Sociology Professor Outlines Decrease in Homeownership

Not everyone benefitted from the housing boom ten years ago.

That was the conclusion of research by Emily Rosenbaum, Ph.D., professor of sociology, whose report on home ownership was published in March by the Russell Sage Foundation and Brown University as part of the US2010 project.

Homeownership, in fact, saw a dramatic decrease for certain groups, between 2001 and 2011, according to Rosenbaum’s report, “Home Ownership’s Wild Ride, 2001-2011.

Between the housing-market collapse and the Great Recession, Rosenbaum found that Generations X and Y are homeowners at a lower rate than their older cohorts were at the same stage of life. In addition, Black households experienced lower rates of homeownership than their White counterparts.

Homeownership among lower income and less educated households also experienced a hit, widening the gap between the high and low socioeconomic households.

“We haven’t seen a drop in the overall home ownership rate this large since the Great Depression,” Rosenbaum wrote. “Losses were particularly large among black households, less-educated households, and households in the bottom 20 percent of the income distribution. The unequal pattern of loss considerably widened the ownership gaps between black and white households, highly educated and less-educated, and high- and low-income households.”

It was also noteworthy, Rosenbaum said, that those same groups did not participate in the surge in home ownership during the first half of the decade. Low-income households, black households and non-college-degree households saw “little change” in ownership between 2001 and 2005.

“In contrast, increases of two, three, or four points typified the experience of households headed by college graduates, non-black households, and households in the top 20 percent of the income distribution,” Rosenbaum wrote.

Rosenbaum’s findings are based on six years of data from the March Current Population Survey (CPS; 2001, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2009, and 2011), capturing the periods immediately before and after the housing bubble’s burst. The full US2010 policy brief can be downloaded here: http://www.s4.brown.edu/us2010/Projects/Reports.htm

– Jenny Hirsch

Fordham Professor Tapped for US2010

Emily Rosenbaum, Ph.D., professor of sociology, is one of 26 researchers who have been chosen from universities all over the United States to participate in a new report on changes in American society, as reflected in the 2010 census.

US2010, Discover America in a New Century, is being funded by the Russell Sage Foundation and coordinated through Brown University. The project, a two-year study which will culminate with a book, got underway when the 2010 census showed virtually no change since 2000 in black and white segregation in the housing markets.

Rosenbaum, a housing inequality expert and author of The Housing Divide: How Generations of Immigrants Fare in New York’s Housing Markets (New York University Press, 2006), will be heading up the research on “How We Are Housed.” Drawing from a few different sources of data, Rosenbaum will analyze recent trends and differentials in home ownership, and housing and neighborhood quality, for the decade 2000-2010.

“Home ownership is widely recognized as a barometer of the U.S. population’s and economy’s well being,” wrote Rosenbaum. “And thus has long been integral to policy making.”

But home ownership, she said, was only “part of the total picture.” Neighborhood safety, access to services such as good schools, and a deteriorating housing unit can adversely affect quality of life and health, she said.

“The persistence of racial/ethnic differentials in housing and neighborhood quality may be a partial explanation for [the] continued patterns of inequality,” said Rosenbaum.

What was surprising about the U.S. 2010 census is that the recent decade of stagnation in black-white segregation followed two decades (1980s, 1990s) of growing diversity. Why has it stopped? This is one of the things the study will look at.

Beyond housing, said John Logan, Ph.D., professor of sociology at Brown and director of US2010, the concluding publication will include studies on immigration, segregation, economics, education, aging and the changing American family, among others.

“US2010 . . . tackles questions of change in American society not from the perspective of one scholar or one topic, but with the expertise of a nationwide team of scholars who were brought together for this purpose,” he said.

—Janet Sassi

Documentary Producer Discusses Gentrification with Fordham Students

Ed Morales
Photo by Gina Vergel

Gentrification.

When the real estate market was booming, the dreaded “G” word caused anxiety in East Harlem, a journalist who documented the tension told Fordham students on Sept. 29.

Ed Morales, a journalist who has covered New York City for more than 20 years, discussed gentrification and whether has displaced the Puerto Ricans who once populated East Harlem in droves.

“We all know about gentrification,” said Morales, whose parents met and married in East Harlem, also called Spanish Harlem and El Barrio. “It’s been a problem for as long back as I can remember.”

Morales was a guest speaker at a class on “Hispanics in the USA” at Fordham College at Lincoln Center. Clara Rodriguez, Ph.D., professor of sociology, said she invited Morales because a documentary he co-produced, Whose Barrio?, fit in line with the topic students were researching in her class.

“[The documentary] focused on the economic shifts that occurred in these neighborhoods and their cultural impact, as opposed to the way in which it is more generally perceived—as racial or ethnic shifts,” Rodriguez said.

Morales showed excerpts from Whose Barrio?, which explores gentrification in East Harlem, where the median household income is just over $22,000.

“Downtown is moving uptown,” Morales says in the film. “Big changes are coming—what some people call development and others call gentrification.”

Shown at the HBO New York International Latino Film Festival in 2009, Whose Barrio? was co-produced with fellow journalist Laura Rivera. The film follows two East Harlem residents—Jose Rivera, a middle-aged man of Puerto Rican descent who was born and raised in El Barrio, and James Garcia, a 20-something seventh generation Mexican-American that bought a condo in one of the new buildings in the area.

While Garcia advocates for an upswing in the neighborhood’s “quality of life,” Rivera worries wealthier newcomers are forcing him out. “You can’t live here and expect to buy a home unless you’re making outrageous amounts of money,” Rivera said in the film. “’Luxury’ means I can’t afford it.”

At one point in the film, Garcia rails against residents, who he says are afraid of change and perhaps comfortable living among crime. Morales said this isn’t so.

“Community leaders have always asked for more policing,” Morales said. “Unfortunately, it seems to come only after the neighborhood is gentrified.”

Before the neighborhood became “hot” for gentrification, Morales said his own friends of Puerto Rican descent who were coming out of academia and other professions moved to El Barrio in an attempt to keep “a cultural presence.”

“They were rather idealistic,” he said. “Their goal was the save and buy in the area, which I thought was great. But then the skyrocketing real estate market happened and no matter how much they saved, they could never save enough.”

Morales said gentrification, while slowed somewhat, is still going on in Spanish Harlem. Most of the new buildings that were not able to sell units are now renting at rates of $1800 and above.

“In New York, the housing market has not gone down as other parts of the country have,” Morales said referring to rent prices that many in the area could never afford.

Whose Barrio? was not intended solely for the people of East Harlem, Morales said.

“It’s a universal film. People in many parts of the country, in one way or another, have been affected by the forces of the real estate market and have had to move out or have been priced out,” Morales said.

For more information about the film, visit www.whosebarrio.com.

A Latin music Newsday columnist and longtime Village Voice contributing writer, Morales’ work has appeared in Rolling Stone and The New York Times. He is the author of Living in Spanglish (St. Martin’s Press, 2003) and The Latin Beat: From Rumba to Rock (DaCapo Press, 2003).

—Gina Vergel

Professor Wins Award for 'Mitzvah Girls'

In her most recent book, Ayala Fader, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, delved deep into the close knit Hasidic Jewish community of Boro Park, Brooklyn.

For her efforts, the Jewish Book Council recently awarded Mitzvah Girls: Bringing Up the Next Generation of Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn (Princeton University Press), with the 2009 Barbara Dobkin Award in Women’s Studies.

In the book, which is one of 18 winners in the council’s annual book awards, Fader examined language, gender, and the body from infancy to adulthood to showing how Hasidic girls in Brooklyn become women responsible for rearing the next generation of non liberal Jewish believers. To uncover how girls learn the practices of Hasidic Judaism, she looked beyond the synagogue to everyday talk in the context of homes, classrooms, and city streets.

Fader will be honored along with her fellow winners on at a gala award ceremony on March 9 at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan at 15 West 16th St. The awards ceremony, which begins at 7:30 p.m., is free and open to the public.

—Patrick Verel