Omer Ali

Ali will investigate how the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and Veterans Administration (VA) mortgage programs shaped residential segregation and racial inequality in the United States during the mid-twentieth century. The research will document where and to whom loans were issued and examine their relationship to racialized patterns of suburbanization and neighborhood formation. Working with collaborators, Ali has assembled the most comprehensive dataset of federally insured mortgages to date by obtaining mortgage records from county and state archives across the country.