The Danger Zone Is Everywhere: How Housing Discrimination Harms Health and Steals Wealth(73 American Crossroads)

Compellingly argues that good health is as much social as it is biological, and that the racial health gap and the racial wealth gap are mutually constitutive. The Danger Zone Is Everywhere shows that housing insecurity and the poor health associated with it are central components of an unjust, destructive, and deadly racial order. Housing discrimination is a civil and economic injustice, but it is also a menace to public health. With this book, George Lipsitz reveals how the injuries of housing discrimination are augmented by racial bias in home appraisals and tax assessments, by the disparate racialized effects of policing, sentencing, and parole, and by the ways in which algorithms in insurance and other spheres associate race with risk. But The Danger Zone Is Everywhere also highlights new practices emerging in health care and the law, emphasizing how grassroots community mobilizations are creating an active and engaged public sphere constituency promoting new forms of legislation, litigation, and organization for social justice.

Table of Contents:
Contents Foreword by Robin D. G. Kelley  Acknowledgments  Introduction: Housing, Health, and Proximity to Toxicity  PART I: WHO HURTS? 1 Save the Children: Precautionary Principles for Housing and Health Justice  2 “Livin’ in the Red”: Housing as a Health Problem and Health as a Housing Problem  3 If You’re Ready: Responding to Health and Housing Emergencies  PART II: WHAT HURTS? 4 Cash in Your Face: Appraisals, Assessments, and Predatory Extraction  5 If It Ain’t One Thing, It’s Another: Gender, Housing, Health, and Mass Incarceration 6 Born under a Bad Sign: Race-Based Risk Assessment in Insurance, Housing, and Health  PART III: WHAT HELPS? 7 Wade in the Water: An Active Engaged Public Sphere for Health and Housing Justice  8 Everything Is Everything: Health and Housing as Human Rights and Public Goods  9 Hard Times (No One Knows Better Than I): The Bitter but Beautiful Struggle  Notes  Works Cited  Index

About the Author :
George Lipsitz is Research Professor Emeritus of Black Studies and Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Review :
“Those who choose to spend time with this hefty, career-defining book will have the chance to engage with not only Lipsitz’s intellect but with his obvious appreciation for the humanity, and not only the vexing injustices, of life in the United States.”