AUTHOR=Vachuska Karl TITLE=Property Tax Foreclosure, Spatial Effects, and Neighborhood Racial Demographic Change: Examining Data From Detroit JOURNAL=Frontiers in Sociology VOLUME=6 YEAR=2021 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sociology/articles/10.3389/fsoc.2021.598911 DOI=10.3389/fsoc.2021.598911 ISSN=2297-7775 ABSTRACT=

In recent decades, the city of Detroit has experienced the greatest population loss of any major American city. Applying Event History Analysis methodology to a large dataset containing information on all properties in Detroit between 2002 and 2013, I examine how Property Tax Foreclosure spatially perpetuated itself in Detroit, finding evidence that the number of past but recent Property Tax Foreclosures in a localized area significantly predicts the likelihood of a future foreclosure. I extrapolate these findings to mathematical simulations and find evidence that suggests that initial Property Tax Foreclosures played a significant role in cascading many later on. Finally, building off past research that suggests neighborhood blight disproportionally affects white residential preferences and patterns, I perform an empirical analysis that examines how the initial distribution of Property Tax Foreclosures in Detroit neighborhoods played some role in determining how those neighborhoods have experienced racial demographic change.