Details about this story

• Source: New York Times
• Date: May 16, 2009
• URL: Read the story
• Bylines: Michael Powell , Janet Roberts
• Topics: Real Estate , Mortgages
• Data Types: Local Data , Federal Data , Mapping
• Description/Excerpt: Late to arrive in the Northeast, the foreclosure crisis has swept through the New York region at an explosive pace in the past two years, destroying billions of dollars in housing wealth, according to a New York Times analysis of foreclosures filed since 2005 and federal mortgage data. It now touches every corner of the region, from estates along the Connecticut Gold Coast to the suburban tracts of Long Island, where 6 percent of all mortgages are at least 90 days delinquent, the point at which foreclosure proceedings usually begin. But the storm has fallen with a special ferocity on black and Latino homeowners, the analysis shows. Defaults occur three times as often in mostly minority census tracts as in mostly white ones. Eighty-five percent of the worst-hit neighborhoods - where the default rate is at least double the regional average - have a majority of black and Latino homeowners. And the hardest blows rain down on the backbone of minority neighborhoods: the black middle class. In New York City, for example, black households making more than $68,000 a year are almost five times as likely to hold high-interest subprime mortgages as are whites of similar - or even lower - incomes.
• Database or Graphic: Go to site (html)