Borrowing to Live:
Consumer and Mortgage Credit Revisited

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Edited by Nicolas P. Retsinas and Eric S. Belsky

Co-published by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies and the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program

This publication is available for purchase through the Brookings Institution Press

Americans are awash in debt, and credit undergirds daily life more than ever before. The damage from a depressed housing market is exacerbated by the subprime lender implosion, sending shock waves through the financial sector, international economies, and the presidential campaign. How did things go so wrong? How can we maintain and expand access to credit while protecting the consumer and avoiding a reoccurrence of the current crisis? In Borrowing to Live, an eclectic group drawn from the best of academia, research, and public service come together with editors Nicolas P. Retsinas and Eric S. Belsky to dissect the current state of consumer and mortgage credit in the United States and help point the way out of the current impasse.

Borrowing to Live: Consumer and Mortgage Credit Revisited is a compilation of research from Understanding Consumer Credit: A National Symposium on Expanding Access, Informing Choices, and Protecting Consumers, convened by the Joint Center in November 2007 with the support of the Ford Foundation, Freddie Mac, and NeighborWorks® America.