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Title details for The Killing Fields of East New York by Stacy Horn - Available

The Killing Fields of East New York

The First Subprime Mortgage Scandal, a White-Collar Crime Spree, and the Collapse of an American Neighborhood

by Stacy Horn
ebook
2 of 6 copies available
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2 of 6 copies available

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.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    January 28, 2025

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781638931232

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781638931232
      • File size: 3841 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Booklist

      November 1, 2024
      East New York was once a thriving community made up of immigrants and middle-income families. In the 1960s, the dynamics changed, and by the 1970s, residents reported that "you couldn't walk down the street." By the 1990s, hundreds in that area were murdered annually, and it was dubbed "the killing fields of New York." This book details just how East New York became that way, and it's not what you would expect. Horn (Damnation Island, 2018) presents a thoroughly researched narrative that begins in 1968 with the passing of the Housing and Urban Development Act, which was used to help families of low socioeconomic status to own homes. The Federal Housing Authority bureaucrats and lenders abused the system and exploited people, leaving this neighborhood in ruins. Horn provides a chronological history of the scandal, including the names of those involved. 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.

      COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Kirkus

      Starred review from January 1, 2025
      The hidden story behind one of the toughest neighborhoods in Brooklyn. The "Killing Fields'' of the title may sound melodramatic, but it was the longtime nickname of East New York, where redlining and blockbusting fostered white flight and subprime subterfuges cheated residents out of their homes and safety. It's a badly needed look at a societal problem that goes largely unaddressed while politicians outdo each other with tough-on-crime rhetoric. Author and journalist Horn sets the stage with the violent death in 1991 of Julia Parker, a 17-year-old girl suspected of talking to the police about the death of a friend. The author jumps back to 1966 to describe the simmering racial tensions fueled by a group called SPONGE (Society for the Prevention of Negroes Getting Everything), described as "the Proud Boys of their day." Ultimately, Mayor John Lindsay's office had to reach out to Brooklyn mobsters associated with the Genovese problem to negotiate a temporary truce. Horn guides readers through a subprime Ponzi scheme scandal that predated the Bush-era crisis. Landlords and mortgage banks swindled the community, offering loans for substandard housing with minimal background checks. "If the homeowners defaulted, the FHA [Federal Housing Authority] would repay the loan, '' she writes. Many FHA officials were themselves corrupt, taking payoffs, ultimately resulting in indictments--and convictions--when investigators in the U.S. Attorney's office caught on to the scam. But Julia Parker, like countless others, was caught in the crossfire. More recently, life in East New York is improving, with fewer food "ghettos" and more community gardens than anywhere else in the city. But Horn provides an invaluable roadmap to how, and why, urban "renewal'' can go tragically wrong. Solid in-depth reporting with a polemical kick.

      COPYRIGHT(2025) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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