people. i did some occasional business reporting. i was with them for 15 years and was sort of like a utility player. i wish i could say that i was the star first baseman, but i was not. when they needed somebody to cover something if i was available, off he goes. ..

>> as a senior reporter for investigative reporting reveals program. he has written three previous books before homewrecker's and the thing is that what he has done again has initially looking at veterans of the war because of his reporting half a million ella terry veterans face long lines waiting for disability compensation. his journalism has sparked federal legislation and congressional hearings what he

does leads our response by a government and maybe we will see the same thing when it comes to homewrecker's. a dupont columbia journalism award winner. twice nominated for a national emmy for pbs news hour. he is really good at what he does. we are fortunate tonight to interview him dorothy brown professor vaught emory university nationally recognized scholar of tax policy and extensively on the race implications. when i called her and talk to her about coming in participating she was excited because she was eager to read his book i said i have one better. you can actually talk to him. so we are excited they are both here tonight please join me to welcome aaron glass and

professor dorothy brown. [applause] >> the title of the book is homewrecker's. >> i wanted to know 8 million american homes were closed up during the great recession. but they didn't all disappear. the wealth gap in america today is bigger than it has been in 100 years of the top one tenth of 1 percent and the other 90 percent. the homeownership rate is at its lowest level in 50 years. is important people understand it didn't just go down in 2008 and 2009 it continued 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 and bottom

out 2016. a book takes a few years to put together and i was sitting there in 2016 watching donald trump with his populist insurgent campaign for president at a time the economy was supposedly doing well with low unemployment many executive quarters of growth but america is angry. and bernie sanders is doing incredibly well the same populist message. so it seemed that housing would be a fruitful way to focus. so i basically started with a question 8 million americans lost their homes we lost our wealth where did it go? who took it. the homewrecker's. >> one of the things i think about is homeownership is the

typical american family has a lot of equity in their home. so when you lose a home that you cannot leave to your child or grandchild is a significant event so not only 8 million homes that has that intergenerational impact. >> homeownership is the only way that most americans can save. the average american has $4000 in the bank we are paycheck to paycheck society where most of the money goes to things transportation health insurance premiums clothing and food and all of that disappears the moment we spend it. housing is the biggest expense that either goes back into our

home in the form of equity to pass on to our children enjoy a healthy retirement or a landlord and they enjoy all of that. so when you say homeownership is at the lowest rate in 30 years you talk about the dispossession of people's ability to live the american dream. according to the senses the average homeowner in this country is worth 100 times more than the average rent or me at 200,000 versus 2000 this is because homeowners make 100 times as much money. i make the same amount as my colleagues who went but i am worth more because i own my house. not only that but in the city of san francisco which is rapidly gentrified. people are affected - - evicted and displaced and rents go up now i have 30 rate

- - 30 year fixed-rate mortgage paying less than my friends that are renting and i have savings and now if i have a medical event or can't afford to send my daughter to college or i want to retire i could have that ability through the equity. and my colleagues don't if they don't own their home. >> part of the story of homewrecker's deals with those mortgages. how did you get into researching about those quick. >> i was mostly interested in the bank called indy mac. is the first big bank to fail in the housing bust in fact it was the biggest since the great depression the government ended up holding this disaster of a bank.

this man is famous not only for reverse mortgages but also ninja loans that were popular that meant no income no job no assets no problem. disneyland loans who claim to make $90000 they just approved it with no paperwork. that was indy mac when the housing market softened they went bankrupt and then there was a dramatic run on the bank that was out of the depression people were pushing and shoving on the streets of pasadena but now the pictures were in color. now stephen nguyen who is now a treasury secretary stepped into brought on - - by the bank for nothing and then the government made a deal with

him we would subsidize his foreclosures that he could not take a loss. initiative foreclose with the bank because you lose money. we agreed to pick up 90 percent of the tab and i got records we paid his group more than a billion dollars to foreclose and he foreclose on more than 100,000 people in 23000 seniors. that closed on over 100,000 people at the homeownership rate at a record low run by the treasury secretary like sheets of bills lives in the world's richest apartment building on park avenue.

you mention the reverse mortgages. so i was pulling the string as a journalist and then i became interested in the private equity firms that actually bought these houses after foreclosure. and a fan - - found a house in los angeles he was renting from a private equity firm that was owned by the best friend donald trump who had bought 30000 homes after the best so i knocked on the door and the guy who came he was sick with aids and dying of cancer facing a rent increase. so like a good reporter i looked at the property record what happened before they bought the house at $180,000?

that's when i found that this house was owned by the same african-american family moved west from the mississippi during the great migration finally able to buy this house in 1963 the very year california banned discrimination in housing. that is the year they were finally able to become homeowners forgot they were foreclosed on because of one of these reverse mortgages. so now i have this house that wasn't just one member of donald trump's inner circle this is one --dash displacing a family that two of them. as i continued i found this house was bundled into a mortgage-backed security by j.p. morgan chase now there was a 514 million-dollar lean on this home and then subsequent publishing that

story in 2017 tom barrett decided to flip out and sold his interest in now was acquired by another one of donald trump's friends who is the chairman of blackstone and in vacation homes that owns 80000 and with the same house with her african-american family and to be foreclosed on the stephen nguyen bank. and then to be bundled into a mortgage-backed security and then it fell to another one of trump's best friends and others a billion-dollar lien on the house so that's not an article just really

complicated. you mention the african-american family. what did you see. >> that is our reality with this country the back of the thirties when president moto one --dash before but president in the new deal we didn't have mortgages like that one - - the new deal. >> or people paid cash which is why homeownership rate was very low. before that the homeownership rate in omaha was 20 percent but there were people who worked for the government and then they said people of color

were red don't make loans here. and that persisted through the 19 sixties so the home owner loan corporation to refinance one out of every five men to buy homes after world war ii. so for the family that i wrote about who bought this home in south l.a. for them to overcome all of that plus a structural discrimination to move across the country to l.a. and finally by this house in 1863 that is an incredible accomplishment but then this is a story that we have this predatory lending that was endemic so these reverse mortgages offered by companies like indy mac would give a

relatively small amount of money then compound interest and fees so the butler family lost their house. the sun of the parents he paid a lot of money to rent an apartment. his daughter she rents. everybody rents. because it can be so hard to get back once you lose that. because these were so emblematic of what happened especially since the bank in california was nearly 70 percent of foreclosures but the problem with this family is at they gave up that you

need action and sometime after that anyway i wrote a book proposal anyway. so i knew in the back of my mind i did not have enough so sandy was white lived in a more affluent part of los angeles. solid middle class her father worked for the water department her mother worked for a company that made payroll checks they were white they buy the house with another v.a. loan 1500 square foot home three bedrooms. and they also were sold a reverse mortgage but unlike the butler's sandy fought and

she fought them for ten years and she saved everything. journalist like people that save everything. [laughter] and she was nice enough to allow me to enter her life to tell her the whole story from the moment her parents were sitting at home watching james gardner sell the a reverse mortgage they call the number and a man came to their door with a powerpoint presentation the last slide i am not kidding said what's the catch? nine. there is no catch. from that moment in 2512 years later she won an 89 million-dollar whistleblower settlement for taxpayers against the bank and

she let me into that world and she talks about all these trump associated homewrecker's. even though we talk about how america in general but. >> then they bring that back with the exorbitant amount that if you want to go month-to-month you have to pay extra. and then she has to write the check. was a company that did not make sense. >> the amazing thing about the story which is one reason wanted to write the book.

and what was familiar to people but was not familiar is what happened after that? that is where the story ends. so sandy goes to the auction with able sell her how she drives up to ventura and shows up at the warehouse and confronts all the people there and printed out information why they should not bid on her house. she hands them a flyer. don't do it. and tell at the last minute there is a woman who comes she sets up a table and plugs in the bluetooth. they try to give her the flyer. she buys the house $330,000.

so she walks back to her car and she just sits there and says where am i going to go? she does the only thing she can do is drive back to her house which is no longer her house and then to say we lost our family home and then hears the sound she saves everything in there is a noise with blue masking tape and it is an eviction notice. she comes to the door and confronts the man and simultaneously gives her the eviction notice which is signed by a company called holding california 511 c and a letter that says should anyone tell you you are being evicted

this is not the case. we would love you to stay as our tenant. she goes onto the internet and who the hell are they crack she figures out it is part of a big company but i explained to her is run by tom barrett who is donald trump's best friend so anyway 18 months she lives as a tenant she pays $42000 in rent over 18 months for a house her parents had bought for less than $90000 in the eighties and it was bought and paid for with a reverse mortgage. >> almost. their mortgage payment at the time was $600 a month and it

would have been paid off very soon. she fought the reverse mortgage company that her parents her mother did not know what day of the week it was. and the banks medical experts said she was completely fine to sign this. they painted sandy as a villain because she is just her moneygrubbing daughter she doesn't care about her parents who decided they needed this product she is interfering with their will. so she pays $40000 and another

important thing about this company is she loses the lawsuit she appeals again and again and again that's why it drags on for so long finally she goes to the courthouse and then chartered by tom barrett. so now she has a least not only did they raise her rent three times and 18 months, it is a feature to push all maintenance on to the tenant. so they say the window cracks are up to you so not only are you paying more and more in rent but you have to fix things when they break.

>> so how would you ever have enough money as a tenant to get back into home ownership? so is not just that they foreclose but keep you out and lock you out. >> is there anything that surprised you when you were writing? you were doing all this reporting but was there anything when you thought about it or discovered it said oh my gosh that i never knew that? >> what surprised me the most was how many people saw this and warned about it and were not listen to. to learning the extent of which all of this was predicted by some very smart people in 2008 and they went to not only the current president george w. bush but

also nancy pelosi and chuck schumer now the democratic leaders and they were in charge of the whole congress then and they said you could bail out the wall street guys you could do what president roosevelt did during the great depression and i already mentioned helping 1 million people stay in their homes refinancing one out of every five loads in urban america. >> and make this available to all people and they pointed out something i did not know about which is a program that they made money from the taxpayers because american people given a non- predatory mortgage usually pay it back with interest. so the homeowner corporation made money the g.i. bill broke

even. so these people federal members of the federal reserve board members of aei. and to say it is fiscally responsible. and in front of these democratic leaders and with that battle that ensued no no no they just laughed us out of their office. so in a way that was very dispiriting but in another way it's encouraging to know that these ideas that are here with us. so it's very inspiring actually so the most surprising but also the most inspiring. >> there is a moment in

history or a moment in time with the right idea and we could change? >> i think people are hopeless that they look at the homewrecker's and wonder what can we do in this new deal program we are constantly told we cannot afford equity. but i told you we paid more than a billion dollars for steve nguyen to foreclose on people be made the same deal with wilbur ross. we subsidize tom barrett's purchases on these homes in the fannie mae freddie mac the

government owned over 200,000 homes we could have sold them off individually to families like roosevelt instead we sold them to private equity firms horse pennies on the dollar we subsidize them so much. so knowing that if we don't subsidize in our own people we will make money for our government that is an incredibly empowering thing to realize in the course of writing a book over bad things that have happened. >> to see republicans and democrats it wasn't just republicans that didn't think helping homeowners was a good idea but also democrats. >> i lived through all of this so i know that the president obama was the president the whole time with obama elected

yes we can 2008. >> know we didn't. [laughter] i know homeownership declined every single year of the obama presidency. that is the fact. i know that happened. it wasn't really a surprise but i didn't know why. so that is where the investigation came in. >> i remember at the time there was talk of homeowners do we bail out the banks. i remember hearing talk that homeowners will just encourage bad this decision-making i don't need a bailout or a

mortgage and i remember hearing some of those arguments as to why they don't want to bail out homeowners do we see a similar argument? like let's make college debt free. did that play a role at all how elected officials paid attention to the issue. >> we have so many opportunities. those decisions that were made and what i am noting is that things continue to move into one direction through 2016. there were many different moments that it was made to shovel more money to the american people so for example in 2011 the government was awash 200,000 properties.

and then it made its first deal with tom barrett's company to sell him 1000 homes across l.a. and phoenix and loss vegas instead of to those families that could be summarily able to benefit from that discount. they would take a huge haircut why not pass that on to families why give that benefit to private equity firms? that was 2011 and 2012. and then we get into leveraging. in 2014 that is when you start to see these liens recorded on these properties of $500 million now looking at the property records of this bungalow now seeing a

500 million-dollar lean and saying how can this be in the property law professor says yes. what they have done is bundled thousands of homes together and pull out all the equity so isn't this what we were all accused of doing during the bubble? and the answer is yes that is why i named j.p. morgan chase and jamie dimon is one of my homewrecker's because they also operate with a debt. they are not spending their own money. no. they are getting it somewhere so the biggest lender for these mortgage-backed securities including on the homes in my book was chase. chase is important because it's the biggest bank in

america financing the mortgage-backed securities also pulling out of the fha program that makes loans to working-class families. so it made way more loans to tom barrett's company, one company than it did to every working-class family in america through the fha program. but they said we are making loans to other banks the government is too big of a hassle so we looked at the lending and we found that lending was not only down from the peak of the bubble that even from the best one - - the busted had gone down dramatically now they are investing in wealth management and boutique products and then in dc they play a game where they claim to not have a branch because of a have a branch than they have to follow the community reinvestment act to require them to lend in the

working-class neighborhoods they have an office but not a branch across the street from the white house making loans to rich people so they made more than 1000 loans in dc over a two-year period only 23 were two african-americans. jamie dimon got really mad when i mentioned that he announced he was opening 400 branches across the country so that was very exciting. these people don't like to be called out to. i heard from different centers that chafes lobbyist was in their office screaming at them you may 23 loans in dc. that's not my fault. you know the racial demographics of dc. >> they do the same thing in boston and philly.

so that is really important because everyone not just us like regular people who have to borrow money for our homes these people are also borrowing many they are also getting financed everyone is getting financed. who is doing the financing and who benefits is the question if we debate an issue like justification and displacement we should be including this part of who does the financing and who was left out. >> what do you hope homewrecker's accomplishes? >> i want to reframe the debate. i want to advance us forward that we have been stuck.

's 2,192,009. mrs. 13 years ago. i don't even want to debate that with you. that is the world you're living in now and i want us use start talking about these homewrecker's the way this a gang of wall street kingpins and cricket bankers all friends of the president how they operated to make gains under obama but then to profit with the president now wilbur

ross is still working secretary mnuchin is still working in the homes are still being rented out and the other thing i would say to catch us up to 2019 they are already thinking about 2020 and the next play. they are already ahead of me. >> and with that housing policy that you found interesting quick. >> i think it's very impressive how many democrats have these plans elizabeth ward was first after we did our redline coverage talking about on the senate floor she got a standing ovation and

after that the other candidates got the idea they should come with something so mayor pete has something that's real kamala harris and castro has something they all have something bernie has something joe biden i don't know. but he may be the outlier. but the impact with the book i want to push this in front of them. they had these plans because the people want to hear what they have to say. but now we need the extra step and the media to engage them when they have their next debate whoever leads that we need them to engage them to talk about the 100 million-dollar plan and then to come up with even

better solutions that so we see with the health care debate and with that same focus and the more they had this if they should be elected i would like to see the media do its job not so much scrutinize the vet engaging so that the voters could assess that. >> so we start off 80 percent of most american budgets go to five essentials the only one that increases in value with homeownership the average homeowner's worth 100 times more than the rent or get the candidates talking about two

talk about this and we can evaluate them. we know that donald trump stands with the homewrecker's and we haven't even talked yet about the way they rigged the tax code for the llc shell companies that own property simultaneously limiting the deduction that makes it more affordable and then to have all these other choices but all these other candidates. from what we have to choose from. [applause]

>> i want to have your chance to ask him questions. please wait for the microphone media reports show 10000 working-class people living in their cars or rvs in los angeles in order to work in the city. so in the programs that you have looked at to reconcile with working-class people cannot live anywhere near where the jobs are quick. >> we have a huge affordability crisis that is true there is a big debate on these issues like where i admit housing is incredibly expensive but the one thing i

try to inject is who buy everything because that is an important part of the debate we neglect. so i think we need to take a hard look at the 3 million american homes that were bought by llc and other shell companies and those that are also owned by shell companies to get out of this debate that i see starting that is all about scarcity because i questioned how big the scarcity is it wasn't that long ago we had way too much housing in the country the country was awash in foreclosures now we are told there is not enough housing we have to build condos everywhere. i'm not against that necessarily but i just don't know that all by itself is the

solution we are already seeing examples like in san francisco there are all kinds of crazy condo developments going up in a population is going down because families are being displaced and speculators by them as second homes. so we need to look at ownership if you own the property you cannot get pushed out so we really need to focus on that not only for middle-class folks but all income brackets we all need a path to homeownership. >> and with those condos at our monthly management fees and things like that in addition to the rent. >>'s secretary mnuchin

apartment has $18000 per month maintenance fee. >> good evening. i came in 1969 to georgia tech graduated in 1871 and i was awarded my degree. >> please keep it to a question. >> i would be glad to. cardio tell the american people why we lost in iraq? but that's a whole separate question but people don't like to be occupied. >> the bullets went from atlanta to baghdad.

>> yes. >> and they was to the soldiers in iraq which contributed to the recession. >> we will be talking about the homewrecker's. >> let's go back here in front. >> can you explain about the program to refi now wants housing in bank of america especially bc all these applications repeatedly people send them like they had no such computers and then on top of that and with that signature issue to be foreclosed on those houses so

why bank of america is guilty quick. >> i don't know if bank of america was guilty only just as all the other banks were doing the same thing at that time and they all got the same bailout and use the same program but then to say would you please? the programs are voluntary. so people found themselves dealing with the giant bureaucracy so it was a little different with secretary mnuchin because they were bought by the government and absorbed that then he agreed as a condition of the sale to offer these programs so he

even made a bigger commitment than bank of america but yet he still did the same thing called robo signing. i always thought that was actual robots but it was people signing so fast but it was almost like robots. and this one woman that was deposed that was one of the robo signers for secretary mnuchin said she read review every log file for 30 seconds and that is one reason why people were foreclosed on by the secretary mnuchin bank by owning as little as 27 cents and they received more than $1 billion of government support for the foreclosures. so bank of america was like the rest of them. so why would they never held to account? we can look to the obama

administration also the state's attorney general's and kamala harris her own staff in the attorney general's office wrote a 25 page document of all the alleges the document of wrongdoing document - - recommending to prosecute them and bury them report so there was cowardice all around at that time and now because of that i don't know if kamala harris would have prosecuted secretary mnuchin with the outcome would have been but i imagine if she had taken him to court in 2013 like her staff recommended he might have had other things to be doing in 2016 besides manning the finances for donald trump's campaign for president. so these people were escaping across the board.

>> do you foresee the private equity firm liquidating to sell to the renters quick. >> no. i don't anticipate them selling their homes because of these new financial products they have devised. i talk about how both the house in south l.a. in the suburbs both were leveraged twice so this is why it is a generational transfer of wealth to have small time flippers they made by low and then sell high at his real estate. that what they are doing is

way more complicated they buy a whole bunch that bundled together then pulling money out of the houses putting into their pocket taking the company public and walking away. so they have sold out exactly the way you are describing. but they have done so without the property ever going back to homeownership. so it is kind of complicated. so if you look at my house there is a mortgage on my house maybe if i decide to take out a 20000-dollar line of credit to remind all on - - remodel my kitchen you'll see a second mortgage you will not see the 960 million-dollar lean.

but the lien signifies the private equity owners have taken all the equity out and put in their pocket. now who will pay this back? the tenant and that is why the rent keeps going up so the question to ask ourselves is not when will they sell? many of them already have the question is what happens if we have a recession people can no longer oh one - - 43100 a month i'll be back to too big to fail situation all over again next. >> you described interesting parallels between the policies

created the 20th century and the policies that predatory lenders had taken advantage of particularly with black and latino communities. so we know the fha manual actually says the reason we're doing this is to maintain homogenate eddie with racially homogenous neighborhoods. so what is the motivation for private equity is that greed or something more sinister quick. >> two things. first we did a national investigation last year and found there were people of color were more likely to be denied a mortgage even if they made the same amount of money buying the same home with the same amount of debt.

clearly the fair housing act notwithstanding racism is alive and well. we went from a period of a boom where there were predatory products and the best when nobody could get credit white or black and now it's a return that looks more like the eighties and 2000 where credit is only available if you have white color skin in this is the case even though it is completely illegal. there is a lot of things like this which found the evictions the greatest prediction was a black neighborhood so is there a memo? no. we have not found a. but during the bubblelike

wells fargo they were making ghetto loans. we have not found anything like that with these guys. >> and the differences of private equity it is not a big. so i mean we haven't found the memo so to me it is a different private equity. >> although i have to say i

was shocked how little enter their mind except for many. but there may be a memo you just haven't seen it. >> so if we find the memo or not. [laughter] what can we do to stop these held workers? a lot are run by technology of the government doesn't care there's nothing you can do about it the courts are probably rigged by the government with technology so what can we do to stop this monster monolith quick. >> i'm glad you allowed me to talk about ben carson that for

50 years we have had this standard of antidiscrimination law if you can prove a pattern you don't need to have the memo if you can prove a pattern if all the right white people get loans all the black people that is discrimination you don't need to have the that the new regulations proposed by ben carson the comet.

just closed say the disparate impact that is the legal terminology is not the way to prove discrimination any longer. this is despite a recent supreme court decision is a disparate impact is perfectly fine with the fair housing act. so in addition to that this rule that they propose it actually says specifically if the discrimination is caused by the algorithm then you cannot blame a human what the algorithm did unless race is a factor in the algorithm of the program was not designed by a human. >> orbit to be reverse engineered and they left and protected someplace else. >> that is the battle right now exactly as you describe. >> where is that place? they have technologies that are protecting the and those

that they created are destroying us. >> i think that is what the trump administration proposed the comment. just closed there is likely to be litigation and people will sue over this i think we had this idea the trumpet ministration announcer putting civil rights in the toilet. no. there will be a process with a variety of points to intervene. so calling your attention that you spotlight one of these areas right now. >> the short term housing market and the affordable housing program, can they be linked to the home records or are they ancillary issues? >> to the extent that people

are pushing for exorbitant amounts of money is lack of affordable housing. who was to pay $3100 we have to fix the window and the plumbing? it's only if you have nowhere else to go. >> we will wrap up that aaron will be around for a little bit signing books. the book is called homewrecker's. if you happen to read the book that came out a while back even acted on - - evicted it is looking at homeownership and what battles against homeownership it is a wonderful book to read. aaron will be signing them in the lobby please join me to thank aaron and dorothy for a wonderful conversation.

[applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] teeseven i am happy to be here to discuss newt gingrich new book job versus china. how are you doing quick. >> i am doing well and i am very excited i have to tell