as well; one study estimated losses of $1.73 billion in GMP. Cascading social costs resulted, including increasing numbers of vacant buildings, rising crime rates from squatting and reduced revenues from property taxes, physical deterioration of neighborhoods and housing stock, and schools squeezed ever tighter for already insufficient funding.

[KCET]

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