The unique value of ethnographic studies comes from their use of indepth interviews and close observation of events in a community, explains anthropologist Mitchell Ratner in the introductory article. These ethnographic studies probe facets of homeownership that transcend statistical generalizations, including the perceptions, interpretations, rationales, and world views of the participants.
Ratner summarizes the major constraints that minorities and immigrants face in pursuing homeownership.
Despite such barriers, the immigrants and minorities in the four studies are often able to attain homeownership by looking beyond the conventional mortgage finance system.
Researcher Kate Porter Young describes the ways African Americans and low-income whites in two rural communities on the coast of South Carolina have traditionally become homeowners. Instead of financing their homes through mortgage lending, they often build on large plots of family-owned land, with labor and materials donated by family and friends or they buy a manufactured home.
Among African Americans in Syracuse, New York, a city with a relatively affordable housing market, Susan Hamilton and Stephen J.H. Cogswell found that only one-quarter of African Americans are homeowners. More than one-half of the surveyed homeowners had purchased a house at auction or through other nontraditional methods.
Susan A. Cheney and Charles C. Cheney show how differing economic and cultural backgrounds influence the homebuying patterns of two immigrant groups -- those from India and those from Spanish-speaking countries -- in the expensive housing market of Montgomery County, Maryland. The researchers found that Indian families were using resources from their relatives in India to finance home purchases, while Hispanic families were sending funds back to their countries of origin. However, both Indians and Hispanics were unfamiliar with the credit transactions so pervasive in the U.S. economy. Hispanics particularly had trouble documenting their incomes and credit histories.
Stephen Johnston, Morsina Katimin, and William Milczarski studied immigrants from South Korea and the Dominican Republic in Queens, New York, another expensive housing market. Cultural brokers such as social and religious groups proved to be important by educating immigrants about their homebuying options and working with real estate agents and lenders.
The March 1997 issue of Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research is now available from HUD USER for $5 per copy.
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