Go to all Recent Grantees

Daniel Ferman-Leon

Grant Type

Dissertation Fieldwork Grant

Institutional Affiliation

Cornell U.

Grant number

Gr. 9993

Approve Date

August 26, 2020

Project Title

Ferman-Leon , Daniel (Cornell U.) "The Financialization of Racialized Geographies: Real Estate Investment and Housing Insecurity in Kansas City"

DANIEL FERMAN-LEON, then a graduate student at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, was awarded funding in August 2020 to aid research on “The Financialization of Racialized Geographies: Real Estate Investment and Housing Insecurity in Kansas City,” supervised by Dr. Marina Welker. This study explores how markets for rental multifamily housing are made through the multiple and overlapping practices of investors, lenders, asset managers and city government officials. Through participant observation, in-depth interviews, textual and discursive analysis, and census data mapping this research explores how the life projects and housing biographies of tenants are mutually constituted by the market expectations generated by real estate investors as they work to convert rental housing into predictable and profitable investment vehicles. By exploring how the new, landscapes of market-rate and luxury rental housing map onto racialized geographies, this project interrogates how ostensibly neutral financial knowledge and practices of asset bundling and risk management are in fact rooted in a history of racial capitalism.