How Urban Neighborhoods are Faring in the Foreclosure Crisis

The collapse of the subprime mortgage market and the resulting foreclosure crisis has put many individual owner families at risk, particularly low income and minority families to whom subprime loans were disproportionately targeted.  Moreover, because subprime lending is concentrated in vulnerable communities, the foreclosure crisis is negatively impacting entire neighborhoods -lowering the assets and quality of life for all residents.  This panel of local housing market experts from The National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (NNIP) will discuss the implications of the fallout on these families and neighborhoods.  NNIP is a collaboration of The Urban Institute and 31 local partners that operate neighborhood-level information systems for use in local policymaking and community building.  NNIP local partners are working individually and cross-site to understand how different neighborhoods are being affected by the initial wave of foreclosures and the broader economic downturn.  The partners will combine findings from recurrent, small-area analysis with a deeper understanding of the local context to describe the current conditions and prospects for city neighborhoods.   Beyond the research, they will discuss their efforts to develop data-driven responses to help foreclosed families recover and to rebuild neighborhood housing markets.