America’s housing crisis is about far more than a place to live and could have a greater impact on achieving racial and economic equality, according to scholar Anita Hill.
Appearing Sunday on MSNBC’s “Melissa Harris-Perry,” Hill said “record-breaking” settlements have been created to address the nation’s foreclosure crisis, but have been criticized as “not enough to make people whole.”
Hill, a professor of social policy, law and women’s studies at Brandeis University, has authored “Reimagining Equality: Stories of Gender, Race and Finding Home,” which looks at the role of home in achieving the American dream, starting with her own family’s story through the subprime mortgage meltdown and what it means to African-Americans.
Hill came under the spotlight during her testimony at Clarence Thomas’ Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 1991, igniting a national conversation about sexual harassment and women’s equality in politics and the workplace.
“Reimagining Equality” looks at how the current housing crisis, especially the subprime mortgage debacle and resulting foreclosures, have threatened not only individual homeowners, but American society as well.
Two settlements by the Justice Department – one for $365 million to address discrimination claims against banks that discriminated against borrowers of color and a $25 billion settlement with state attorneys general to provide relief for foreclosure discrimination victims – have been criticized for not going far enough. The payouts only amount to $1,500 to $2,500 to individual homeowners affected.
“Now, I applaud both of these settlements because people want accountability,” Hill told Perry, but the size of the crisis is so big that even a substantial amount of money can seem like a drop in the bucket.
“Well, it just shows you how much damage is done, doesn’t it? It’s incredible if $25 billion is not enough to put us back where we ought to be,” Hill said.
“We have to pursue other remedies too because the damage to the individual is only a part of the problem … But think about communities that have been ravaged, and that is where much of where I’m looking at today to see how do we now begin to put these communities back together, communities that have stood as symbols of equality and having achieved.
“And don’t forget there was also a gender element,” Hill said, “especially for African-Americans, because many of those African-American homebuyers were African-American women who had overcome racial and gender discrimination to afford a home, and then, just as they were getting in, the subprime market exploded, and they lost a tremendous amount of wealth. In African-American communities and Latino communities, 65 percent of wealth has been lost since 2008 because (home-buying) has historically been how we established ourselves and established our communities.”
In addition to the basic concerns about homeownership and wealth, Hill said she had four other concerns about the housing crisis: The impact on children and what displacement and homelessness may mean on their ability to succeed; the impact housing insecurity plays on health; the impact on civic participation and the sense of belonging to and being active in one’s community and the ability to build legacy for families.
Hill, who was in New Orleans in January speaking about her work and housing policies, talked about the continuing displacement many families are facing because of bureaucratic red tape, even though “it was all good intent.”
“What I learned, really, more than anything above all when I went to New Orleans in January was that people feel they that they are not being listened to, that the remedies are these sort of high, from high remedies coming down on them, and it doesn’t look at how people live, and where they live and what their day-to-day …..
