Papers by Jesus Hernandez
This chapter reviews California’s long dependence on Latino labor to place emphasis on the fact t... more This chapter reviews California’s long dependence on Latino labor to place emphasis on the fact that this workforce is a permanent fixture in the state’s economy; contributing to both the supply and demand of housing. Then, a series of brief stories on anti-immigrant housing policies, housing finance, smart growth, and environmental concerns will underscore the urgency to consider new ways to apply the Fair Housing Act and protect the place generations of Latino immigrants still struggle to safely call home.
In this paper we demonstrate the utility of structural violence as an analytical device to make v... more In this paper we demonstrate the utility of structural violence as an analytical device to make visible intergenerational patterns of exclusion obscured by institutional arrangements initially established to represent and defend community interests. We apply an interdisciplinary critical analysis of the history of economic and social marginalization of neighborhoods to the recent closure of seven neighborhood elementary schools in South Sacramento. By stressing the importance of distribution as an important social arrangement that can cause injury to individuals and populations, we demonstrate how disparate impact, briefly defined as the unequal distribution of resources that affect life chances, has current as well as future effects on households and neighborhoods. We argue that patterns of structural violence are not only contingent upon historical processes but are also embedded prospectively, or in other words, into the future of neighborhood stability. We find that the structural violence continuum is a phenomenon embedded in the past, present, and future in a manner that constrains the inclusion of certain neighborhoods in the social and economic life of urban settlements.
Explanations for the U.S. subprime loan crisis fail to acknowledge the high concentration of unsu... more Explanations for the U.S. subprime loan crisis fail to acknowledge the high concentration of unsustainable mortgage products in predominantly nonwhite neighborhoods. Using Sacramento, California, as a case study, I place the housing crisis within the historical context of housing discrimination, demonstrating how market preconditions were manipulated through the use of racial categories – a process fusing race with economic action. This sorting of individuals based upon racialized criteria secured market privilege and position for selected groups, while encouraging group closure. Such historically-rooted and racialized credit lending policies left segregated neighborhoods highly vulnerable to subprime lending and foreclosure. The existence of a dual credit market calls attention to the presence of such race-based rules for market conduct and access. By extending Granovetter’s claim that economic action remains embedded in social relations to include race relations, the housing crisis in Sacramento can be seen as a problem of embeddedness.
Despite decades of government reform, the American housing credit system continues to mirror long... more Despite decades of government reform, the American housing credit system continues to mirror long-standing patterns of racial segregation and inequality. Consistent with this trend, the current housing crisis reveals an unusually high concentration of subprime mortgage activity and property foreclosures in non-white residential settlements across the nation. Given the generally accepted premise of market neutrality, this case study of lending patterns in Sacramento, California, questions why US housing market exchanges continue to produce racially disparate outcomes and seeks to identify the ideological practices in which race is deployed, informs state and private economic action and shapes contemporary credit market practices.
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Papers by Jesus Hernandez