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Behind the Housing CrisisKai Wright and Nomi PrinsThe Subprime Swindle
By Kai Wright
George Mitchell's wife, Lillian, took her last breath in the house she loved, on New Year's Day 2006. "Right there in that spot," says George, 77, nodding to the far end of his worn, floral-print couch. "I think the last words she spoke was my name." "Yup," confirms his youngest daughter, Chandra Chavis. "I was trying to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation at the time." She points out the living room window to the small, sloping front yard and drive. "There was no address on the house, so I had to stop doing that to get the ambulance to come in." But Lillian's heart had seized, and Chandra knows there's not much she could have done anyway. She figures if even the trauma team at Atlanta's century-old public hospital couldn't revive her mom, she must have been long gone. "Nobody can bring you back if the Lord calls you," concludes an older daughter, Gwen Russell. It was Lillian's tenacity that led the Mitchell family to Atlanta's Westwood neighborhood, in 1968. "She was determined," Chandra explains, "not to have her children in an apartment—I know the story; I've heard it a million times—so she found somebody, a real estate agent, and they came out and they looked in this neighborhood. I don't know what brought them to this part of town, 'cause at the time they were living in Dixon Hills"—then an up-and-coming black neighborhood—"but she decided she wanted a house, and this is where she found it." Read the rest of the article here.
Why the Economy Went South
By Nomi Prins
After months of housing-market debris, Congress is still grappling with temporary solutions. One question they should be asking this week: How could these problems have been avoided? Below, five ways Wall Street and Washington set us up for the crash. Newt Gingrich and Home Ownership There were myriad calls in the early '90s to usher in banking controls on the precipice of the GOP "contract with America" revolution. In response, the House battled for the Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act of 1994 to cap the most outrageous predatory loans. Read the rest of the article here. |
The Nation Institute's Investigative Fund provides support for the research costs associated with investigative journalism. The Fund emphasizes reporting on subjects often ignored by the mainstream media, and seeks to improve the scope and overall quality of investigative reporting in the independent press. Above all, we want to support reporting with the potential to have a social impact. The Fund encourages its grant recipients to publish their findings in a variety of print, broadcast and electronic outlets. Director Joe Conason and investigative editor Esther Kaplan initiate and oversee Investigative Fund projects. Joe is an award-winning investigative reporter and a national correspondent for The New York Observer and a columnist for Salon.com. Esther is a longtime reporter and editor and author of the investigative book With God on Their Side: George W. Bush and the Christian Right. The first step in applying is to email us a story query and a budget request. It's useful to include information about what's new and enterprising about the research, your reporting approach, the story's potential impact, and what publication or broadcast outlet is interested in the piece. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis. |