The Killing Fields of East New York

The First Subprime Mortgage Scandal, a White-Collar Crime Spree, and the Collapse of an American Neighborhood

De: Stacy Horn

Narrado por: EJ Lavery

In this groundbreaking work of investigative journalism and true crime, Stacy Horn sheds light on how the subprime mortgage scandal of the 1970s and a long history of white-collar crime slowly devastated East New York, a Brooklyn neighborhood that would come to be known as the Killing Fields.

On a warm summer evening in 1991, seventeen-year-old Julia Parker was murdered in the Brooklyn neighborhood of East New York. An area known for an exorbitant level of violence and crime, East New York had come to be known as the Killing Fields. In the six months after Julia Parker’s death, 62 more people were murdered in the same area. In the early 1990s, murder rates in the neighborhood climbed to the highest in NYPD history. East New York was dying.

But how did this once thriving, diverse, family neighborhood fall into such ruin? The answer can be found two decades earlier. In response to redlining and discriminatory housing practices, the Johnson administration passed the Housing and Urban Development Act in 1968. The Federal Housing Authority aimed to use this piece of legislation to help low-income families of color finally achieve homeownership. But they could never have predicted how banks, lenders, realtors, and corrupt FHA officials themselves would use the newly passed law to make victims of the very people they were supposed to help, and the devastation they would leave in their wake.

A compulsively readable hybrid of true crime and investigative journalism, The Killing Fields of East New York reveals how white-collar crime reduced a prospering neighborhood to abandoned buildings and empty lots. Following the dual threads of the hunt for the network of criminals behind the first subprime mortgage scandal and the ensuing downfall of East New York, Stacy Horn weaves a compelling narrative of government failure, a desperate community, and ultimately the largest series of mortgage fraud prosecutions in American history. The Killing Fields of East New York deftly demonstrates how different types of crime are profoundly entangled, and how the crimes committed in nice suits and corner offices are just as destructive as those committed on the street.

©2025 Stacy Horn (P)2025 Zando Penguin Audio

Clear description of a muddy subject

An expansive and well researched document of the tactics used by mortgage lenders, specifically the FHA, during the Nixon administration.

You will learn exactly how an area becomes blighted over time, and how the white collars never even get a tinge of soot in the process. The worst being an offender might be shunned at the country club by his peers. Considered punishment enough.

You will understand how areas get worse block by block. You will know the futility of recourse. The veil will be lifted from a mysterious subject.

A lot to take in

This was meticulously researched and written in plain English. As an audiobook listened to while driving I occasionally felt a little lost in the alphabet soup of various organizations. If I was looking at the page I think I wouldn’t have had a problem. This book is about more than one community- it lays out the effect white collar crime had and continues to have on the lives of ordinary Americans. For this reason I recommend this book for everyone.

Such an important book

This book was well written, extremely informative. More people need to listen/read this book if we ever want to

some good info on the surprise procesdes

if you want an unrealistic idea of how ghettos are just full of great people who would definitely not make terrible home owners and evil (almost entirely Republicans) make them buy crappy houses with mortgages they can't afford? This is for you. obviously written by someone who never l8ved in those neighborhoods for an extended period with carefully selected examples chosen to expound on the life. I truly wish the neighborhoods were the hopeful places just in need of a hand up depicted, but theyre not and this won't help fix the real problems. all that said the author is absolutely correct that the money men behind th financial crimes never face justice and our political system has no interest in making them.