Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership

The book opens with the story of a black single mother who was unable to find a place to rent. She was encouraged to buy a place instead. This ended up being a dump that should have probably been condemned. The author places the blame on the real estate professionals and the government's complicity. There is a conflict in seeing housing as a place to live and as an investment. Well-meaning intentions to expand access end up backfiring. 

Much of the book focuses on the HUD during the Nixon administration. George Romney was Nixon's in-party rival, so Nixon attempted to relegate him to the backwaters of the housing department. Romney, however, really wanted to help the poor and especially racial minorities. He had worked hard to integrate housing. He ended up working too hard. His attempts to integrate suburbs was leaked and was disbanded for political expediency. Romney ended up having a fall-out with Nixon.

In spite of Romney's intentions, all was not well with the HUD. Black employees tended to earn less than their white counterparts. There were also cases of the government signing off on poor quality housing that it insured. There were many areas of corruption throughout. Some required repairs may not be done. Some appraisers and inspectors may be doing double duty other places and have incentives that were not in the best interest of others.

The narrative of black housing ended up using color-blind rationale to continue segregation. Black homeowners were seen as not being able to maintain their housing. Minority neighborhoods were less desirable than white ones. With free choice, people would still choose to cluster. On top of these arguments, local communities argued that they should have control. Many zoning ordinances made no mention of race, but served to make things difficult for black homeowners. There ended up being a whole "throw the baby out with the bathwater" mentality. Local communities enact restrictive zoning regulations that ended up driving up the cost for everyone while also making neighborhoods more isolated, spread out and car dependent. 

Facebook, Zillow and Trulia

I was on my phone learning some facts on Memrise, when all of a sudden I get a message that I need to login. I was annoyed, because it looked like facebook had expired its login. But, I couldn't remember the local password I had set up, so I went to use the facebook login. Facebook, alas, decided that I was logging on from some new location. (Ummm, this is the same location I was using 5 minutes before...) In its security minded approach, it asked me to validate some things. It gave three options:

1) Answer "Secret questions"
2) Get text on phone
3) Identify people in photos.

I have know idea what phone I used with facebook, but since it has been a while, I am guessing it is and old one that I don't have anymore. "Secret questions" are always problematic, especially if it has been a while. What was my favorite movie back then? It depends on when "then" was.

I opted for "identify people in photos."

This had its own set of problems. I primarily use facebook as a convenient way to sign in to various apps. If I need a login, and there is not anything super valuable there, facebook is a convenient option. Fewer passwords to remember. As for accessing facebook, well, I think I posted something myself a few years ago. About the only activity I get is produced by various acts. (Hence my sister asking why I was listening to Katy Perry on Spotify.)

I'll also occasionally go in there and respond to friend requests and add a few suggested friends. This turned out to be my downfall.

It is easy to identify pictures of my family or current friends. But, facebook doesn't stick with those. It gives me a wonderful picture of somebody that I haven't seen since elementary school. Uh, perhaps process of elimination will help. Even worse, it will show the extended family of somebody that I haven't seen in years. I guess this is their encouragement to be actively involved in facebook. My first try, I failed out the identification. On the second try, the final picture was of my mom. Whew! Made it.

It would be a little helpful if they would actually show photos of the person. When they ask me to identify an adult friend, and I get a picture of a six year old, I know something is up. It would also be useful if they would tell me why they think there is a login from a new place. I did go to their logs, and didn't see anything that looked unusually. There was me on the work network. And there was my phone and computer on the home network. Why was there an issue?

I've also run into another annoyance with Real Estate sites. I was interested in seeing house values for some condos. Sites like Zillow are very good at showing values of single family homes. You can zoom into a neighborhood and see numbers next to each of the houses. Alas, for condos, it gets confused. Really confused.

It shows some jumbled text at the building. Ok. I can deal with that. However, the details, can be even more bizarre. It shows some of the units in the building. But not others. I see a couple apartment 2s. Only, one has one address and once has a different one. Eventually I got a listing that seemed to have everything - maybe. This was a condo complex that had about 6 different addresses, with 3 units per address. I finally found one address that where I could get all the units. The only problem was that they were labeled as "apt 1. apt 1. #1. Apt 2" etc. Eventually digging down could get some sales prices.

Trulia could be even more bizarre. I would do a couple search for the address and get one result from Trulia. Then I'd try typing that into their search engine and get nothing. Huh? Oh well. All they need is a simple feature: "show nearby units." Alas, it is next to impossible to get it.

Also, it was interesting to see the different estimates. I saw estimates ranging from 130k to 210k for the units, depending on the site. After looking, it appeared that there was an attempt to sell one unit for about 210k a year ago, but the sale never went through. There was also an attempted short sell for about 130k recently. I guess that explains the wide range. The actual value is likely somewhere in between.

There are so many "junk" sites out there. It is hard to filter through all the "Spam" sites that google returns to get to ones that actually have relevant real estate data. Another curse of the ease of access to big data. If only these companies that make junk sites would spend their efforts making quality data rather than just trying to show up high on the search engine rankings.