The Killing Fields of East New York: The First Subprime Mortgage Scandal, a White-Collar Crime Spree, and the Collapse of an American Neighborhood

"In the 1990s, East New York, Brooklyn, garnered an ignominious reputation as New York City’s “killing fields,” because more than 100 people a year were killed there, with children routinely getting caught in the crossfire of gang violence. The status quo explanation for the neighborhood’s violence has long been that its predominantly poor Black and Puerto Rican residents were either responsible for trafficking in drugs and guns or stood by and tolerated the chaos. Journalist Stacy Horn offers a more complex diagnosis of East New York’s decline with her searing investigation of a white-collar criminal conspiracy that lined the real estate industry’s pockets while destroying a onetime affordable enclave for working- and middle-class families."