56
MEASURING THE
EFFECTIVENESS
OF FORECLOSURE
ASSISTANCE
PROGRAMS
According to Boston Mayor Marty Walsh,
foreclosures in his city have dropped to a 17-
year low, due in part to city-wide programs,
WCVB reported.
"I'm proud that through our work with
homeowners, we have been able to reduce the
number of foreclosures in Boston, and keep
more families in their homes," Walsh said.
"ese results show that our programs and
policies to prevent foreclosures and evictions
are working. Housing stability is vital to
ensuring Boston has strong neighborhoods
and communities, and I want to thank the
leadership and staff of the Boston Home
Center and all of our provider partners who
work so hard for Boston's homeowners every
day."
Since 2019, the number of foreclosures
executed against owner-occupant
homeowners in Boston dropped from 35 to
17 year over year.
Foreclosures in Boston are heavily
concentrated in black neighborhoods,
according to the Joint Center for Housing
Studies of Harvard University ( JSHS), as over
80% of Boston's foreclosures occured in just
five of the city's 15 planning districts, which
make up just 30% of Boston's housing units.
"Compared to the city as a whole, the
high-foreclosure block groups were, on
average, home to about half as many whites
and twice as many blacks," said David
Luberoff, Deputy Director of the JSHS.
"However, high-foreclosure block groups were
not the city's most disadvantaged areas, which
have large numbers of publicly subsidized
housing units that are not likely to be subject
to foreclosure."
According to Jackelyn Hwang, Assistant
Professor of Sociology at Stanford,
corporations were more likely to resell
previously foreclosed properties to other
investors and have reported maintenance
issues against them. With this in mind,
Hwang's study alleges that "predominantly
black neighborhoods hit hard by foreclosures
in Boston were left further behind in the
recovery from the housing crisis compared to
other hard‐hit neighborhoods.
