Race Brokers: Housing Markets and Segregation in 21st Century Urban America

by Elizabeth Korver-Glenn

Overview

How is it that America's cities remain almost as segregated as they were fifty years ago? In Race Brokers, Elizabeth Korver-Glenn examines how housing market professionals—including housing developers, real estate agents, mortgage lenders, and appraisers—construct contemporary urban housing markets in ways that contribute to neighborhood inequality and racial segregation. Drawing on extensive ethnographic and interview data collected in Houston, Texas, Korver-Glenn shows how these professionals, especially those who are White, use racist tools to build a fundamentally unequal housing market and are even encouraged to apply racist ideas to market activity and interactions. Korver-Glenn further tracks how professionals broker racism across the entirety of the housing exchange process—from the home's construction, to real estate brokerage, mortgage lending, home appraisals, and the home sale closing. Race Brokers highlights the imperative to interrupt the racism that pervades housing market professionals' work, dismantle the racialized routines that underwrite such racism, and cultivate a truly fair housing market.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190063870
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	04/02/2021
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	8.90(w) x 5.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Elizabeth Korver-Glenn is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of New Mexico. Her award-winning research has been published in American Sociological Review, Social Problems, Social Currents, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, and City & Community, among other peer-reviewed outlets. Her work has also been featured in national news outlets, including The Washington Post.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1: H-Town
Chapter 2: Building Homes
Chapter 3: Brokering Sales
Chapter 4: Lending Capital
Chapter 5: Appraising Value
Chapter 6: Fair Housing
Conclusion
Methodological Appendix
References
Notes
Index

Editorial Reviews

"I highly recommend Korver-Glenn's book to housing scholars for both its important methodological intervention and her insights from the field. For housing practitioners and policymakers, I recommend the penultimate recommendations chapter, which has implementable policies for regulation and oversight, such as recommendations for building a more just appraising profession." — Stephen Sherman, Journal of the American Planning Association

"For scholars of neighborhoods, housing, and racial segregation, Dr. Korver-Glenn offers an insightful look into the role of real estate professionals in patterning inequality and reifying racial segregation.... Dr. Korver-Glenn offers an opportunity to apply the Race Brokers framework beyond the field of housing, helping sociologists better understand how racist ideas and tropes inform other unequal power relationships and market exchanges." — Brian J. McCabe, Social Forces

From the Publisher