From the Editor

Cityscape began publication in 1994 with a commitment to present research that would "challenge long-held assumptions . . . and encourage innovative thinking" on the crucial housing and urban development issues facing our Nation. We launch the third volume of this journal with a collection that succeeds on both counts -- articles that will stimulate questions and ideas about the path to homeownership and will also introduce a new perspective to the repertory of housing policy research.

Urban policy development has traditionally relied on quantitative research methods. Their transparent rationality and precision are so integral to the policymaking process that it is easy to lose sight of their limitations. Quantitative research can describe phenomena, but struggles to explain them adequately. The much-discussed colloquy on "Race and Default in Credit Markets" presented in Volume 2, Number 1 of Cityscape demonstrated once again that even the sophisticated analysis of large data sets can lead to an interpretive fog in which the outlines of important facts are visible, but the details and human scale that allow us to understand their significance are missing. The quantitative analysis revealed a relatively high incidence of mortgage defaults among African-Americans that seemed inconsistent with theories about the consequences of discrimination in mortgage lending, but its inability to illuminate the circumstances that gave rise to the disparity made the research a flashpoint for controversy.

The methods of ethnography -- which uses in-depth interviews and observation to provide a narrative counterpoint to quantitative research -- would seem to offer a way of moving beyond such an impasse by looking at the experiences of the individuals behind the numbers. Thus the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Fannie Mae commissioned a team led by Mitchell Ratner to undertake ethnographic studies that would explore another key issue regarding access to mortgage credit: how African-Americans and recent immigrants in various housing markets navigate the path to homeownership. The results of this research describe encounters with the conventional mortgage lending process and its alternatives, tracing the complex interplay of geographic, cultural, economic, and social factors that shape their outcomes.

The insights offered by these ethnographies also show that national statistics can mask the diversity of the homebuying experience. For example, most housing units in the rural South Carolina communities studied by Kate Porter Young were owner occupied, but few of the homeowners utilized mortgage lending. More than one-half of the African-American and Hispanic residents of Syracuse who were interviewed by Susan Hamilton and Stephen J.H. Cogswell became homeowners through nontraditional means, such as purchasing properties at auction or from community-based organizations. Cultural adaptation and barriers to homeownership were experienced by immigrants from South Korea and the Dominican Republic interviewed in Northern Queens by Stephen Johnston, Morsina Katimin, and William Milczarski and by immigrants from South America and India interviewed in Montgomery County, Maryland, by Susan A. Cheney and Charles C. Cheney.

HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research sponsors studies such as these in order to enrich outcome-oriented research and broaden the discussion of key urban policy issues. We hope they will inspire additional ethnographic research in homeownership. A richer understanding of housing needs among underrepresented populations -- and of the forces that inhibit fulfillment of those needs -- will help public and private decisionmakers forge responsive policies and ensure that the way to homeownership is open to all Americans.

Michael A. Stegman Assistant Secretary for Policy Development and Research