"Ethical Challenges of the American Housing Crisis"

February 08, 2011 |

Goucher College's Sarah T. Hughes Center for Field Politics will present "Ethical Challenges of the American Housing Crisis," a lecture by Paul Reyes '93, on Tuesday, February 8, at 8 p.m. in Buchner Hall of the Alumnae/i House.

Reyes will discuss his first book, Exiles in Eden: Life Among the Ruins of Florida's Great Recession, a personal portrayal of his family and the people and communities affected by the foreclosure crisis, during which nearly 6 million homes nationwide have been foreclosed upon and 10.7 million are now mortgaged for more than their value.

This lecture is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Eric Singer, chair of the Political Science and International Relations Department, at esinger@goucher.edu or 410-337-6255. 

Reyes wrote Exiles in Eden while working with his father's small company that "trashes out"—enters, empties, and cleans—foreclosed homes in Florida for resale. In the book, he examines the particular circumstances of each failed mortgage, analyzes Florida's history and  socioeconomics, and explains the machinations of Wall Street that contributed to the housing collapse in his home state and across the nation. 

He is also the contributing editor for the literary magazine the Virginia Quarterly. Prior to this prestigious position, he was the editor at large of The Oxford American, where he edited and contributed a wide range of articles, including profiles, criticism, and essays, and produced several multimedia features for its website. 

Reyes began his career in journalism working as a freelance fact-checker for such magazines as Lingua Franca, Talk, The New York Times Magazine, Harper's, and GQ.

His writing has aslo appeared in Harper's, The New York Times, Slate, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, Details, Men's Vogue, and Mississippi Review. In 2010 he received a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.