The

The Hello and welcome to Behind the News. My name is Doug Henwood. Two guests today with not even the

slightest of perturbations. Stacey Horn will talk about a vast mortgage fraud in East New York in the

1970s that savage that Brooklyn neighborhood. And David Backer will talk about how we finance our

public schools and how we can do better. Many neighborhoods in New York City have gentrified over the last

four or five decades, but one that has gentrified less than most is East New York in the

southeastern corner of Brooklyn. Its median income is more than a third below the citywide average.

There are many reasons for the neighborhood's persistent poverty, but one is a mortgage fraud some

50 years ago that resulted in foreclosure and abandonment

on a huge scale. That story is the subject of Stacey Horn's book, her seventh. The Killing

Fields of East New York, the first subprime mortgage scandal, a white-collar crime spree, and the

collapse of an American neighborhood, just out in paperback from Julian Flynn books. Stacey

Horn. Let's start with the early history of East New York, back of the ancient days when

Brooklyn was something of a wilderness.

Who settled there when and who developed it?

Well, this guy, John Pickin, bought it in 1835, and he had this idea that he was going

to build a town that would rival New York City.

But two years later, there was a financial panic.

It was called the Financial Panic of 1837.

So he had to pivot.

And so he took out these articles in local newspapers advertising East New York as economical. So come here and you can

start a business and raise a family for a lot less than what you could do in Manhattan,

...