Progressive advocates helped push sub-prime credit into racialized poor communities.

Evidence

Interestingly, these forces were often joined by more neoliberal community and advocacy organizations. Noting the way ghettoization and exploitative slum landlords thrived in areas where (racialized) poor populations had little to no access to banking services and credit, they lobbied and partnered with financial institutional to make sub-prime credit available in the hopes of seeing money spent on housing come back to home-owners, rather than being simply transferred from tenants to (typically absentee) landlords and thus leaving the community. As numerous studies attest, the saga and imagery of the sub-prime meltdown are highly racialized The Financial Liquidation of Social Life 63 (Chakravartty and Ferreira da Silva 2012; Dymski, Hernandez and Mohanty 2011; McNally 2011, 119-123; “Race and Recession” 2009; Wyly 2009). — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 201

Categorization

• QUESTION: How far did advocacy organizations actually believe sub-prime credit would recirculate wealth, versus being co-opted by financial institutions? Worth chasing the Kear/Rivlin sources.
• SHARE: A specific person studying housing justice or community economic development would appreciate the irony that equality-minded advocates abetted predatory lending.
• XREF: connects to: Predatory sub-prime lending preyed on America’s poor and racialized communities — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 154; Sub-prime lending exploited the American Dream myth to sell mobility to marginalized borrowers — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 528

Broader Connections

• Sub-prime lending exploited the American Dream myth to sell mobility to marginalized borrowers #expands (0.82) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 528