'Homewreckers' Book Probes How The 2008 Housing Crisis Killed The White Picket Fence American Dream
Host Tonya Mosley speaks with author Aaron Glantz about his new book, “Homewreckers: How a Gang of Wall Street Kingpins, Hedge Fund Magnates, Crooked Banks, and Vulture Capitalists Suckered Millions Out of Their Homes and Demolished the American Dream,” which explains how some well-placed financiers took advantage of the 2008 housing crisis to buy thousands of family homes.
Book Excerpt: “Homewreckers”
By Aaron Glantz
Most of the beneficiaries of the foreclosure crisis were not first-time home buyers who secured a thirty-year fixed mortgage with family support. Instead, they were a new breed of corporate landlord that bought up entire neighborhoods and held the homes in shell companies, with the true identities of their owner unknown to most of the new tenants. In Oakland, for example, a nonprofit organization called the Urban Strategies Council found that between January 2007 and October 2011, more than 40 percent of the
