by Raphael Bostic In her new book How the Other Half Banks, Mehrsa Baradaran, a law professor at the University of Georgia, tells the true story of three borrowers. The first, named Tanya, is a single mother of two. She had to take off work to take care of her son Read more…
While much of my academic career has been spent studying how families get credit to buy homes, the past few years have made me much more aware that simply getting credit isn’t a goal in itself. No, if the credit isn’t sensible and sustainable, the pain can be far worse Read more…
by Raphael Bostic If you list the 34 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development—generally considered to be the most highly developed, democratic nations in the world—and you rank them by the percent of citizens who voted in the last major election, the United States will come in Read more…
by Raphael Bostic I love teaching. I love getting to know my students, challenging them to think in new ways, and engaging them in a conversation centered around important questions. I love seeing their passion to solve great problems, and I love sharing what I’ve learned to help them solve those Read more…
by Raphael Bostic When people talk about home, usually they have in mind the place where they cook their food, store their belongings, relax and recover from the day’s activities, bathe, and lay their heads to sleep. But for many, this isn’t right. For them, home is quite a different thing. Read more…
by Raphael Bostic It’s hard to write about education knowing I could have been, but wasn’t, denied all the opportunities that have come my way. For all the decisions we have control over in life, where we go to school as children is not one of them. Yet, of course, it’s Read more…
by Raphael Bostic They say that twilight is the most dangerous time on the battlefield. Half day, half night, the light plays tricks on your eyes, and the time plays tricks on your body. It is in this moment of transition that you are most vulnerable to an attack. But this Read more…
by Raphael Bostic We may—or may not—be on the brink of a housing revolution. You may not have noticed yet, but this moment is an opportunity. Whether we seize it is entirely up to us. It reminds me a bit of the wonderful work by the economist Alexander Field. In his Read more…
by Liz Falletta A reaction to Evicted by Matthew Desmond Though housing type and housing design are near the top of the list for many of us as we evaluate our housing options, these issues barely registered in the lives described in Matthew Desmond’s Evicted. As Arleen, Crystal and Pam searched Read more…
by Raphael Bostic I heard a story recently about a man who lived in a crooked apartment. The floor was sloped, so that if you placed a bottle at one end of the room, it would roll downhill until it hit the other wall. The apartment was rent-controlled, and the man Read more…
by Raphael Bostic On the afternoon of August 15, 2015, Jamyla Bolden came home from Koch Elementary School in eastern Missouri to play with her friend Akeelah on Ellison Drive, where the Bolden family lived. They probably danced until the sun set. (Jamyla was known for making up new dance Read more…
by Raphael Bostic During this Black History Month, and for many to come, we must never forget the dream—and fight for a new inheritance, one woven not of exclusion but instead of that universal human spirit that calls us each home. If you want to understand the black-white wealth gap, it Read more…
by Raphael Bostic About 150 years ago, people figured out that lead pipes could kill them. In 1861, fifty prisoners in King County Jail in Brooklyn started vomiting uncontrollably, until a doctor realized that the water supply was contaminated with lead. Seven years later, a New York City woman named Elizabeth Read more…
by Raphael Bostic On Thursday morning, when I fly from Los Angeles to Utah for Thanksgiving with my family, there will come a moment when I’m reminded just how fortunate I am that I have a home to go to. So, I’m guessing, do you. Thanksgiving is practically synonymous with Read more…
by Raphael Bostic The long-awaited moment is here. The Millennials are on the move. For the first time in almost a decade, America’s young adults are leaving home and forming their own households at a growing rate. The Millennial generation, now in their 20s and early 30s, have waited longer than Read more…
by Raphael Bostic The U.S. presidential race has done an amazing thing: It has made $28 trillion disappear. That’s how much all the homes in the United States are worth. It’s one tenth of everything the U.S. owns. It’s more money than the entire economy produces in a year. And if you Read more…
by Raphael Bostic Middle-aged white Americans have been dying at an accelerating rate for the last fifteen years. This is surprising to, well, pretty much everyone. Perhaps you heard it on the news. Almost immediately after winning the 2015 Nobel Prize in economics, Angus Deaton and Anne Case dropped this bombshell Read more…
by Raphael Bostic Our homes watch over us as we age. They see everything from birth to death and in between—a child’s first steps, a beloved pet’s last breaths, from marriage to divorce, adolescence to infirmity—and through it all, they change as we change. From the decorations on the wall to Read more…
by Raphael Bostic How do you talk about home without thinking of the American dream? It was Thomas Jefferson who first solidified the vision of homeownership as the foundation of American democracy. He saw it as the antidote to European aristocracy, which perpetuated itself by keeping land in the hands of Read more…