Abstract
This paper examines the social, economic, demographic and locational characteristics of the clients of the Federal Housing Administration's mortgage insurance program. The program has been accused of fostering the development of white middle class suburbs and nonwhite central cities. The data used in this analysis are from 1976 and 1977, and indicate that the mortgage insurance program is less suburb oriented than private financing of houses in the same price range. White homebuyers under the program are more likely to purchase suburban homes than nonwhite, however. This is a result of a variety of actors in the housing market of which the Federal Housing Administration is one. The paper concludes with comments on what kinds of people use the program and ways to ensure that the users benefit from the insurance.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aaron, H. (1972). Shelter and Subsidies; Who Benefits from Federal Housing Policies? Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution.
Adams, C.T. (1978). “Federal Housing Policy and Neighborhood Change”, paper presented at the Association of American Geographers' Annual Meetings, New Orleans.
Berkman, N.G. (1979). “Mortgage finance and the housing cycle”, New England Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank, Boston Sept./Oct.: 54–76.
Boddy, M. and F. Gray. (1979). “Filtering theory, housing policy and the legitimation of inequality”, Policy and Politics 7: 39–54.
Bradford, C. (1979). “Financing home ownership: the federal role in neighborhood decline”, Urban Affairs Quarterly March: 313–337.
Brown, W.H. (1972). “Access to housing: the role of the real estate industry”, Economic Geography 48: 66–78.
Carlin, B.L. (1976). “1974 HUD-FHA Master Statistical File Data Documentation”, Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute Working Paper 236–3, Nov.
Checkoway, B. (1980). “Large builders, federal housing programs and postwar suburbanization”, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 4: 21–45.
Clay, P.L. (1979). “The process of black suburbanization”, Urban Affirs Quarterly 14: 405–424.
Downs, A. (1977). “The impact of housing policies on family-life in the United States since World War II”, Daedalus 106: 163–180.
Farley, R., S. Bianchi and D. Colasanto (1979). Barriers to the racial integration of neighborhoods: the Detroit case”, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 441: 97–113.
Fullerton, D.J. and C.D. MacRae (1978). “FHA, racial discrimination and urban mortgages”, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association Journal 6: 451–470.
Gale, S. (1977). “Ideological man in a nonideological society”, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 67: 267–272.
Haar, C.M. (1960). Federal Credit and Private Housing: The Mass Financing Dilemna. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Harvey, D. and L. Chatterjee (1974). “Absolute rent and the structuring of space by governmental and financial institutions”, Antipode 6: 22–36.
Harvey, D., L. Chatterjee, M.G. Wolman, L. Klugman, and J.S. Newman (1972). The Housing market and Code Enforcement in Baltimore. Baltimore: Baltimore Urban Observatory.
Kaserman, D.L. (1978). “Evidence on the decline of FHA”, Journal of Money, Credit and Banking 10: 194–205.
Lehmann, D.R. (1979). Market Research Analysis. Homewood Ill: Richard D. Irwin, Inc.
Leven, C., J.T. Little, H.O. Nourse and R.B. Read (1976). Neighborhood Change: Lessons in the Dynamics of Urban Decay. New York: Praeger.
Lowry, I.S. (1960). “Filtering and housing subsidies: A conceptual analysis”, Land Economics 36: 362–370.
MacRae, C.D. and A.B. Schnare (1975). “FHA Activity in Older Urban Declining Areas: Options for Evaluation Research”, Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute, contract report No. 225–5, HUD Contract #H-2162-R.
MacRae, C.D. and R.J. Struyk (1977). “Federal housing administration (FHA), tenure choice, and residential land-use”, Journal of Urban Economics 4: 360–378.
McFarland, M.C. (1966). “Major developments in the financing of residential construction since World War II”, Journal of Finance 21: 382–394.
Morrow-Jones, H.A. (1980). “The Impact of Federal Housing Policy on Population Distribution in the United States”, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Columbus, Ohio: Department of Geography, The Ohio State University.
Mulkeen, J.P. (1976). “Legal Aspects of Racial Redlining”, paper presented at the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association conference, Atlanta.
Muth, R.F. (1969). Cities and Housing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Patterson, J.G. (1977). “Racial-Locational Inequity in the Operation of Federally Subsidized Housing Programs”, paper presented at the annual meetings of the Association of American Geographers, Salt Lake City.
Phillips, K.F. and M.B. Teitz (1976). “Central city housing conservation—mortgage insurance approach”, California Management Review 18: 86–95.
Schafer, R. (1977). “New Directions for Federal Housing Policy”, Cambridge, Mass: Policy Note P77–5, Department of City and Regional Planning, Harvard University.
Taylor, D.G. (1979). “Housing neighborhoods and race relations: recent survey evidence”, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 441: 26–40.
U.S. Congress, Congressional Budget Office (1978). Federal Housing Policy: Current Programs and Recurring Issues. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.
United States Congress, House, Committee on Banking, Currency and Housing (1975). Evolution of the Role of the Federal Government in Housing and Community Development: A Chronology of Legislative and Selected Executive Actions, 1892–1974. Committee print, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.
United States Congress, Senate, Committee on Banking and Currency (1975). Hearings on the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act of 1975. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.
U.S. President's Committee on Urban Housing (1968). A Decent Home, Report of the Committee to the President. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Van de Geer, J.P. (1971). Introduction to Multivariate Analysis for the Social Sciences. San Francisco: Freeman.
Vrooman, J. and S. Greenfield (1980). “Are blacks making it in the suburbs?” Journal of Urban Economics 7: 155–167.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Morrow-Jones, H.A. Federal mortgage insurance and the characteristics of intraurban movers in the United States. Popul Res Policy Rev 2, 85–102 (1983). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00123251
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00123251