Review by Booklist Review
East New York was once a thriving community made up of immigrants and middle-income families. In the 1960s, the dynamics changed, and by the 1970s, residents reported that "you couldn't walk down the street." By the 1990s, hundreds in that area were murdered annually, and it was dubbed "the killing fields of New York." This book details just how East New York became that way, and it's not what you would expect. Horn (Damnation Island, 2018) presents a thoroughly researched narrative that begins in 1968 with the passing of the Housing and Urban Development Act, which was used to help families of low socioeconomic status to own homes. The Federal Housing Authority bureaucrats and lenders abused the system and exploited people, leaving this neighborhood in ruins. Horn provides a chronological history of the scandal, including the names of those involved. Her investigation uses numerous resources including extensive interviews. Readers will be drawn into the conversational style that places them in a world that illustrates just what happens when money and power fall into the wrong hands.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The hidden story behind one of the toughest neighborhoods in Brooklyn. The "Killing Fields'' of the title may sound melodramatic, but it was the longtime nickname of East New York, where redlining and blockbusting fostered white flight and subprime subterfuges cheated residents out of their homes and safety. It's a badly needed look at a societal problem that goes largely unaddressed while politicians outdo each other with tough-on-crime rhetoric. Author and journalist Horn sets the stage with the violent death in 1991 of Julia Parker, a 17-year-old girl suspected of talking to the police about the death of a friend. The author jumps back to 1966 to describe the simmering racial tensions fueled by a group called SPONGE (Society for the Prevention of Negroes Getting Everything), described as "the Proud Boys of their day." Ultimately, Mayor John Lindsay's office had to reach out to Brooklyn mobsters associated with the Genovese problem to negotiate a temporary truce. Horn guides readers through a subprime Ponzi scheme scandal that predated the Bush-era crisis. Landlords and mortgage banks swindled the community, offering loans for substandard housing with minimal background checks. "If the homeowners defaulted, the FHA [Federal Housing Authority] would repay the loan,'' she writes. Many FHA officials were themselves corrupt, taking payoffs, ultimately resulting in indictments--and convictions--when investigators in the U.S. Attorney's office caught on to the scam. But Julia Parker, like countless others, was caught in the crossfire. More recently, life in East New York is improving, with fewer food "ghettos" and more community gardens than anywhere else in the city. But Horn provides an invaluable roadmap to how, and why, urban "renewal'' can go tragically wrong. Solid in-depth reporting with a polemical kick. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
