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The First Subprime Mortgage Scandal, a White-Collar Crime Spree, and the Collapse of an American Neighborhood
by Stacy Horn
In this groundbreaking work of investigative journalism and true crime, Stacy Horn sheds light on how the subprime mortgage scandal of the 1970s and a long history of white-collar crime slowly devastated East New York, a Brooklyn neighborhood that would come to be known as the Killing Fields.
On a warm summer evening in 1991, seventeen-year-old Julia Parker was murdered in the Brooklyn neighborhood of East New York. An area known for an exorbitant level of violence and crime, East New York had come to be known as the Killing Fields. In the six months after Julia Parker's death, 62 more people were murdered in the same area. In the early 1990s, murder rates in the neighborhood climbed to the highest in NYPD history. East New York was dying.
But how did this once thriving, diverse, family neighborhood fall into such ruin? The answer can be found two decades earlier. In response to redlining and discriminatory housing practices, the Johnson administration passed the Housing and Urban Development Act in 1968. The Federal Housing Authority aimed to use this piece of legislation to help low-income families of color finally achieve homeownership. But they could never have predicted how banks, lenders, realtors, and corrupt FHA officials themselves would use the newly passed law to make victims of the very people they were supposed to help, and the devastation they would leave in their wake.
A compulsively readable hybrid of true crime and investigative journalism, The Killing Fields of East New York reveals how white-collar crime reduced a prospering neighborhood to abandoned buildings and empty lots. Following the dual threads of the hunt for the network of criminals behind the first subprime mortgage scandal and the ensuing downfall of East New York, Stacy Horn weaves a compelling narrative of government failure, a desperate community, and ultimately the largest series of mortgage fraud prosecutions in American history. The Killing Fields of East New York deftly demonstrates how different types of crime are profoundly entangled, and how the crimes committed in nice suits and corner offices are just as destructive as those committed on the street.
"A badly needed look at a societal problem that goes largely unaddressed while politicians outdo each other with tough-on-crime rhetoric…Horn provides an invaluable roadmap to how, and why, urban "renewal'' can go tragically wrong." ―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Her vivid descriptions of East New York's descent, and her persuasive identification of the forces behind it, are as stirring as they are infuriating. This sobering account shines a vital light on an underdiscussed chapter of recent American history." ―Publishers Weekly
"Horn (Damnation Island, 2018) presents a thoroughly researched narrative ... Her investigation uses numerous resources including extensive interviews. Readers will be drawn into the conversational style that places them in a world that illustrates just what happens when money and power fall into the wrong hands." ―Booklist
"In our age of sky-high housing costs and corporate takeovers of neighborhoods, Horn's book is more than a gripping read―it's a reminder that every city, neighborhood, and block has a story, one that's still being written to this day." ―P.E. Moskowitz, author of How to Kill a City
This information about The Killing Fields of East New York was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Stacy Horn is a journalist and author of nonfiction books, including Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad & Criminal in 19th Century New York and The Restless Sleep: Inside New York City's Cold Case Squad. Her last book, described on The Bowery Boys podcast as "your page-turning horror read for the summer," turned out to be excellent preparation for the horror read she was to write next. Mary Roach has hailed her for "combining awe-fueled curiosity with topflight reporting skills," while others have described her work as "immaculately researched" and "several notches above the typical reporter's insights." Horn's commentaries have been heard on NPR's All Things Considered, and she lives in New York City.
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