Satter are never at war with each other” in Family Properties. But “the historian and the storyteller in Ms. Her father, Mark Satter, was a white lawyer in Chicago who loudly did battle with discriminatory housing practices before his death, at 49, in 1965. To hang on, families rented out parts of their homes and themselves became exploitative landlords.įor Satter, this is a personal story, said Dwight Garner in The New York Times. Exorbitant fees were often tacked on, and a single late payment was grounds for instant eviction. Speculators filled the vacuum in those areas, selling buildings at inflated prices to black buyers willing to sign onerous contracts. Unlike other Americans, blacks couldn’t borrow from a bank because the Federal Housing Administration would not provide mortgage insurance for homes in neighborhoods where even a handful of blacks lived. A half-century ago, she says, the typical African-American couple hoping to buy a home confronted a system that was seemingly engineered to destroy family and community. It’s no mystery how America’s black urban slums came to be, says historian Beryl Satter.
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