Note: Thank you to NetGalley, Little, Brown, and Company, as well as author Bernadette Atuahene, for the advanced reader copy of this book. This review will also be posted on NetGalley. What follows is my unbiased review of the book.

I was greatly interested in this topic. As a teenager and young adult, I had witnessed blockbusting and racial steering first-hand in Elmont, NY, where I grew up. The title made me think it would cover events in various places in the United States. This is misleading. Author Bernadette Atuahene only details the problems in the City of Detroit and its counties. A better title would have been “How Racist Policies Undermine Black Homeownership in Detroit.”

The problem with the misleading title and subject is that it will be easy for people to dismiss this. Detroit has a reputation. We can argue back and forth whether it deserves that reputation for the way its residents are treated (my opinion) or if Detroit is the way it is because of its residents (other people’s thinking). The people who most need to understand the systemic racism that Bernadette Atuahene is highlighting will dismiss this book simply because she only talks about Detroit.

Atuahene succinctly details the problem: areas where African-American residents live are over-taxed and under-represented. Poor and working-class families do not have access to the legal means to remediate the problem, not to mention that the City and County make it overly complicated. Atuahene follows the stories of several families who have lost homes to tax foreclosures, highlighting that it’s not a matter of “personal responsibility.” It’s a matter of the system being stacked against them and elected officials unwilling to do much about it until recently.

The book was not an easy read. I don’t think it’s meant to be. It’s meant to give a deeper understanding of the housing crisis in the Detroit area. Sure, houses can be purchased for quite a bit less in Detroit than in many other areas of the country, but it’s also easy for people to lose those houses. Besides unfair property tax assessments, mortgage companies make it difficult for working-class people in these areas to finance their homes or to tap into equity to help in their upkeep.

Atuahene details the many racist policies that led to this point. The most overt are the land covenants that once existed that prevented African-American families from moving out of the inner-city to the suburbs. Even after those land covenants were declared illegal, it still hasn’t been easy for people to move out of the inner-city. Atuahene briefly mentions the problem of racial steering by real estate agents, and I thought she’d perhaps bring up the case of the town I lived in, where a lawsuit sanctioned real estate agents for racial steering and blockbusting. Alas, it’s only Detroit she’s focused on.

There was relief provided for indigent homeowners as well as those who lived in the homes they owned, but it was not advertised, nor was it easy to find out how to do this. It’s very likely that this was done on purpose, as fair assessments and easy access to information about property tax remediation would have led to a decline in income for the City and the County of Wayne.

It would be natural to think the problem ended when African-Americans began getting elected to positions in the local government. In fact, some of them were more corrupt than their predecessors, but people didn’t want to speak up for fear of it being a strike against all African-Americans.

I found the chapters about the people who bought up properties that had been foreclosed on for tax debt very interesting. It’s hard to pin the situation down. Sure, there were some people who were just looking to make a quick buck and not work to improve the homes they bought. There were others, though, who worked hard to try and provide decent housing for people in the area through this means. Are they wrong? Atuahene seems to be making the case that they are because they are profiting off of others’ misfortunes. There was one specific case of a Vietnam veteran who lost his home, who couldn’t seem to understand why. He was a hoarder as well, and it seemed like he needed mental care that he wasn’t getting. I don’t think living in the house was all that healthy for him, either.

I do recommend people read this, as it makes the point that the problems we see are complicated and don’t have easy answers. Detroit is a microcosm of the housing problems prevalent in many cities across the country, and I wish she’d done a better job showing that. Atuahene promises a second book in the series. I don’t know if I will pick that one up.