by John Yinger

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REVIEWS

“John Yinger’s Closed Doors, Opportunities Lost presents the best and most comprehensive evaluation of the scholarly and anecdotal evidence for the existence and persistence of racial and ethnic bias in housing markets in the United States. It reviews the causes and consequences of housing discrimination and examines the range of public policies available for redressing that discrimination. In between, the book explores the contemporary debates over spatial mismatches of jobs and residences, linkages between school segregation and housing access, measurement and detection of discrimination through audits, the limitations of the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, and practically every methodological issue that has ever been raised in the housing discrimination literature.”
Samuel L. Myers, Jr., American Political Science Review, December 1996, pp. 927-928

“Yinger introduces his own plan for combating housing discrimination. The plan is a careful, comprehensive compromise between concerns over social justice and political feasibility….  Closed Doors, Opportunities Lost focuses attention on the institutional barriers blacks and Hispanics face when attempting to improve their living conditions. Yinger’s treatment of the history of housing policy and his discussion of other studies of discrimination are careful and thorough….   This fine book should be read and discussed by academics, policymakers, and the public at large.”
David Harris, Contemporary Sociology, March 1997, pp. 155-156.

“John Yinger has written a lucid account of racial discrimination in housing and real estate markets, analyzing the costs imposed by this pattern of behavior upon minority households and evaluating the broader economic and social consequences of housing market discrimination.…  Much of this evidence is based upon the results of the Housing Discrimination Study….  As research director for the study and as one of the architects of the research design, Yinger has the ideal vantage point to describe the findings and their implications….  Yinger’s book will be the definitive work on housing market discrimination for the decade.”
John M. Quigley, American Journal of Sociology, November 1996, pp. 891-893.
“One should detect from the tenor of this review that I thoroughly enjoyed this book and highly recommend it to a wide range of readers.  The author’s good writing, use of interesting examples, and simple language make the book appropriate for undergraduates as well as graduate and professional students.  The accessible style does not come at the expense of scholarship:  Yinger’s argument are well developed and his points are well documented.”
Michael I. Luger, Journal of Regional Science, November 1997, pp. 714-716.