>> next on booktv, jodie adams kirshner looks at the impact detroit's bankruptcy has had on that city's poor. and then brian fitzpatrick offers his thoughts on class action lawsuit. later, civil rights lawyer discusses what he calls the injustices of the u.s. judicial system. check your program guide for more information. >> good evening everybody.

>> as a capacity building and fellowship building program that takes 25-30 individuals dedicated to racial equity and takes a year-long process of developing skills. teach lessons. beach capacity and fellowship. that's the deal. our other partner is pages bookstore and now i will introduce - - from pages bookstore. [applause] >> hello everybody and thanks for coming. i am susan murphy, i own pages bookshop on grand river in the rosedale area. we are so happy to be here tonight and have jody talk about the book. if you've not read the book, it's an easy read because it's

so engaging with the characters in the book. jody is a research professor at the new york university. previously at cambridge university, she also teaches bankruptcy law at columbia. she's an elected member of the council on foreign relations and a technical advisor to the bank for international settlements. she's received a prestigious multi-year grant to research her book. until 2014, she was a law professor at cambridge university where she served as the deputy director of the cambridge program. - - and as a fellow. she received her undergraduate from harvard university and graduate degrees in law and in journalism from columbia university. she lives in new york city

currently. she will be joined today with stephen henderson who is our local pulitzer prize winning journalist. and also the host of detroit today. we may have a couple other guests joined on the panel discussion who were profiled in the book. we will escort them in when they arrive. with that, what we will do is have jody start off. she will do a little reading. then we will open it up to questions and answers. i will give it to stephen. >> thank you so much for being here. i'm excited and have trepidation about discussing

this book. this is your city. this is where you've lived. i'm eager to hear your responses and hope we can have as much time for conversation as possible. so i am going to keep my remarks to a minimum. what i'd like to do is, this is a book that follows seven people living in detroit during and after the city's bankruptcy. it's not a book about midtown. it's about the neighborhoods where the seven people live. i'd also point out that the time. the book is income and in the fall of 2018. i'm aware there have been changes since then. what i'd like to do is introduce you to the seven people in the book. two of them have just arrived and i'm glad to see you both. and quickly read you a short two-page passage and then begin to talk about it.

charles and miles from the book are here. do you want to introduce yourselves? >> there we go. i am charles. >> i am stephen miles. >> do you want to say anymore? i don't want to talk about you in your presence. >> not yet. >> correct me. charles is a lifelong detroiter. his family moved here during the great migration. made it in the car industry. our house in morningside that was a real achievement for them. charles has watched his block changed a lot since then.

and you wondered whether you want to stay in detroit. >> i will stay in detroit. >> glad to hear it. >> and miles. i think in a way you are a metaphor for detroit. you were a contractor in the lead up to the financial crisis. you own the home that you were proud to own in a neighborhood you felt was very stable with families. play outside and sat on the porch. we've had a hard time making use of your construction skills since then. you have a house that you bought it turns out with

outstanding property taxes. you knew about the earlier year and not the later year and have struggled against fines and fees and other things to make it here. >>. [indiscernible] >> so you are both very heroic and i'm so grateful to you for spending all the time talking to me and opening your lives to me. >> we needed this story to get out as it's not just us.it's

thousands of other people went through it and they probably won't have the chance to tell their story. i was more than happy to give up my little part of it. it hit the whole city. not just one group of people. it hit everybody around here. it doesn't seem like it's over with. there's a different thing going on. >> thank you from the bottom of my heart. thank you for being here tonight. means a lot to me. >> well, i personally think about the bankruptcy that the municipality had in the city of detroit. meanwhile, they left the people bankrupt. what can make a comeback at a time when - - [indiscernible]. come in the city of detroit and buy up the homes. you make an international

statement. come in and buy the home after what the ãi would say gentrification. using the word gentrification is basically what has happened in the city of detroit. it's been a plan for the longest. for instance, i will give an example, here we've got joe lewis arena downtown. - - that we had in the city of detroit. but we're going to tear that down because we have a new plan. there aren't many joe lewis type of people that have an arena named in the city of detroit. overall, in a situation like that, next thing you know, his - - will be down. what would be next. we can't even go to - - anymore

in jefferson. who speaks for the little man? - - we've got this big development downtown. this money, is private money. not private enough for the citizens to walk to a plaza that they were allowed to walk for 30-40 years. >> i hope i have been true with what you entrusted me with. let me tell you about the other five people in the book. one is robin who has opportunities from the bankruptcy. he has been in the past a filmmaker in los angeles but has looked for opportunities in the real estate market. and began investing in detroit

right before the financial crisis hit. use the bankruptcy to spin and narrative to investors. but ultimately, he is someone was trying to do good in the city of detroit. wants to be doing meaningful projects and ultimately has a hard time bringing abandoned buildings back into productive use. he tells the story of it being harder than one might think. - - has a compelling real estate story as most of you know. many of the aspects of the economy here are not functioning as they do in other parts of the country. including the mortgage market. when he wanted to be a homeowner, he adopted children from relatives and really wants them to have a stable home to

come home to and he buys the house on a land contract. he pays the full payment, renovates the house. turns out the woman who sold it to him has not been paying the property taxes. he loses the house to a foreign investment company. and ultimately the houses burned down. also in the book is cindy who was a lifelong white detroiter. she has lived in blackmore, bussing, she sees it as a crucial moment in her life. that led people to leave the neighborhood. her family didn't have the wherewithal to leave. her mother responded by saying she should stay home from school. so she has been living in bright for for her life. she gets involved with the urban agriculture community and really achieves a lot on the

board of city organizations. ultimately, you see her in her role in that begin to break down because of divisions with things like outsiders and immigration. lola is another person in the book. she is unfortunately now working the night shift at the chrysler plant so isn't here tonight. she is a single mother in her late 20s. and she has dreams of starting a business. she has a four-year college degree but she's commuting 80 miles each way. well she was to a job at the call center. her job at the chrysler plant, at the time we were talking, she was commuting for minimum wage. struggling to stay in her

house. but she does not feel very safe. worrying about her daughter's education in the detroit school system. a system where students receive half the amount of funding as students in new york or boston. finally is joe, who is a white man from new jersey who has come to detroit with a lot of ideas and talent and education and cash. he buys commercial space and has ideas of starting a business in it. he is beset by the lack of lending and has trouble finding money to renovate the commercial space. his wife and his daughter join him. his daughter is quite successful here. working in restaurants and bars. he has a new baby and i think we see him encountering a lot of the problems that lifelong

detroiters phase. even as one who has come much more recently. worried about crime in his neighborhood. worried about where the baby will eventually go to school. where there isn't a lot of disposable cash. so those are the seven people in the book. and i want to quickly read one passage from the book. it's from early on in the book. it illustrates how cities are people. but people's progress is ultimately the city's progress. and austerity policies seem to further our national divide. so this is reggie, early on as he bought a house on a land contract. over the following months as reggie worked on the house,

courtney came in person to collect his installment payments. she indicated neither she nor surprised that the houses condition. reggie didn't know she had bought it for $2100. ever polite, he thanked her and called her ma'am. he fought to replace all the old carpet because the padding had melted into the floor. he got lucky and found a used furnace. he did without but he couldn't afford to fix the cracked foundation or replace the roof. when it rains, the basement leaked and condensation appeared on the walls in several rooms of the house. across the country, - - [indiscernible]. often in minority communities.

properties left vacant and scrapped and properties and neighborhoods with low rent or scarcely - - didn't offer long-term investments and the speculators turned to land contracts to liquidate their holdings and avoid the regulations that would have applied to a traditional sale or rental arrangement. mortgage lenders would have had to disclose the quality of the properties. landlords would have had to maintain the properties when tenants left. the speculative, targeted land contract to populations similar to those who fell victim to subprime mortgages. in the case of land contracts, homeownership meant for quality houses without additional consumer protections.

the families who bought the properties lacked access to loans to finance repairs that most of the properties needed. which made it likely for necessary expenditures to lead them to default on the contracts. caught up in making the house livable for his newly large family, reggie never confirmed courtney taylor was paying property taxes on the house. most states, including michigan, didn't require land contracts to be recorded. but few contracts seem to end and ownership. by february 2016, at least 200 properties of a primary participant, a dallas-based asset management firm had entered foreclosure in detroit for nonpayment of property taxes. a firm purchase more than 6700 mortgage foreclosed single-family properties from the government-sponsored housing lender fannie mae and then resold the properties on land contracts. by that time, reggie finished making his house comfortable. he and his family had grown to

love living in it. the living room had neatly painted walls, a brown carpet, lots of framed family photographs. leather sofas with woven pillows and humming radiators. reggie prepared giant lasagna is in the kitchen and hosted extended family on the lawn. after he paid courtney taylor in person, she suddenly directed him to send money orders to a po box. he wondered about the changes but decided not to ask questions. he didn't want to threaten the homeownership nearly within his reach. so i will pass the ball to you and begin to talk about these. [applause] >> so, i want to start with big picture. question. when you read these stories in the book and you get to some of

this, it's impossible i think as a native detroiter, not to think back to a time when things were different. in the city. when there was more opportunity. and when it seemed as though possibilities were a lot more plentiful. i'm born in the city in 1970 in a neighborhood that looks a lot like what charles and miles are describing about where they live. and was very familiar to me based on the stories you're telling in the book. i can remember that neighborhood being much more stable. then it is today. most people own their own homes. they were all african-american. they all had employment. and there was value in those homes. that should, according to the way we think of property and investment, should have

produced an incredible amount of intergenerational wealth for people like us. who are still here. i want you to talk a little about what turned and when it turned and why. to take all of that away. i can't help but think of it as a postscript of the great migration and the opportunity the auto industry gave to people who took advantage of that. what did we do wrong? where did we go wrong with the kind of investments african-americans were able to make in the 60s and 70s, that now are virtually worthless? >> do you mean primarily the housing piece? >> housing. >> in a way, this is an example of what bankruptcy can't do when you balance a budget.

you don't return property value that was lost. you don't return poverty tax revenues that those properties generated in any direct way. if we look at the more recent piece and not at the whole picture. detroit, the demographics, 80 percent african-american. that is the population that was targeted by subprime lenders. the national percentage for that year was 24 percent. so that is the difference. what that means in real terms, and personal wealth. most people, their wealth is in their homes. that's especially true in this demographic. so you see just a sucking of

wealth from detroit and cities like it in terms of tax revenues and personal wealth. we also know that in detroit, houses were secured less well than in other places. and then there's the story that reggie begins to tell that all of this ends up with this large swaths of the city somewhat in limbo. to perhaps find profits in rental housing in other parts of the country. that there wasn't enough in the rental demand. that it wasn't going to be profitable to own those properties. and began to offload them

through instruments like land contracts which carried great risks. echoing redlines from decades ago. >> and so, when you think about the last decade. putting in the larger context. there are distinctions between what we see here and other cities. i've always believed. [indiscernible]. and those cities have been better able to recover from the effects of what you're talking about. obviously cities have tremendous problems of their own. the demographic dynamic to all of that. the fact that african-americans suffer more is also true. but those cities have opportunities that we don't

hear. what's your sense of why that is true? >> let me tell you some of what miles had told me and i don't want to speak for you so please jump in as you want to. but miles had bought a house when he was very young. >>. [indiscernible]

>> the whole thing seems like it was set up from the beginning. they start off with something simple. a regular refinance. keep your property together. next thing you know is that that adjustable rate, your payment goes up. but then it goes further and further out the reach of your income. you miss a day of work or weak, next thing you know, to payments. i had this house 16-17 years. - - then you find out things like a class action suit they had that they were posting people's payments 30 days late and they weren't even late yet.

they were five days late, seven days. then we found out it supposed to be 30 days. then they changed all of that. next thing you know, they came up with something else. you're losing your house, the neighbor is losing his house. next thing you know, the whole block. >> before that happened, your plan was to be a landlord. and had bought another property. >> - - that's when the problem started with the work and keeping up my income. i guess my credit wasn't good enough to keep the house. so and ended up letting it go because i couldn't afford it anymore.

>> and you were arranging for the landlord situation. ended up getting set on fire and burned down. you found a house being sold at a price you could afford. that had been won in a taxable occlusion auction by an llc that bought 100 houses in the auction that year. sold it to you for about five times what they paid in the auction. >>. [indiscernible] they would sell it to you six months before foreclosure. when they want those houses, they had stipulations on those houses that they were to keep the taxes up and pay those taxes. but they didn't pay the taxes. they'd sell you the house and tell you the taxes weren't paid in the county only goes back so

far. then you find out there was another year worth of taxes that they didn't say anything about it now you're in foreclosure. you lose your investment and everything you put up. or you swallow that debt. >> this is incredible. miles was sold a house that was effectively already in tax foreclosure. having gone down town to check the records. that is a story you seem to hear of life in the city, tax bills that have no relation to the value of the house. going to vacant lots and that sort of thing. >> a lot of what you're pointing to and talking about

here is how broken the mortgage market is in the city and it looks different than it does in other places. i wonder what you make of the possibility for solution there. - - some neighborhoods are very reluctant to make conventional - - to extend conventional mortgages to middle and lower income people in detroit on houses that are in middle class neighborhoods. this is hard to get that done. what's the solution to that? how you fix the mortgage market when it's as broken as miles is pointing out. and reggie for instance. is a great example in the book.

>> this is slow, hard work. since the financial crisis, the change in regulation around mortgage lenders has for better or worse made it more expensive to write mortgages. so banks have been reluctant to write mortgages on properties valued at less than $50,000. you also see the story of banks being unwilling to send - - also not having enough home sales that have taken place. the city has various programs that are trying to see that the mortgage market - - all of the properties that are in ownership, public ownership, have flowed since the bankruptcy. it owns about a third of the properties. and has the variety of

programs, that's too many properties to handle individually. sorting properties into buckets with various waves of trying to start this market. houses that are pre-renovated with preapproved money for further renovations. and joe's neighborhood which is the - - neighborhood, bordering some of the neighborhoods that have remained stable throughout this history.neighborhoods like the university district. you have started seeing some houses sell from the land bank from substantially more than they have. those are successes. he was surprised at some of those sales beginning to take place. but that is very specific and in specific neighborhoods.

so this is a problem and it is hard. a balanced budget does not do anything directly to address this. it's hard, slow work. >> so whether you do it - - i guess you say, all the people that lost their equity and the money they had turned into the houses. they lost because the other person might have been doing that. but how much is your house worth if you have 4-5 people doing bad in your house is sitting there. >> the wealth that has been lost in a city that was a city of home ownership and now is a city of majority renters.

i know the statistics following the financial crisis is that the wealth gap has increased from a factor of four to a factor of six. that's from generational consequences. if you're building wealth in your home. you can use that to send children to college. you can use it to start a business perhaps. if you lose your home and don't have access to that, then that perpetuates itself. >> now we all have bad credit from back then. from, 10 years ago. everything stopped and change. it didn't change for the regular people here. the people that didn't leave detroit. the people that had to hold the values when everyone else left. when the banks didn't want those houses. we are the ones that held the

neighborhood. so the speculators and prospectors could come through and choose all the good neighborhoods, the good houses. that's when you heard about the auction and land bank. so i guess you get people from different states, different parts of the country and different costs of living with a can afford to pay back taxes. it's nothing to them. but we can't afford that. so every time we go down to the auction, you've got guys going down with a couple hundred thousand dollars. you coming down with two-$3000, what are you going to do? you're going to rent from them. they will sell you the land contract. waving these discovery clauses. now they can give it to you for nothing because you signed your life away because you didn't have anywhere else to go. you didn't have no other choice. that's the stress that the people that are still here in the city, their feeling it and it never went nowhere. you can see it on their face. when you don't know where you're going.you don't know where your next dollar is coming from and you don't have

a grandmother or mother that has stability. because everybody lost their houses. now you have 2-3 families and one house. >> and rent here is very high. - - among the heartbreaking stories i heard in my time here. it gets me every time when you describe how your parents moved into the house in morningside. how your father planted the rosebush in the backyard and how you dug up the rosebush when an investor who bought several houses told you it was time to leave the house. >>. [indiscernible] >> we stayed in a home approximately 30 years. the property value and the mortgage went from $150,000 to

$12,000. meanwhile we have a mortgage for $91,000. the majority of the houses are vacant and torn down. not that i was a slave but you didn't feel like you did yesterday. so once that started to change, it's like a different way of looking at things. considering you to come home to the same house and the neighbors that used to be there no longer live there. i was one of the last people to leave from a 30 year span. you see the ups and downs. the gas company for instance, it became - - the gas company became the light company. therefore that was a monopoly that's never been addressed yet. they overcharge you as they

please. the insurance company charges more money to ensure your house. you aren't able to get car insurance. if it's not a conspiracy, what is it? this is no accident. this is by design. to leave individuals - - not my family. we are better off. but to leave individuals with no hope. it was a time when the people have car insurance for the majority of them at least. people walked on the sidewalk. now they walk in the street. many people have no car insurance. so where is the value of life here? looks like it took more than just the houses. seems like it took their spirit. destroyed the future that was coming. to make things worse, to show you how much michigan really cares.

- - poisons the people in flint. what's the difference between snyder and hitler? they both committed genocide. >> one of the - - i want you to address and i want to talk about crafting this work. the process of writing the book. one of the things we are lacking is investment. there's not enough capital and neighborhoods in detroit to fix some of the problems we need. we can talk about investment property or investment in people. either way, it's about capital. at the same time, there's a healthy, and reasonable skepticism about outside capital coming into the city.

coming into neighborhoods investing and not doing on behalf of the people that lived there but doing it to profit off of them. talk about how you manage those things in a city and manage those tensions in a way that would do better by the people who are here and resist some of the things that charles is talking about like gentrification. with the kind of exploitation of people who don't have means. >> it's a very good question. a complicated question. you may all disagree with me but my reading of this is that detroit needs capital. a lot of it was disinvestment over past decades. it also needs people. density. there are ways to tailor that. i am more worried about neighborhoods that don't have capital. neighborhoods that would have names we've all heard about.

i'm thinking of cindy's neighborhood. at a certain point in the book, a bullet comes through her front window in the middle of the night. it goes a very near to where her daughter is sleeping. she is terrified and she is constantly calling the california owned company that owns her house, trying to get the window fix and it never gets fixed. and it never gets fixed. she is worried that no matter how much class she picks up, one day her daughter will go to school with the cut foot and child protective services will take her daughter. you can see the company that owns the house is an investor but that's not the investment you're looking at. how can we tailor this?

there are federal tax credits for affordable housing. federal tax credits for many things. but a lot of the language has never really been defined in a way that would be helpful to revitalization goals. they begin to tailor money like that to people for are going to live in the house that they will buy. >> how would you recommend them getting their properties back and trying to build homeownership back up? >> why couldn't the citizens do the same? >> now you're asking the really hard questions. >> it's always some criteria we can't fit.

if you have all of this, to fit this criteria, you wouldn't need their help. but they always, with a bunch of stuff, that you can't fit their criteria. i give you - - and you miss a payment or two. i give you whatever you need. you lose your whole life. and the banks didn't even want the houses. >> you have a house, you know how to fix it. it's a very small amount of capital that would enable you to do that. >>. [indiscernible] >> exactly. if you could do what you have planned to do all along with your house.

the force that would be on your block to have a beautifully renovated block for the homeowner who cares about it. >> when they were owning their homes, they had an entirely different feeling. when you've got people speculating. walking up asking you questions. coming out of anywhere. you don't know who these people are we bought your house or we bought the whole block up. then they walk up out of nowhere. or they're looking at our house but you don't know. it's like everybody in the neighborhood has a different feeling now. they don't care about the city or downtown. they don't care about their souls because they have anything to care about. they basically have been bought off. city council cut some crazy deal but they're only working downtown. they're not working in the

neighborhoods. >> what i should say and i should revise what i said earlier. and i just did. often talk about detroit as a place of disinvestment. when in fact, so often, it is the - - of a particular type of investment. that is not the right kind of investment for the people that live here. >> let's talk about writing this book.what gave you the idea to come to detroit and tell this story? >> at the time that detroit and many other cities like it. i was teaching and researching full-time about bankruptcy law and really a great believer in the process. but what i wanted to do was go behind the headlines and really look and evaluate in a long-term way what bankruptcy meant for the people who live in the city that goes through the process.

ultimately, that became a question of what is the human cost of bankruptcy. >> and how did you find the seven people that ended up being the stars of this story? >> i feel like you found me in a way. because you were willing to stick with me and trust me and talk to me. i really started with the real estate story. as is you come here and start talking to somebody, the stories often go to real estate and somebody who has lost their house. and real estate seems emblematic of a lot of the problems the city faced in the lead up to bankruptcy. and the challenges that it faces in the wake of the bankruptcy. so i started with that. but the very nice person from the housing coalition in the audience who allowed me to tag

along. sits in on counseling sessions. - - i met charles through the aclu in relation to his house. and met miles as his friends. then from there, i began to broaden out beyond real estate into what seems like issues that similarly have been challenging to the city before the bankruptcy. remain challenging afterwards and are the key to revitalization issues like education, crime, entrepreneurship, transportation. >> and the title. i always asked that question. the title and the cover which i've heard some people say they were in love with. this abandoned house being used represent our city. talk about how you settled on the image.

>> i take credit for the word broke because it seems to have a lot of meaning that were all applicable in various ways. i have to say, i had nothing to do with the cover. that was the publishing house and that was there call. >> i'm going to open it up in a second but i wonder what you see as a sort of, easy, low hanging fruit solutions that would at least accelerate some of the things you think we are doing right or correct what we are doing wrong. what's within our grasp? >> i think detroit needs jobs. jobs for people who have been living here. and that is hard work that

maybe not what i should say for low hanging fruit. a time when i was with lola. and she was working at this call center, answering calls about air-conditioning systems. and one of her callers says, you could probably instead of answering questions about air-conditioners. you can sell them and you would probably do a lot better. sounded good to her and she was on the east side of detroit near the eastland mall. for those not familiar with it, it has itself gone through a bankruptcy. it has very few stores functioning. she would often tell people in directions that they could avoid the traffic light by going through a very empty parking lot. but it has a home depot. at that point, her grandfather was driving her the 80 miles each way to work. but she asked him if they could

stop at the home depot and she would ask if there was any jobs available. but she was very clear that even if they had a job, which they didn't. but if they did, she would never want that job because she knew she would be paid on commission and she wanted to be where the money was and to her, the money was in the suburbs. ... corporations and that is one fix >> how could they get to work if they can't even drive their vehicles? >> because of the ã [inaudible] how can they even get to work? [inaudible]

in>> this is a story that charles and miles have lived, car insurance here has cost upwards of $6000 a year compared to a national average of about $815 a year. that makes it very hard to get anywhere, that's the cost of a lot of housing in the city. what bankruptcy can't do, the city knows this is a problem. the current leadership has called this a matter of civil rights. when most jobs are in the suburbs. car insurance is a matter of state law and there's very little the city can do on its own.

since the time of the book i know that the new governor has passed some changes to the car insurance regime. i know they haven't come online yet. >> those are unfolding now and they are not nearly what they probably need. they will lower rates a little bit but it's still something that needs pretty significant reform. >> i want to open it up to audience questions. do we have a microphone for people in the audience? >> while we are getting to the microphone i'm going to tell charles a story of car insurance as he was driving a friend's car somebody bumped into him at a railroad crossing and please take over at any moment, you're waiting in the car waiting to see if the car behind you would call the

police knowing that that's something somebody with car insurance would do. >> there was anything wrong with the car. and therefore was not complicated. overall. [inaudible] >> this is the second term. so when does the city of detroit and the mayor decide to get the people in the city of detroit car insurance which is needed instead of having the police to stop the different individuals and write them to get the can afford. why continuously utilize ã

>> same people that lost everything. >> the fight is never ending. you fight on this and and you fight on that and and continuously fight or fight the gas company here, gas company over there. overall it's just a fight that continuously being a fight but what will you win. when does the mayor get together and the city and come up with something that can help detroit and not give pathway to corporate america downtown. all the tax breaks should sooner or later come to the people who lost their homes. [applause] >> let's get to audience questions. . go ahead. >> steve mentioned why was detroit different?

>> i think just speak up a little bit into the microphone. >> steve asked how is detroit different trip from chicago and other major cities. and us being the motor city could you comment on the fact that gm and chrysler had to be rescued and how big of a part do you think that played in our difference? >> another set of bankruptcies. another set of bankruptcies. the question was how is detroit different from other cities and what role does the rescue of the car industry play in those differences? i would first say that in many ways detroit is a different. i think it's on trend with what

we as a country have been doing with our cities in past decades. cities didn't used to go bankrupt. they were supported by their states and the federal government. federal assistance to cities peaked in the late 70s and has been falling steadily held by half by 1980 and 1988 we responded to the financial crisis with the sequester which cut federal discretionary spending. states all of whom but detroit had balanced budget requirements turned around and passed those cuts to cities and cities have been left increasingly to try to balance their budgets by going into the financial market by selling bonds and all the risk that was accumulated and didn't perform well during the financial crisis. detroit i think is a representative. it's also in some ways extreme with the car industry.

that is an industry that has suffered from globalization or the industrialization from suburbanization. i was reading in the newspaper about cuts to the gm plant taking place right now and so that is certainly a contributor and retreat detroit is somewhat unique on the other end. it hasn't had as much austerity as some of the other municipal bankruptcies have seen in its

wake. >> my name is glenda ãi'm a long time detroit or by way of mobile alabama. five years ago i purchased a house in a land bank said paid cash for it. two months after i purchased the house i got a tax bill for back taxes for $3500. i was not told by the city that there was going to be any additional taxes. fortunately i was able to pay it, a lot of times when they get those kind of bills they have to walk away. even after they paid tax for house. i also attempted to get, it was a four bedroom four bathroom house and brussel word, i attempted to get a $25,000 loan to the bank and i am blessed at that time i was making six figures with the irs. i could not get a loan. these are the things that are happening to people of color every single day whether you

have a high income, low end, it does not matter. auto insurance last year i had a car stolen out of my driveway i had another vehicle sitting on blocks then i had a minor auto accident, i have two vehicles, my son and i. he works for the city, i'm retired now. i am paying $1600 a month for full coverage. this is what's happening to us in the city of detroit. and to most cities in the state of michigan if you live in a city that's predominantly were people of color live. we are paying for the rest of the state to survive off the backs of people of color. we really need to know and then when people are moving into the city who don't look like me, don't have this type of color, they are using somebody else's

address in the suburbs. they're not able to vote in detroit. this is what's happening. and has been for decades. i'm blessed that i own five properties, my rent for my tenants is $450-$525 a month for a two bedroom, you can't find any affordable housing in the city now so people are moving to flat rock, taylor, all these downriver communities because they can no longer afford staying in detroit. your history and understand what's going on with the bankruptcy which was really come distraught and it's affected all of us either directly or indirectly because of choices the emergency management and other folks have made that affect all of us one way or another. >> this is why i wrote the book. [applause]

i think we focus a lot on population detroit has lost but nearly 700,000 people still live here and they are bravely making do often very high cost for things compared to where you live in other parts of the country. the idea that where you live in america matters and determine the lever of the opportunities is problematic and something that all of us as americans should care about to be a country. >> can everyone hear me? >> she just kind of segued into my question. i'm trying to be ãbut my question will be based on, have you touched upon people that have means within your book and i asked that because i purposefully moved back to detroit to buy a house and i opted to go without a mortgage even though i have a great credit score because of all the

stories. i know people that one of my friends heard her father was a dentist retired they lived in an indian village and lost their home. they been paying their mortgage faithfully for years. they got a letter and realized they had been there house was gone. i know people that, i grew up in the university and i know people that moved away, i have a friend one of my good friends who lives in paradise valley in arizona that tried during the downturn to buy a building downtown completely shut out. i tried to look at condos near midtown during the downturn and was shut out. i would go with my realtor we would have the wrong code couldn't get in the house. my question is, have you covered that. i think it ties in with those investors that you mentioned. how much of that you talk about. people that have credit scores and means but are completely shut out. >> i think the clearest analog

to your experience is joe when he comes from new jersey and he is really, he is deliberately moving to detroit. he's looked at several cities that he sees as having more open space and he's excited to be here.he has an idea of reinvention has an impossible time finding a house as he understands it, a lot of it was the lack of existence at the broker market event that the commissions that you would be earning on a house at a low price were just so low that all of the brokers he called work returning his phone calls. he eventually bought from somebody who put up signs saying we pay cash for houses and he knew the house had problems that he was glad to have it and ran into similar problems in trying to buy commercial space for the business idea he had.

vacant properties that for whatever reason just sit it didn't seem to be for sale. he never knew the identity of the person he was dealing with to buy it. he bought it on the equivalent of a land contract arrangement so he was mailing monthly checks to an llc at a po box but did pay it off and take ownership. >> thank you. >> can everyone hear me? you touched on as far as investment and people moving in for jobs housing values. as well as people moving away. one of the things that impacts a lot of debt is people feeling safe. he talked about how appraising

houses, they won't send it out because they don't feel safe. because in bankruptcy the city had a judge had to determine whether or not the city could meet its responsibilities to citizens and things like police and firefighters. is there any legal responsibility on the city for whatever value is lost in those homes or in those investments or lack of investments in those neighborhoods where people are leaving or not able to maintain home values due to high crime rates. >> interesting question. first of all, bankruptcy for cities is new. this is something that wasn't originally in the bankruptcy code until we got to the great depression even then it really wasn't used for cities maybe if

the city lost a lawsuit and suddenly needed to pay a lot of damages it didn't have, this use of bankruptcy for a city, a large city for generalized challenges this is something you really didn't see until after the financial crisis and what bankruptcy does it negotiated process to write down debt it doesn't get into the nuances of what you are talking about which israel come at a certain point, cindy, the white woman living in bryn mawr, she owns her house it doesn't have a mortgage, she thinks she would like to leave and she has a whole plan she will get a used camper trailer and drive it to memphis where she has a relative and she will park in the driveway and get some work cleaning houses in memphis and then she realizes that even if somebody wanted to

buy her house, which is difficult for her to imagine, even if that she wouldn't be able to sell it for as much as a used camper trailer cost. >> thank you. >> okay. let's give jodi a hand for being here. [applause] and thank you all of you for coming out. you are watching booktv on c-span2 with top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. booktv, television for serious readers. >> here are some programs to watch out for this weekend on

booktv on c-span2. new york times magazine contributor peggy orenstein is our guest on our author interview program afterwards. she examines the role of sex and masculinity in the lives of young men.also national constitution center resident jeffrey rosen and supreme court justice ruth bader gives discuss the conversations they've had over the years. robert.com entertainment editor jerome hudson argues the mainstream media ãbformer wall street trader turned photojournalist chris armani talks about the plight of those living on the margins of society in america. check your program guide and visit booktv.org for more information. on our author interview program "after words" university of maryland baltimore county president freeman ãoffered his thoughts on building a successful university. he spoke with robin hood ceo wes moore. here's a portion of their conversation. >> the role of the liberal education is to reduce students who learn how to present their arguments and base their

arguments on evidence. the importance of evidence. number two, to be willing to listen to other points of view, not to win the argument but to listen to other points of view and look carefully at the evidence base to support another point of view. and most important, to learn how to find the common ground. how we figure out what it is we all can agree to that is for the public good, for the common good somehow. for us at umb see we are through our work in humanities to the sciences, looking at ways of helping students to learn to ask the hard questions to read critically but to a appreciate the value of evidence in a society that is bombarding us with information at different points of view with things being confused about what is truth and what is not. educated people should have the skills to ask the questions that will lead to the evidence that can therefore determine what is truth.

at the essence, the heart of all this, empowered to seek the truth. >> to watch the rest of this interview visit our website booktv.org click on the "after words" tab or search for freeman lebowski search at the top of the page. >> am delighted to welcome you to our event today on the conservative case for class actions, a book written by professor fitzpatrick that galvanizes this debate. we got three outstanding speakers, panelists i should say, our first is head of the class action practice here at gibson and crutcher he's litigated and defended countless class actions including over 20 dismissals of the class-action cases.you might have a sense of where his position is on that. he is a graduate of georgetown undergraduate and the university of virginia law school where he was on law review and he's also the author of chapter in the