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Abstract: Theory suggests that perception of neighborhood quality is influenced by crime, blight, and other outdoor characteristics, by respondent perception of the quality of their housing, and by attributes of the local jurisdiction. It also suggests that these geographical attributes should be confounded by respondent demographic characteristics. Using 48,000 sample responses collected by the American Housing Survey in 2002, ordinary least squares, factor analysis, and hierarchical linear modeling, we connected these strands of theory and found strong associations between neighborhood quality, detrimental conditions, housing quality, socioeconomic status, and age. We also measured a small anti-big city effect, and a few weaker relationships with growing/healthy and demographic homogeneity effect. The application of complex statistical tools, in short, enabled us to obtain insight about how people build mental models of their neighborhoods. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The appraisal practices of the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) and its Residential Security Maps are often cited as major contributors to later redlining and the perpetuation of segregation through unequal access to mortgage credit. This article focuses on whether there was a relationship between the HOLC's neighborhood assessments and mortgage outcomes. Our results indicate that the agency was clearly instrumental in restructuring the home finance system and permitting far greater access to homeowner‐ship, but it is important to consider other factors in examining the HOLC's legacy in the reshaping of the mortgage market and the operation of the financial sector after the Great Depression. Specifically, the issue of increasing segregation in older cities in the late 20th century remains inextricably linked to both the shifting nature of real estate finance after the HOLC era and the demographic, economic, and residential changes affecting U.S. cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]