A Dream of Homeownership, Undermined
“In 1971, Annie Jeminson had good reason to believe that the house she was buying in Detroit was nicer than her small, moldy apartment in public housing. It had been approved for mortgage insurance by the Federal Housing Authority, and her real estate broker had signed a list of its broken things, promising to fix them before she and her three kids moved in. But on moving day, her new home was uninhabitable. None of the promised repairs had been made, water was running down walls, rats lived in the basement, and there was no furnace”