Plundered // How Racist Policies Undermine Black Homeownership in America

When Harvard and Yale trained property law scholar Bernadette Atuahene moved to Detroit, she planned to study the city's squatting phenomenon, in which thousands occupied vacant homes without the permission of the record owner. After a long sojourn in South Africa, where she researched the theft of land and homes from Black citizens, she wanted to immerse herself in a project that showcased Black agency. And yet what she found in Detroit was too urgent to ignore. Her neighbors, many of whom had owned their homes for decades, were losing them to property tax foreclosure. Even though the reasons why this was happening were shrouded, the results were clear: once bustling Black neighborhoods blighted with vacant homes and trash-strewn lots, social networks eroded, family legacies lost. It was a puzzle that would take five years of dogged investigation, including hundreds of interviews with homeowners, landlords, real estate investors, and city officials to solve, but data point by data poi