Doctoral Dissertation Research: Landlord Abandonment and Mortgage Foreclosure in New York City Neighborhoods

1970年代的经济危机条件促成了强调自由市场经济和政府不再向地方提供资本的政策。 在这一转变过程中，房东放弃了内城的真实的地产，耗尽了住房存量，使穷人和少数民族居民流离失所。 在城市长期衰落之后，地主的放弃创造了一种欠发达的条件，这使得在内城地区进行再投资成为可能，并有利可图。 内城社区成为城市经济增长的引擎，也是三十年来戏剧性的城市变化和城市价值重估的关键，这些变化和城市价值重估将房东的放弃与当前持续的抵押贷款止赎危机分开。 这些看似不同的住房危机都集中在低收入的有色人种社区，并成为从这些社区提取资本的手段。 将城市社区纳入资本循环，对围绕止赎的政治动员提出了挑战，因为许多以前反对的城市社会运动已经陷入了他们以前抵制的结构中，例如真实的房地产开发。 博士生Desiree Fields在纽约市立大学研究生院大学中心人类环境中心的Susan Saegert博士的监督下，将探索城市不平等的再现，以及防止和减轻不平等影响的政治动员，通过房东放弃和抵押品赎回权来探索这些问题。 将2006-2008年止赎申请的足迹与1976-1981年纽约市财政部没收并转移到城市所有权的废弃建筑的足迹进行比较，将创建一个历史和当代城市危机的空间重合地图。 判别分析将澄清经历了一个，两个，或没有这些危机的地区之间的邻里变化轨迹的差异。 通过对几代活动家内部和跨代活动家的关键知情人和焦点群体的访谈，将深入了解自向新自由主义治理模式转变以来，为应对城市住房危机而进行的政治动员的演变。这项研究的结果将深入了解边缘化和弱势社区如何受到城市土地和住房危机的多重影响，从而可能加强旨在稳定社区的政策努力。 此外，这项研究将有助于文献的地理城市不平等，住房危机，社区组织和发展。 因此，要理解这种不平等是如何再现的，就需要关注城市发展不同阶段之间的协同作用和相互作用，以及区分它们的断裂。

The economic crisis conditions of the 1970s fostered policies that emphasized free-market economics and the withdrawal of government from the provision of capital to localities. Amidst this transition, landlord abandonment of inner city real estate depleted housing stock and displaced poor and minority residents. After a long period of urban decline, landlord abandonment created the kind of conditions of underdevelopment that would make reinvestment in inner city locations possible and profitable. Inner city neighborhoods became an engine of economic growth for cities, and pivotal to the three decades of dramatic urban change and revalorization of cities that separate landlord abandonment from the current, ongoing mortgage foreclosure crisis. These seemingly distinct housing crises connect in that both are concentrated in low-income communities of color and have served as a means of extracting capital from these communities. The very incorporation of urban neighborhoods into circuits of capital presents challenges to political mobilization around foreclosure in that many previously oppositional urban social movements have become enmeshed in structures they previously resisted, e.g. real estate development. Doctoral student Desiree Fields, under the supervision of Dr. Susan Saegert in the Center for Human Environments at the CUNY Graduate School University Center, will explore the reproduction of urban inequality, and political mobilization to prevent and mitigate the effects of inequality, exploring these concerns through landlord abandonment and mortgage foreclosure. A comparison of the footprint of foreclosure filings from 2006-2008 with that of abandoned buildings seized by the NYC Department of Finance and transferred to city ownership between 1976-1981 will create a map of spatial co-incidence of historic and contemporary urban crises. Discriminate analysis will clarify differences in trajectories of neighborhood change between areas that experienced one, both, or neither of these crises. Interviews with key informants and focus groups within and across generations of activists will provide insight on the evolution of political mobilization in responses to urban housing crises since the shift to a neoliberal mode of governance.The results of this research will provide insight on how marginalized and vulnerable communities are multiply affected by crises rooted in urban land and housing, thus potentially enhancing policy efforts designed to stabilize neighborhoods. Moreover this research will contribute to literature on the geography of urban inequality, housing crises, and community organizing and development. Understanding how this inequality is reproduced thus requires an attention to the synergies and interactions between different phases of urban development as much as the ruptures that distinguish them.