The proverbial American dream of owning a home has become an all-too-real nightmare for a growing number of families. The most vulnerable segments of our society—including minorities, the elderly, and working families—are being victimized by financiers who lure them into commitments they cannot fulfill. Collectively known as predatory lending, these practices include offering higher interest rates than can be justified by the risk, high pre-payment penalties that lock families into exploitative loans, and monstrous balloon payments that often result in default and the loss of the home. The net result can be disastrous: damage to one's credit rating, bankruptcy, and even the loss of lifelong savings. Why the Poor Pay More is an incisive exposure of these practices: how they have evolved, why they have become so prevalent in recent years, and how their negative effects can be quantified. It features in-depth analysis from prominent scholars, legal experts, and community leaders, who shed new light on the social, political, and economic consequences of predatory lending. Why the Poor Pay More is much more than an indictment of these insidious discriminatory practices. It is a call to arms for anyone concerned about how the financial-political system can be corrupted to serve the needs of the wealthy. Highlighting community initiatives already underway to combat predatory lending and an extensive listing of practical resources, Why the Poor Pay More outlines active roles that individuals, advocacy groups, financial and legal service providers, and policymakers can play in reversing this destructive trend.
Despite local folklore, Chicago is not always a city that works. No longer the "Hog Butcher for the World," the Windy City has, in recent decades, pursued economic growth at all costs--to the detriment of many of its citizens. This book describes the social, economic, and political costs of the growth ideology and examines the populist response that promises an alternative Chicago. Tracing the city's uneven economic development since World War II, the authors demonstrate how unchecked growth in favor of private enterprise has resulted in severe poverty, unemployment, crime, reduced tax revenues and property values, a decline in municipal services, and racial, ethnic, and class divisiveness. And yet proponents of Daley-style machine politics and the notion of the city as a growth machine still assert that the future of the city depends exclusively on its ability to grow. The victory of Harold Washington is the most visible symbol of the movement toward an alternative Chicago. Naming different priorities and using more participatory tactics, this challenge to the politics of growth promotes development that is responsive to social need, not just market signals. Author note: Gregory D. Squires is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Larry Bennett is Associate Professor and Chair of the Political Science Department at DePaul University. Kathleen McCourt is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Loyola University of Chicago. Philip Nyden is Associate Professor of Sociology at Loyola University of Chicago.
After decades of suffering redlining and disinvestment by financial institutions, many communities have learned to fight back successfully. In more than seventy U.S. cities, over 300 community-based organizations have negotiated at least eighteen billion dollars in reinvestment commitments in recent years. In original essays, well-known community activists and activist academics tell the stories of some of the most successful reinvestment campaigns in Boston, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, Atlanta, and California. In the series Conflicts in Urban and Regional Development, edited by John R. Logan and Todd Swanstrom.
Meltdown reveals how the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was able to curb important unsafe and unfair practices that led to the recent financial crisis. In interviews with key government, industry, and advocacy groups along with deep archival research, Kirsch and Squires show where the CFPB was able to overcome many abusive practices, where it was less able to do so, and why. Open for business in 2011, the CFPB was Congress's response to the financial catastrophe that shattered millions of middle-class and lower-income households and threatened the stability of the global economy. But only a few years later, with U.S. economic conditions on a path to recovery, there are already disturbing signs of the (re)emergence of the high-risk, high-reward credit practices that the CFPB was designed to curb. This book profiles how the Bureau has attempted to stop abusive and discriminatory lending practices in the mortgage and automobile lending sectors and documents the multilayered challenges faced by an untested new regulatory agency in its efforts to transform the broken—but lucrative—business practices of the financial services industry. Authors Kirsch and Squires raise the question of whether the consumer protection approach to financial services reform will succeed over the long term in light of political and business efforts to scuttle it. Case studies of mortgage and automobile lending reforms highlight the key contextual and structural conditions that explain the CFPB's ability to transform financial service industry business models and practices. Meltdown: The Financial Crisis, Consumer Protection, and the Road Forward is essential reading for a wide audience, including anyone involved in the provision of financial services, staff of financial services and consumer protection regulatory agencies, and fair lending and consumer protection advocates. Its accessible presentation of financial information will also serve students and general readers.
The proverbial American dream of owning a home has become an all-too-real nightmare for a growing number of families. The most vulnerable segments of our society—including minorities, the elderly, and working families—are being victimized by financiers who lure them into commitments they cannot fulfill. Collectively known as predatory lending, these practices include offering higher interest rates than can be justified by the risk, high pre-payment penalties that lock families into exploitative loans, and monstrous balloon payments that often result in default and the loss of the home. The net result can be disastrous: damage to one's credit rating, bankruptcy, and even the loss of lifelong savings. Why the Poor Pay More is an incisive exposure of these practices: how they have evolved, why they have become so prevalent in recent years, and how their negative effects can be quantified. It features in-depth analysis from prominent scholars, legal experts, and community leaders, who shed new light on the social, political, and economic consequences of predatory lending. Why the Poor Pay More is much more than an indictment of these insidious discriminatory practices. It is a call to arms for anyone concerned about how the financial-political system can be corrupted to serve the needs of the wealthy. Highlighting community initiatives already underway to combat predatory lending and an extensive listing of practical resources, Why the Poor Pay More outlines active roles that individuals, advocacy groups, financial and legal service providers, and policymakers can play in reversing this destructive trend.
Redlining refers to discrimination in the homeowners' insurance market based on racial or ethnic characteristics of neighborhoods or individuals that are unrelated to risk. This book brings new evidence to bear on the issues that have framed almost 30 years of debate over insurance redlining, providing a framework for the development of public policy, private industry practice, and partnerships with community-based organizations that can help make insurance available. Contributors include academics, community organizers, private attorneys, and staffs of government agencies and nonprofit organizations. Contributors include: Tom Baker and Karen McElrath; Stephen Dane; Robert Klein; George Knight; William Lynch; Richard Ritter; Jay Schultz; D.J. Powers; and Shanna Smith and Cathy Cloud.
Monograph arguing that formal education has served primarily as an agency of social control, reconciling social conflict so that dominant social classes maintain occupational structure and unequal opportunity in the USA - traces educational development, describes the conventional interpretation of American education (democracy and provision of occupational qualification), and relationships between skill requirements, recruitment standards and educational level, and considers impacts on economic disparity. Bibliography pp. 215 to 229.
Urban Sprawl is not simply a development that undercuts the quality of life for suburbanites. It has raised alarms across the nation, as fair housing advocates, environmentalists, land use planners, and even many suburban employers who cannot find the workers they need, have recognized that the costs go far beyond aesthetics. Despite the agreement that something needs to be done, there is no consensus on what works. Urban Sprawl: Causes, Consequences, and Policy Responses assembles leading scholars who analyze the major causes and consequences of urban sprawl and the policy initiatives that are being explored in response to these developments.
Despite local folklore, Chicago is not always a city that works. No longer the "Hog Butcher for the World," the Windy City has, in recent decades, pursued economic growth at all costs--to the detriment of many of its citizens. This book describes the social, economic, and political costs of the growth ideology and examines the populist response that promises an alternative Chicago. Tracing the city's uneven economic development since World War II, the authors demonstrate how unchecked growth in favor of private enterprise has resulted in severe poverty, unemployment, crime, reduced tax revenues and property values, a decline in municipal services, and racial, ethnic, and class divisiveness. And yet proponents of Daley-style machine politics and the notion of the city as a growth machine still assert that the future of the city depends exclusively on its ability to grow. The victory of Harold Washington is the most visible symbol of the movement toward an alternative Chicago. Naming different priorities and using more participatory tactics, this challenge to the politics of growth promotes development that is responsive to social need, not just market signals. Author note: Gregory D. Squires is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Larry Bennett is Associate Professor and Chair of the Political Science Department at DePaul University. Kathleen McCourt is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Loyola University of Chicago. Philip Nyden is Associate Professor of Sociology at Loyola University of Chicago.
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