Moses persuaded lenders to prefer defaulting to the city over the bank.

Evidence

Learning that a small charitable foundation was unable to meet mortgage payments on a piece of property in Queens and was planning to let it go to the bank by default, Moses appeared before its board of trustees, several of whom were directors of the bank, and talked to them so movingly about the need of slum children for recreation that they agreed to use the foundation’s few remaining assets to pay off the small balance remaining on the mortgage—and default instead on the taxes, so that the city could take it over rather than the bank. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 1659

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘[m]aking land’ through creative finance is the urbanist-wonk core of this chapter, tying to ch13’s secrecy and ch16’s procedural creativity.