- ISBN13: 9780805076769
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
Part family story and part urban history, a landmark investigation of segregation and urban decay in Chicago—and cities across the nationThe “promised land” for thousands of Southern blacks, postwar Chicago quickly became the most segregated city in the North, the site of the nation’s worst ghettos and the target of Martin Luther King Jr.’s first campaign beyond the South. In this powerful book, Beryl Satter identifies the true causes of the city’s bl… More >>
Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America
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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.
Rating: 5 / 5
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.
Rating: 5 / 5
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.
Rating: 4 / 5
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.
Rating: 5 / 5
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.
Rating: 5 / 5