Document Type
Article
Version
Author's Final Manuscript
Publication Title
City and Community
Volume
17
Publication Date
2018
Abstract
While many scholars have demonstrated that entrenched racial residential segregation perpetuates racial inequality, the causes of persistent racial segregation continue to be debated. This paper investigates how geographically and socioeconomically mobile African Americans approach the home-buying process in the context of a segregated metropolitan region, by using qualitative interviews with working-class to middle-income African American aspiring homebuyers. Homebuyers use three principal search strategies to determine suitable neighborhoods: avoiding decline, searching for improvement, and searching for stability. The findings suggest that despite these strategies African American homebuyers end up in areas that may not retain characteristics they desire in terms of racial demographics and amenities, in large part because such neighborhoods remain rare.
Citation
Taplin-Kaguru, N. 2018. “Mobile but Stuck: Multigenerational Neighborhood Decline and Housing Search Strategies.” City and Community 17.3: 835-857.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1111/cico.12322