In 2012 and 2013, then Maryland Morning Producer Lawrence Lanahan, WYPR’s Sheilah Kast, Tom Hall and other members of the Maryland Morning team produced a weekly series called The Lines Between Us, which examined the many ways in which inequality was manifested in the Baltimore region.
This morning, a conversation about one of the things we focused on then: discrimination in the mortgage lending market here in Baltimore.
Dr. Jacob Rugh is a Professor of Sociology at Brigham Young University of Utah. Last year Rugh and his co-authors -- sociologists Len Albright of Northeastern University, and Douglas Massey of Princeton University -- published a study of mortgage lending in Baltimore from 2000-2008, when the real estate market and the US economy went into a deep recession. What they found was significant racial discrimination in mortgage lending here in Baltimore City.
Tomorrow night in New Orleans, Prof. Rugh and his co-authors will be awarded the John Hope Franklin Prize for the Best Article on Race, Racism and the Law published within last 2 years for their Baltimore article. The Prize is named after the great historian and civil rights pioneer who studied racial politics.
Jacob Rugh joins me on the line from Utah. The prize-winning – and eye-opening -- article was published in the journal, Social Problems. It is called Race, Space, and Cumulative Disadvantage: A Case Study of the Subprime Lending Collapse.
