Foreclosures: Geography & Race in Riverside - Exhibit Materials

Foreclosures in Riverside, August 2008
August 2008 marked the peak of the current Foreclosure rates for City of Riverside, 2000-2009,
foreclosure crisis, the result of sub-prime mort- showing peak of foreclosure crisis in August 2008 Northside
gage loans made as far back as 2006.
White (32.3%)
Hispanic (51.7%)
African American (8.9%)
This moment of crisis highlighted the unequal Hunter Industrial
Foreclosures, Aug 2008:
impact of foreclosures on different neighbor- Park
.81%
hoods within the city. In general, areas with a N/A
high percentage of minority residents suffered
the highest rates of foreclosure. Downtown 1.16%
White (49.3%)
This map shows the racial composition of each Hispanic (36.0%)
neighborhood within Riverside and the fore- University
Demographic data is from the U.S. Census, Census Foreclosures, Aug 2008:
closure rate from August 2008. The numbers 2000, and was compiled for each neighborhood by the
City of Riverside Community Development Depart-
.70% White (38.2%)
for the foreclosure rate may appear small (from ment. Foreclosure rates from www.zillow.com.
Hispanic (24.6%)
Eastside Asian (21.3%)
0.10% to 1.16%), but remember that these are Wood Streets
White (9.6%) Foreclosures, Aug 2008:
foreclosures for one month only, and that each Grand White (66.3%)
foreclosure also affects the value of other prop- Hispanic (21.6%)

Hispanic (72.4%)
African American (14.5%) .38%
White (59.9%) African American (6.7%)
erties in its area. Hispanic (26.7%)
.48%
Airport Foreclosures, Aug 2008: .21%
La Sierra Acres White (34.7%) .31% Victoria
Hispanic (48.8%)
White (37.8%)
African American (8.9%) Magnolia Center White (68.3%)
Hispanic (52.9%) Foreclosures, Aug 2008: Hispanic (21.8%)
African American (2.6%) White (62.3%) African American (3.8%)

.88% Hispanic (25.5%)
African American (6.4%) Foreclosures, Aug 2008:
Arlanza
.90% Foreclosures, Aug 2008: .35%
White (28.2%)
Hispanic (61.1%) Ramona .61%
La Sierra Hills African American (4.6%)
White (53.2%)
Canyon Crest
Hispanic (33.6%)
White (47.1%) Foreclosures, Aug 2008:
African American (6.3%) Casablanca Hawarden Hills
White (64.8%)
Sycamore Canyon/
1.01% Hispanic (12.6%)
Hispanic (39.3%) Sycamore Canyon Park
White (62.3%) African American (7.2%)
Asian (5.9%) Foreclosures, Aug 2008: Hispanic (25.5%)
White (79.2%) Canyon Springs
Foreclosures, Aug 2008: .70% Hispanic (9.8%)
Asian (5.0%)
N/A
.53% Foreclosures, Aug 2008: .20%
Arlington .83% Foreclosures, Aug 2008:
Presidential Park
White (44.4%) .10%
Hispanic (39.6%) White (45.1%)
African American (6.4%) Hispanic (41.7%)
Mission Grove
La Sierra Foreclosures, Aug 2008:
.73%
Foreclosures, Aug 2008: Alessandro Heights White (57.1%)
Hispanic (18.7%)
White (41.7%)
Hispanic (41.8%) .76% White (71.5%)
Asian (11.3%)

Arlington South Hispanic (11.3%)
Asian (11.0%)

White (58.3%) .55%
.71% Hispanic (31.2% Arlington Heights Foreclosures, Aug 2008:
White (60.7%)
.37%
Foreclosures, Aug 2008: Hispanic (24.4%)
.59%
La Sierra South .72%
White (55.8%)
Hispanic (32.6%)
Asian (4.5%)

Orangecrest
.98% White (59.4%)
Hispanic (21.2%)
.57%
Arlanza Neighborhood
Foreclosure Rate* Population by Race**
(Arlanza shown in red) **Population Data from U.S. Census Bureau,
Census 2000, courtesy of the City of Riverside
Chart shows average monthly foreclosure rates Community Development Department.
(as a % of total residences) for 2008-2009 for six
neighborhoods.
*Foreclosure Data from www.zillow.com Area: 2.93 sq miles (3.6% of City Area)
Population: 20,870 (Citywide: 255,166)
White (28.2%)
386
29 5,879
Hispanic (61.1%)
96 African American (4.6%)
628 American Indian & Alaskan (0.7%)
151 Asian (3.0%)
952 Hawaiian & Pacific Islander (0.5%)
Some Other Race (0.1%)
12,749
2 or More Races (1.8%)
La Sierra Neighborhood
(La Sierra shown in red) **Population Data from U.S. Census Bureau,
neighborhoods.
White (41.7%)
10,419 Hispanic (41.8%)

678
60
American Indian & Alaskan (0.6%)
121
Asian (5.5%)
1,361
Hawaiian & Pacific Islander (0.5%)
158
1,744 10,458
Eastside Neighborhood
(Eastide shown in red) **Population Data from U.S. Census Bureau,
neighborhoods.
*Foreclosure Data from www.zillow.com
Area: 2.22 sq miles (2.7% of City Area)
White (9.6%)
1,616 Hispanic (72.4%)

232 African American (14.5%)
12,151
26 Asian (1.4%)
236 Hawaiian & Pacific Islander (0.2%)
62
2,427
Orangecrest Neighborhood
(Orangecrest shown in red) **Population Data from U.S. Census Bureau,
neighborhoods.
White (59.4%)
Hispanic (21.2%)
330 6,443
22
American Indian & Alaskan (0.5%)
9
Asian (7.7%)
838
53
859
2,295
Magnolia Center Neighborhood
(Magnolia Center shown in red) **Population Data from U.S. Census Bureau,
neighborhoods.
*Foreclosure Data from www.zillow.com
Area: 2.51 sq miles (3.1% of City Area)
Neighborhood Population by Race**

White (62.3%)
287 Hispanic (25.5%)
22 7,880
322
Asian (2.5%)
71
808
3,222
Canyon Crest Neighborhood
(Canyon Crest shown in red) **Population Data from U.S. Census Bureau,
neighborhoods.
White (64.8%)
Hispanic (12.6%)
566 10,168 African American (7.2%)
28
Asian (11.1%)
1743
30
1,133 1,977
SUNDAY, AUGUST 2, 2009 latimes.com
Latinos who flocked to the once- It also can increase social conflicts and challenges.
burgeoning Inland Empire are "Because they are choosing areas with less established immigrant
hard-hit in economic downturn networks," Bohn said, "they don't have the institutions or organiza-
tions to fall back upon."
Because the construction and service jobs Now many immigrants, including some who have been in the U.S. for
decades, are struggling to adapt to unemployment in new areas
they filled are gone and the houses they around the state.
bought may be in foreclosure, they feel the
Workforce development offices have seen a five-fold increase in
brunt of the recession. jobless clients seeking retraining, many of them minorities, according
to the Riverside County Economic Development Agency.
August 02, 2009|Anna Gorman and Rich Connell
Edwin Fuentes, 41, a naturalized U.S. citizen from El Salvador, flipped
through postings at the Workforce Development Center of Riverside
County last month. He left Santa Ana in 2006 to buy his first home in
Perris. Later that year, the plumbing company where he worked for
With sprawling new housing tracts transforming the Inland Empire eight years, earning $20 an hour, shut down. His home went into
earlier this decade, word traveled to immigrants across the state. There foreclosure, and he and his wife have moved in with relatives.
were jobs -- lots of jobs.
Jobs are scarce, he said. "You find work and then when things get
Mexican native Ramon Granados got the news in the Northern Califor- slow, they lay you off and you start all over again."
nia town of Watsonville. He moved to Riverside in 2004 and quickly
was hired as an electrician. Immigrants often find it harder to land new jobs, because many lack
education or English skills and aren't as comfortable applying for
"There was tons of work -- new apartments, new construction," said positions online, said Sylvia Spigner, a job center worker. And job
Granados, 25, a U.S. citizen. "Everybody wanted to come to this part of competition has become fierce. In some cases, Spigner said, skilled
California." applicants are chasing jobs as truck drivers, dishwashers and phone
operators. "The immigrants are competing with professionals who are
He had a steady job for four years, working his way up to $17 an hour willing to take these jobs," she said.
plus benefits for himself, his wife and their two children. But when the
economy crashed last year, Granados was laid off. These days, he waits Riverside County Supervisor Bob Buster said the increase in immi-
under a tree outside a Home Depot off the 91 Freeway, hoping for a grants coupled with the economic downturn has prompted debate
day's work at $8 an hour. over immigration policy and funding for local services.
"I'll do anything to bring food to my table," he said. "Here, I get at least "With the recession, everybody's watching the dollar [and debating
a chance of getting a job." which] people we should be spending money on," he said, noting that
he was reviewing a constituent letter expressing concern about
Granados and fellow immigrants transformed the face of the Inland healthcare services for illegal immigrants.
Empire. As hundreds of thousands of immigrants chased construction
and service jobs and the chance to own a home in Riverside and San Diversity has prompted adjustments in an array of government activi-
Bernardino counties, the region's Latino population soared. Latinos ties, including the hiring of bilingual county employees, greater use of
were one-quarter of Riverside County's population in the 1990 Census, bilingual ballots and poll workers and adding programs for children in
for example, and 43% by 2007. changing neighborhoods that have seen an influx of Latino families,
Buster said.
Now, with the region's economy reeling from a brutal recession in
which home construction has collapsed and unemployment rates One challenge for schools, now facing recession-driven budget cuts,
have soared as high as 20% in some areas, its immigrant residents are has been providing support for students with limited English skills,
among the hardest hit. said Kenneth Young, Riverside County schools superintendent. Latino
enrollment grew dramatically during the boom years, and now Latinos
Economic data do not single out the recession's effects on immigrants, constitute a majority of students, he said.
but researchers and employment specialists note that Latinos, includ-
ing many immigrants, are heavily represented in construction jobs With much uncertainty about the future of the economy, researchers
that have some of the Inland Empire's highest unemployment rates. can't predict how immigrants in the Inland Empire will respond. New
state data show overall domestic migration to the Inland Empire,
Joblessness among Latinos across California has surpassed all other including immigrants and non-immigrants, dropped sharply last year.
ethnic groups, including blacks, for the first time since the economic And studies by the Pew Hispanic Center and others show that the flow
downturn began, according to new data released by the Economic of all immigrants into the U.S. has slowed in recent years.
Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.
Some immigrants say they plan to ride out the recession while others
And UC Riverside professor Vanessa Estrada Correa said her research said they will return to their native countries.
shows that Latinos tend to have more subprime mortgages than those
in other ethnic groups and are overrepresented in neighborhoods Pedro Paz, 40, moved from Cudahy to Riverside in 2004, earning $12
with high foreclosure rates. an hour building houses in Riverside, Corona and Norco. An illegal
immigrant, he sent money home each week to his family in Honduras.
The shift of immigrants to inland counties in the years before the He had work until 2007 but now is behind on his rent and buys food at
recession marked a fundamental change in settlement patterns, a corner store on credit. He rarely picks up work outside the Home
according to a recently released detailed analysis of immigrant move- Depot.
ment by the Public Policy Institute of California.
"There isn't any," he said. "It all ended." Nevertheless, Paz said, he will
From 2000 to 2007, the number of immigrants in San Bernardino and keep trying.
Riverside counties grew 55%, from 490,946 to 761,629, researchers
found. Despite being far larger at 3.5 million, the immigrant popula- Granados, the former electrician, has applied at several restaurants
tion in the Los Angeles-Long Beach area grew by just 161,000, or 4.6%, and temporary employment agencies. At a Jack in the Box recently,
in the same period. Granados said the manager had a stack of applications the size of a
thick phone book. He is considering following his father, who, after
Many of the immigrants -- legal and illegal, blue-collar workers and more than 30 years in the U.S., sold everything and returned to
college graduates -- left homelands or supportive big-city ethnic Mexico.
enclaves behind. Pursuing jobs, higher wages and homeownership in
new areas may be a positive development, said Sarah Bohn, a lead "It used to be the American dream here," he said. "Not anymore. The
author of the study. economy came down. Everything came down."
"That may mean they are grabbing hold of economic opportunities
and assimilating faster than in the past," she said.
Predatory Lending and the Foreclosure Crisis in Riverside: Local Impact (Steve Duncan) Page 1 of 7
Regional and racialized impacts of the foreclosure crisis

By Steve Duncan
[Note: This is a portion of a larger project co-authored with Isabelle Placentia and
Richard Alvarado]
California
California has been impacted particularly severely by the foreclosure crisis

relative to other states, both in absolute numbers and on the basis of foreclosures per unit
of residential property. This has been a multi-year pattern and it is also connected to
issues of residential property values and thus to issues of equity and wealth accumulation
for homeowners; sociologist Vanesa Estrada Correra has noted, for example, that
California has been “above the national average in foreclosure starts in its quarterly
National Delinquency Survey since 2007” and that “this corresponds to the same period
in which California’s housing price index has fallen.”1 This dry language should not
obscure the profound impact of the foreclosure crisis in terms of human suffering and
long-term inequalities and wealth distribution. As the Center for Responsible Lending put
it, in less moderated but equally accurate language, “reckless and abusive lending
practices have left California victim to a foreclosure crisis with catastrophic
consequences for families, communities and the state economy.”2
For California, this is very much an ongoing problem. In general, 2008 has been
seen as the peak of the foreclosure crisis in the context of the nation as a whole.
However, in the first quarter of 2010, California had 216,263 properties with foreclosure
filings during the quarter.3 This was the highest foreclosure total for any state in the
nation for the quarter, and the fourth highest foreclosure rate as a percentage of the total
number of residential properties. 4 This indicates only a very slight drop (6 percent) in
foreclosures relative to the same quarter in the prior year, and it is actually a slight
increase (5 percent) over the directly preceding quarter.5 Averaged out against the total
residential units in the state, this means that “one in every 62 California housing units
received a foreclosure filing during the quarter.”6
Data indicates that the statewide problem of foreclosures will continue at least
into the near future, inasmuch as many foreclosure filings—the numbers cited above—
are only early steps in the long process of actual foreclosure. Foreclosure filings include
three different types of documents. The data above, as well as the regional foreclosure
1
Vanessa Estrada Correa, “The Housing Downtown and Racial Inequality.” Policy Matters Vol 3, Issue 2, Fall 2009.
Page 5. Housing price index research comes from the Federal Housing Finance Agency (2008), and Foreclosure data
cited from the Mortgage Bankers Association.
2
Center for Responsible Lending. “California Economic Outlook: Greater Foreclosures Loom, Threaten to Delay
Economic Recovery.” Policy Brief, November 2009. Page 1/ Executive Summary (online at
http://www.responsiblelending.org/California)
3
RealtyTrac Staff. California Foreclosure Activity, First quarter 2010: Jan-Mar. RealtyTrac U.S. Foreclosure Market
Report. www.realtytrac.com.
4
RealtyTrac, California Foreclosure Activity, First quarter 2010.
5
6
data used in the exhibit component of this project, was provided by RealtyTrac, an online
marketplace for foreclosure properties and a provider of mortgage and home sales data.
RealtyTrac notes that its “foreclosure filing” data includes “default notice[s], foreclosure
auction notice[s], or bank repossession[s].”7 The most severe category is the third: these
are REO properties (Real Estate Owned), which have actually gone through the
foreclosure process and are now owned by a bank.
REOs are the “actual foreclosures,” and their numbers are generally much less
than the total number of other types of foreclosure filings. For example, for the first half
of 2009, the state of California had 259,993 notices of default, but only 89,287 actual
foreclosures (REOs). To a large extant this shows that not all properties that risk
foreclosure, or that move toward foreclosure, are actually foreclosed upon. However, the
disparity between foreclosure filings overall versus REOs can to some extent also be seen
as an indication of future foreclosures, or at least foreclosure potential.
This has been called a “foreclosure backlog” by some analysts, and it hints that
not only does California’s foreclosure crisis continue at present, but that it will continue
into the future as well. As the Center for Responsible Lending ominously explained in
later 2009, “it is likely that the majority of this backlog will result in future foreclosures,
as loan modifications are preventing foreclosures in fewer than one in five seriously
delinquent loans.”8 In fact, this pessimism is unfortunately widely supported by other
data. The current wave of foreclosures that peaked in 2008 has generally been a function
of the sub-prime loans made to borrowers who were often clearly unequipped to pay back
the loan. The Center for Responsible Lending, however, has also predicted that the next
wave of foreclosures will be in the “Alt-A mortgage market,” which refers to mortgage
loans “made to near-prime quality borrowers.”9 This is particularly relevant to California
because, in fact, the state has “more than 30 percent of the nation’s Alt-A loans” made
between 2000 and 2007. The center predicts that “as subprime loans begin to pass their
payment reset or recast dates, Alt-A loans will enter a period of dramatic payment
shocks, starting in late 2009.”10 Additionally, the drastic drop in home prices throughout
the state left many borrowers owing more on their mortgage than the total worth of their
home, or “underwater.” Over 40 percent of the state’s residential properties were
underwater in 2009, and a 2009 study by DeutscheBank estimated that “by 2011, nearly
70 percent of California homeowners will be under water.”11
San Bernadino & Riverside Counties
7
A fuller explanation of the data, as explained by RealtyTrac, is below:
RealtyTrac’s report incorporates documents filed in all three phases of foreclosure: Default — Notice of
Default (NOD) and Lis Pendens (LIS); Auction — Notice of Trustee Sale and Notice of Foreclosure Sale
(NTS and NFS); and Real Estate Owned, or REO properties (that have been foreclosed on and repurchased
by a bank).
8
Center for Responsible Lending, 2009
9
10
11
Cited in Center for Responsible Lending, 2009
The impact on California in general is also particularly concentrated within the

Inland Empire area, and in the San Bernadino-Riverside metropolitan area. Individually,
the two counties represent the second and third greatest total number of foreclosures in
the state, surpassed only by Los Angeles County (which has a far larger population). In
May 2010, for example, Riverside had 7,141 foreclosure filings and San Bernadino had
6,538, while Los Angeles County had 14,203.12 Overall, for the first quarter of 2010,
reports from data compiled by RealtyTrac indicate that “Riverside County had the highest
county foreclosure rate in the metro area…with one in every 34 housing units receiving a
foreclosure filing,” while “San Bernardino County had the second highest foreclosure
rate” with one in every 38 housing units receiving a foreclosure filing.”13 The counties
are also very high for “underwater” homes; in 2008, 39 percent of San Bernardino homes
and 46 percent of Riverside County homes owed more than 105 percent of the property’s
value, as opposed, for example, to 24 percent for Orange County or 29 percent for Los
Angeles county.
Racialized Impacts of Predatory Lending
The county level also provides a good perspective from which to begin to
examine the demographics of the foreclosure crisis, and its racialized and unequal impact.
Numerous analysts have noted that “hardest hit borrowers are minorities and immigrants,
and neighborhoods with high concentrations of subprime borrowers…”14
To a large extent this is a function of the racially disparate application of
predatory lending practices. Sociologist Vanesa Estrada Correa has determined, for
example, than in 2007 “over 30% of loans to Latinos and African American homebuyers
in Riverside and San Bernadino Counties were sub-prime loans while fewer than 15% of
White homebuyers had subprime loans made.”15 High-cost loans are one element of what
she calls “housing stran,” defined as spending more than 30 percent of income on
mortgage costs, and she suggests that this is a key indicator of the risk factor for
foreclosure. She notes that in her study area of Riverside County, even after “controlling
for income and other factors, Latinos were the ones most likely to experience housing
strain (63%), followed by Asian Americans (54%), African Americans (53%), and whites
(41%).”16
City of Riverside
Our project used the City of Riverside as an opportunity to examine the

correlation between racial composition of neighborhoods and disparate experiences of
foreclosure. To do this, we used foreclosure data from foreclosure and real-estate industry
12
RealtyTrac Staff. “California Real Estate Trends: May 2010.” RealtyTrac U.S. Foreclosure Market Report.
www.realtytrac.com.
13
RealtyTrac, “California Real Estate Trends: May 2010.”
14
Joseph Carreras. “The Mortgage lending crisis: impact on people and places.” 8th Annual Regional Housing Summit,
May 2008, Southern California Association of Governments.
15
Estrada Correra 2009, 6
16
Estrada Correa 2009, 9
sources including RealtyTrac (an online marketplace and a data provider for foreclosed
residential properties) and Zillow (an online brokerage and marketplace that also
provides foreclosure data for consumer and real-estate industry needs). We combined this
with race/ethnicity data for neighborhood demographics from the U.S. Census (the 2000
Census). The census data used had already been broken down by individual
neighborhood by the City of Riverside Planning Department, and the foreclosure/real
estate data was likewise geographically delimited. Because the data available gave
foreclosure filing rates on a monthly basis, and because the monthly rate varied so
drastically between, for example, the peak of the crisis in August 2008 and moments of
relative stasis during the winters, we decided to use an average of monthly foreclosure
rates for the period of 2008-2009.
In general, and in very broad terms, the data showed a clear correlation between
the non-white percentage of neighborhood population, and the average rates of
foreclosure for that neighborhood. For example, two of the neighborhoods with the
highest average monthly foreclosure rates were Northside (32% white, 52% Hispanic, 9%
African American) which had an average monthly foreclosure rate of 0.55%, and Arlanza
(28% white, 61% Hispanic, 5% African American) had an average monthly rate of
0.44%.17 In contrast, the lowest rate of foreclosure, 0.08%, was seen in Hawarden Hills,
which is 79% white.
The total population of Riverside in the 2000 Census was 255,166. For the
exhibit, we selected six neighborhoods of the 26 Riverside neighborhoods. Selecting only
from those neighborhoods with a population of more than 10,000, we chose three
representative neighborhoods from among those with the highest rates of foreclosure and
three from those with the lowest rates.
In considering this issue from a methodological or analytical perspective,

it is important to note that it is generally impossible to clearly determine the
demographics of the individuals actually foreclosed upon. Race is not reported when
foreclosure filings are registered in RealtyTrac’s database, for example. Instead, analysis
of the racialized impacts of foreclosure rests in part upon the degree to which foreclosure
patterns overlap with racially segregated communities. Census data provides
demographic information about communities, as defined by geographic identifiers like
neighborhoods or zip codes, and this can be correlated with foreclosure data to provide a
clear picture of how foreclosure affects that particular community. What is not always
clear is whether the demographics of the community as a whole is also reflected in the
demographics of the foreclosure victims.
At the same time, foreclosure clearly impacts the community as a whole—some
estimates, for example, suggest that an individual foreclosure will reduce the value of
neighboring homes by something like 0.9% for all homes within 1/8 miles. Thus, there is
in fact a clear way in which foreclosures DO affect everyone within that geographic
region, although it is indirect.
17
In fact, the two neighborhoods with the highest recorded average foreclosure rate were Arlington Heights (60%
white, 24% Hispanic, 6% African American) and Hunter Industrial Park, but these neighborhoods have small
populations—2,308 and and 1,237 respectively—and so they do not provide statistically useful samples.
Data is from RealtyTrac foreclosure database and the U.S. Census, compiled by the City of Riverside planning
department.
There is also a clear correlation between foreclosure and various risk factors, such
as having high-cost or predatory loans, that are able to be directly connected with
demographic identifiers like race. In particular, as Vanesa Estrada Correa has noted, the
Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HDMA), passed in 1975, requires lenders to report on
mortgage lending activity with data that includes “Applicant Ethnicity” and “Applicant
Race.”18 This data can, to some extent, help inform analysis with a greater degree of
precision. Vanesa Estrada Correa’s approach is uniquely useful, however, not only
because she uses the different types of data mentioned above, but also because she
integrates the insights offered by closer surveys of samples of individuals from within a
particularly area.
Recognizing these analytical and methodological limitations, and also recognizing

that the City of Riverside provides only a small sample, we nonetheless found that it
illustrated broader trends that other researchers have noted. In particular, there was a
clear correlation in our sample set between the Hispanic population of individual
neighborhoods and the rate of foreclosure. This appears to be the outcome of two factors
that have contributed to the racial inequality of the foreclosure crisis.
The first is institutionalized racism within the practices of predatory lending, as
discussed above. Investigations have now shown that institutions like Wells Fargo
targeted racially identified neighborhoods for high-cost predatory loans. This is in many
ways a direct descendent of the racialized “redlining” practices of the early and mid-
twentieth century. As a New York Times article explained, referring to the impact of such
racist practices on African American populations in other parts of the country:
Mortgage lenders like Countrywide and Wells Fargo sought out minority
homebuyers for the heartbreakingly simple reason that, for decades, blacks
had been denied mortgages on racial grounds, and were thus a ready-made
market for the gonzo mortgage products of the mid-’00s.19
Similarly, Latino communities have been targeted in California as being relatively
naïve or inexperienced home-buyers, and as susceptible to predatory lending both
because of this perceived inexperience. This is closely related to the second factor
involved in the racialization of foreclosure in the Riverside region: the fact that more
recent homeowners are the most susceptible to becoming victims of predatory lending
and of foreclosure. This means that immigrants and new arrivals to any region will face
the highest risk—while at the same time often having the least resources available to deal
with economics downturns. A 2009 L.A. Times article, for example, noted that in recent
years, “in Riverside and San Bernardino counties, the region's Latino population soared.
Latinos were one-quarter of Riverside County's population in the 1990 Census, for
example, and 43% by 2007.” 20 At the same time, “Latinos tend to have more subprime
mortgages than those in other ethnic groups and are overrepresented in neighborhoods
with high foreclosure rates.” 21
Vanesa Estrada Correa has also noted the role that language plays in making
18
Estrada Correa 2009, 7; also “HMDA Glossary” on the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act website,
http://www.ffiec.gov/hmda/glossary.htm#R
19
Barbara Ehrenreich and Dedrick Muhammad. “The Recession's Racial Divide” New York Times, September 13, 2009
20
Anna Gorman and Rich Connell. “Latinos who flocked to the once-burgeoning Inland Empire are
hard-hit in economic downturn.” LA Times, August 02, 2009
21
Anna Gorman and Rich Connell, 2009
recent immigrants who are not native English speakers susceptible to predatory lending.
“Despite California laws which require translation of mortgage documents, 64% of
mortgage counseling agencies in the CRC September 2008 survey reported that it was
“very common” that their clients are not English speakers, yet have English loan
documents which they could not read.”22
The problems illustrated in this project are broad, and solutions are not simple. A
realistic analysis of the racialized and unequal impact of the foreclosure crisis, however,
makes it clear that race is an important consideration in fully understanding how this
crisis affects people. Solutions, therefore, should also recognize the racism and the
racialized outcomes that have exacerbated this crisis in many regions. As a recent report
on “Fair Credit and Fair Housing” explained:
Because unequal and segregated credit emerged hand-in-hand with
racially segregated housing markets, the provision of fair credit and fair
housing opportunity must be pursued together. These tools of community
and asset exclusion reinforced each other – people of color were denied
credit and could not build and pass on intergenerational wealth – and they
must be understood and unwound together.23
22
Estrada Correa 2009, 7
23
Christy Rogers and Jason Reece, primary researchers. “Fair Credit and Fair Housing in the Wake of the Subprime
Lending and Foreclosure Crisis: Findings from the Kirwan Institute Initiative.” W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the
Kirwan Institute, Ohio State University, February 2010, Page 23.
Works Cited
Carreras, Joseph. “The Mortgage lending crisis: impact on people and places.” 8th Annual Regional Housing Summit,
May 2008, Southern California Association of Governments.
Center for Responsible Lending. “California Economic Outlook: Greater Foreclosures Loom, Threaten to Delay
Economic Recovery.” Policy Brief, November 2009. Page 1/ Executive Summary (online at
http://www.responsiblelending.org/California)
Correa, Vanessa Estrada. “The Housing Downtown and Racial Inequality.” Policy Matters Vol 3, Issue 2, Fall 2009.
Ehrenreich, Barbara and Dedrick Muhammad. “The Recession's Racial Divide” New York Times, September 13, 2009
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Foreclosures: Geography & Race in Riverside - Exhibit Materials

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Foreclosures in Riverside, August 2008

foreclosure also affects the value of other prop- Hispanic (21.6%)

Foreclosures, Aug 2008:

African American (7.0%)

Foreclosures, Aug 2008:

Foreclosures, Aug 2008:

Foreclosures, Aug 2008:

10,419 Hispanic (41.8%)

1,616 Hispanic (72.4%)

Neighborhood Population by Race**

Regional and racialized impacts of the foreclosure crisis

California has been impacted particularly severely by the foreclosure crisis

San Bernadino & Riverside Counties

The impact on California in general is also particularly concentrated within the

Racialized Impacts of Predatory Lending

Our project used the City of Riverside as an opportunity to examine the

In considering this issue from a methodological or analytical perspective,

Recognizing these analytical and methodological limitations, and also recognizing

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