Customer Reviews

Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America

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Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America
This is one terrific book -- focused, hard-hitting and extremely readable. I will not go into details; a growing number of glowing reviews from the New York Times,the Washington Post and others take care of that. In brief, Satter has written an instant classic about exloitative contract sales to blacks that were common in many cities from World War II to the late 1960s. This is a must read for anyone wanting to understand why America's big cities turned out the way they did.

A very timely and revealing book in light of continued patterns of racially segregated urban housing and discriminatory lending practices; as well as in light of President Obama's community work in Chicago's lower class neighborhoods, Sudhir Venkatesh's three books about the Robert Taylor Housing Projects, and the recent Mortgage Melt-down, to name just a few.

This author has put her finger on the pulse of America's ugly under current and her pen where her mouth is. Mixing family history with sociological facts, Ms. Satter reconstructs the shameful framework of a part of America's racist past that haunts us even as it continues to bear devastating negative fruit for mostly black urban communities across the land, even today.

The overriding fear after reading this book is that this experiment in the most hidden, persistent and pernicious of systemic racism has undoubtedly been that it has been responsible for laying the foundation for a generation of poverty and social misery whose pattern, like an evil template has been repeated throughout the country in almost every major metropolitan area of the U.S.

Arguably, it has been this pernicious pattern that in large measure has been responsible for the hole that other Americans seem to think the black working and underclass has dug all on its own, solely as a result of its own decadent and mal-adaptive behavior.

While the jury still remains out on the final details of the particular shape of America's black social meltdown and the full genesis of its overall pathology, Ms. Satter's book makes a big dent in undermining the logic of that conventional wisdom and makes it unmistakably clear that past racism in U.S. housing policy in the North, played an important if not a decisive role in creating and sustaining the current shameful and embarrassing race-based social order and thus in creating and sustaining the current racist mess our nation continues to find itself in today even with a black President.

Here, with great clarity, wit, with a Sociologist bent, and a profound sense of seriousness, the author shows how redlining, contract selling, lack of access to equitable credit, not only impoverished hardworking and highly motivated blacks, many of them, veterans back from the German front, but these practices also greatly enriched those who benefitted from them and who helped enforce the racist rules and laws. Not surprisingly, as is still the case, among the major culprits was to be found the U.S. Government itself. Just as Fannie Mae,Freddie Mac, and other quasi governmental agencies are implicated today, so too was FHA and other federal housing agencies implicated at the creation of the racist housing mess.

Unfortunately, her personal family tragedy gets played out writ large: Just as her father had no viable recourses to redressing the inequities and unfairness, so too remains the case for a whole generation of black Americans both in the last generation and to a lesser extent, even today -- as is witnessed in the aftermath of the current "Mortgage Ponzi bust-out."

Her research beautifully compliments the ethnographic work of Sudhir Venkatesh and comes to essentially the same conclusions. It also dramatically demonstrates why President Obama's community organizing work in Chicago of a decade ago was destined to fail. A great read.

Five Stars

Blacks have been screwed by whites for four centuries, so what can we learn from still another book -- this one focusing on housing and economic discrimination half a century ago? Quite a lot, as it turns out.
Beryl Satter, a Rutgers University historial, has written an almost epic work that explains just how systematically black familes were exploited in the decades after the Second World War. Central to her story is the role played by white contract sellers, who provided black families with overpriced rundown houses that they could not afford. As soon as they missed a payment, the contract seller, who held title to the house, would evict the family and resell it to another black family.
Although this took place in Chicago, probably the most segregated city in the country, this practice took place throughout the nation. The Federal Housing Administration had redlined neighborhoods where even just a few blacks lived, making very hard for anyone to get a mortgage. This placed black families entirely at the mercy of the contract sellers, who, in effect, robbed these families of their savings.
Satter has meticulously researched her subject, but managed to write an eminently readable books. If you are curious about how the big city slums evolved during the post-war decades, this is the book for you.

Beryl Satter's Family Properties begins with a brisk biography of her father, Mark Satter, a crusading Chicago real estate attorney and benevolent landlord who experienced a dual career of continuous frustration--both in his unsuccessful efforts to secure justice for African-American "contract buyers" through the Chicago legal system, as well as constant disappointment at the hands of tenants who would default on rent or damage his buildings. Mark Satter's tale comes tragically to an end at only age 49 with the complications of a sudden cardiac ailment (that the author only implies was a "broken heart").

From her father's story, the author moves to contextualize the Chicago contract buyers' protracted battle against a cadre of ultra-connected speculators who exploited the racist Chicago real estate market for unconscionable financial gain. Because of federal mortgage insurance redlining, as well as garden variety white racism, Blacks could purchase homes only in select neighborhoods of Chicago's south and west sides--and to do so, had to both pay prices close to double what the homes were worth, and acquire the properties by "land contract," a devilishly lopsided arrangement whereby the homeowner could forfeit his entire investment upon a single missed payment or other minor default.

What emerges from this picture is a deeply sophisticated and highly-nuanced treatment of institutional racism in the northern U.S. through the 1950s, '60s, and '70s, an objective treatment of major figures like Saul Alinsky, Richard Daley, and MLK, and an engaging story about the powers and perils of community organizations and public interest lawsuits. In the end, Beryl Satter makes a powerful argument for how America's major urban slums really came about, and an important warning of how vestiges of the same problem, such as the modern subprime mortgage crisis, will continue to plague our society today.

The reason that I purchased this book is the author was featured on C-Span Book TV. Beryl explained that the current mortgage meltdown had Land Contract buying and selling as a precursor to what is happening now.
She deals with the true causes of our cities black slums and the ruin of urban neighborhoods: NOT as some have argued, black pathology, the culture of poverty, or white flight, but a widespread and institutionalized system of legal and financial exploitation. Satter shows the interlocking forces at work in their oppression: the discriminatory practices of the banking industry, the federal policies that created the country's shameful "dual housing market," the economic anxieties that fueled white violence, and the tempting profits to be made by preying on the city's most vulnerable population.
A monumental work of history, this tale of racism and real estate, politics and finance, will forever change our understanding of the forces that transformed urban America.

This is an impressive book. I read the review in the New York Times and was interested, because I lived in Hyde Park on the south side of Chicago in the mid-70s, while attending the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. I also spent two years working at Bethel Lutheran Church, a poverty-stricken African-American congregation in the Englewood neighborhood of the south side.

During those years, I heard much about what black folks called "urban removal," and Satter's book helped me understand the complex dynamics of that. (The seminary building was constructed in the late-60s, taking over the site of houses. Satter's assertion is that the housing stock in Hyde Park was decreased by urban renewal to decrease the housing available to African-Americans. In addition, the Bethel church building was of recent construction. Their old building had been torn down as the Englewood neighborhood was "renewed.")

I remember the rage and violence expressed against an African-American family in the Bethel congregation who moved into an all-white neighborhood. I remember the fear of whites who worried that their property values would plummet if blacks started moving into their neighborhood. Satter's book helped me better understand all of that.

I appreciate how Satter weaves the story of her father with the story of Chicago's real estate exploitation. Mark Satter was certainly one of the many, many heroes of the civil rights movement. It is a compelling story and a tragic story.

If I may find a bit of fault: I did find the going a bit tedious at times, because Satter felt it necessary to go into great detail concerning the court cases at the heart of her story. I would have appreciated less of that detail and more space devoted to the recollections of Satter's allies and clients. To me, what is most gripping is the human heroism and human tragedy of this era in the history of Chicago and other cities.

After reading this book who have to ask yourself what would race relations be like if we only followed Jesus Christ example of loving even our enemies. Does not appear that any of those who exploited their fellow Americans lived to enjoy the fruits of their exploltain. But they did do untold damage to the fabric of America and African American families.

I remembered some of the general outline of the situation,
but never knew the details. Satter, Macnama, Monsignor Egan, many people in
Lawndale and others were certainly heroes. The unwillingness of others to help
was a scandal. And the venality that is noted in Africa's, India's and other
third-world countries' leaders was scandalously evident in Chicago's business,
legal and political community.

It is of great interest that the same type of market manipulation of housing is now,once again, causing huge grief and distress for so many across the country.

On the one hand, the book shows the power of good people to make a difference. On the other, it is a terrifying example of the power of evil to maim people's lives.

beautifully written, extremely readable. Satter explains how "inner cities" and urban areas developed the slums and blight that exist today, documenting that it was a pattern of institutionalized exploitation and racism that created the ghettos that we all know. what makes it readable is that she puts it in the context of her father and other activists who fought slumlords and the institutions that allowed them to exist.

It is unusual for an academic work to include family history, but this is the strength of Beryl Satter's valuable account, which begins with her father. In 1957, attorney Mark Satter was among the first to blow the whistle on contract-buying as the only option open to many of Chicago's Blacks for buying a home. There were two terrible abuses: the buyer had no equity in the property until the final payment was made, and even one missed payment could result in a loss of the property. Contract-buying, unfortunately, was legal. This practice was challenged by creative and persevering lawyers, such as Thomas Boodel, Jr., Marshall Patner, Tom Sullivan, and John Tucker, all of whom followed the path started by the author's father. (The record of Jenner & Block in representing the Contract Buyers League over the years is one of our country's greatest stories of pro bono law firm commitment.)

Important figures make appearances but did not always agree on tactics, including Saul Alinsky, Monsignor John Egan, Rabbi Robert J. Marx, and Dempsey Travis. This is a sad tale of "easy pickings," as many found a way to profit off of Chicago's poorest neighborhoods.