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Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City
ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 100 NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2025 • A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST BOOK OF 2025 • THE SKIPPED HISTORY PODCAST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
“[R]evelatory…Deeply researched and masterfully told.” —Brian Goldstone, New York Times Book Review
The explosive account of the arson wave that hit the Bronx and other American cities in the 1970s—and its legacy today.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning!” That legendary and apocryphal phrase, allegedly uttered by announcers during the 1977 World Series as flames rose above Yankee Stadium, seemed to encapsulate an entire era in this nation’s urban history. Across that decade, a wave of arson coursed through American cities, destroying entire neighborhoods home to poor communities of color.
Yet as historian Bench Ansfield demonstrates in Born in Flames, the most destructive fires were not set by residents, as is commonly assumed, but by landlords looking to collect insurance payouts. Driven by perverse incentives—new government-sponsored insurance combined with tanking property values—landlords hired “torches,” mostly Black and Brown youth, to set fires in the buildings, sometimes with people still living in them. Tens of thousands of families lost their homes to these blazes, yet for much of the 1970s, tenant vandalism and welfare fraud stood as the prevailing explanations for the arson wave, effectively indemnifying landlords.
Ansfield’s book, based on a decade of research, introduces the term “brownlining” for the destructive insurance practices imposed on poor communities of color under the guise of racial redress. Ansfield shows that as the FIRE industries—finance, insurance, and real estate— eclipsed manufacturing in the 1970s, they began profoundly reshaping Black and Brown neighborhoods, seeing them as easy sources of profit. At every step, Ansfield charts the tenant-led resistance movements that sprung up in the Bronx and elsewhere, as well as the explosion of popular culture around the fires, from iconic movies like The Towering Inferno to hit songs such as “Disco Inferno.” Ultimately, they show how similarly pernicious dynamics around insurance and race are still at play in our own era, especially in regions most at risk of climate shocks.
“[R]evelatory…Deeply researched and masterfully told.” —Brian Goldstone, New York Times Book Review
The explosive account of the arson wave that hit the Bronx and other American cities in the 1970s—and its legacy today.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning!” That legendary and apocryphal phrase, allegedly uttered by announcers during the 1977 World Series as flames rose above Yankee Stadium, seemed to encapsulate an entire era in this nation’s urban history. Across that decade, a wave of arson coursed through American cities, destroying entire neighborhoods home to poor communities of color.
Yet as historian Bench Ansfield demonstrates in Born in Flames, the most destructive fires were not set by residents, as is commonly assumed, but by landlords looking to collect insurance payouts. Driven by perverse incentives—new government-sponsored insurance combined with tanking property values—landlords hired “torches,” mostly Black and Brown youth, to set fires in the buildings, sometimes with people still living in them. Tens of thousands of families lost their homes to these blazes, yet for much of the 1970s, tenant vandalism and welfare fraud stood as the prevailing explanations for the arson wave, effectively indemnifying landlords.
Ansfield’s book, based on a decade of research, introduces the term “brownlining” for the destructive insurance practices imposed on poor communities of color under the guise of racial redress. Ansfield shows that as the FIRE industries—finance, insurance, and real estate— eclipsed manufacturing in the 1970s, they began profoundly reshaping Black and Brown neighborhoods, seeing them as easy sources of profit. At every step, Ansfield charts the tenant-led resistance movements that sprung up in the Bronx and elsewhere, as well as the explosion of popular culture around the fires, from iconic movies like The Towering Inferno to hit songs such as “Disco Inferno.” Ultimately, they show how similarly pernicious dynamics around insurance and race are still at play in our own era, especially in regions most at risk of climate shocks.
359 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 19, 2025
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August 1, 2025A necessary study that brings the remembered, experienced, and anecdotal into the realm of documented histories. Ansfield takes readers back to the transition from fire as urban protest to fire deliberately created by landlords to maximize insurance payouts- showing the direct experiences of victims, neighbors, torches, and poor communities- and how this collective experience was expressed in popular culture.. An important addition to the history of New York, urban studies, and previous works by Beryl Satter and Keeanga Yamahtta Taylor among others.
September 30, 2025
Racial capitalism! White collar crime! Hyper-local organizing! High drama in this niche history, all of which was news to me. It definitely had the vibe of a dissertation-turned-book in a fun hyperfixation “omg i can’t believe how much research they did” way.
I won a copy of this in a giveaway and put off reading it for months because it seemed like it would either be boring or traumatizing, but I’m glad i finally read it. Would recommend for folks who are interested in tenants’ rights, the origins of FAIR insurance plans, or how racial capitalism has impacted people across the US.
I won a copy of this in a giveaway and put off reading it for months because it seemed like it would either be boring or traumatizing, but I’m glad i finally read it. Would recommend for folks who are interested in tenants’ rights, the origins of FAIR insurance plans, or how racial capitalism has impacted people across the US.
September 15, 2025
In the wake of the 1967 riots in US cities Congress passed a law authorizing residual property insurance companies ("Fair Plans") in states. It was clear that that insurance companies were redlining predominantly black urban areas. The Fair Plans were required to issue policies to any eligible applicant regardless of the property location.
The Plans were successful in providing insurance access in many states. (Disclosure, I worked for the Massachusetts Fair Plan for 30 years.)
This book is about a very serious unintended consequence of the Fair Plans. In Bronx, New York unscrupulous property owners bought up distressed properties for small amounts. They insured them at much higher amounts with the New York Fair Plan, "NYPIUA", and then burned them in an arson for profit scheme.
The scope of the arson damage in the Bronx in the late 1970s is mind boggling. The Bronx lost 20% of its housing stock between 1970 and 1981. Whole blocks were burnt in the South Bronx. The area became the symbol for urban decay in the 1970s America.
Ansfield, in this deeply researched and well written books makes several important points.
First, the media and politicians at the time argued that the Bronx was burning because of fires set by black residents. There was even a theory it was being done to get welfare benefits. Ansfield is appropriately outraged that the victims were blamed for the crimes. The fires were intentionally set by organized gangs of wealthy, predominantly white, property owners who were defrauding insurance companies, and gave no thought to the lives and property of their tenants.
Second, he blames NYPIUA and the insurance industry for creating the conditions that lead to the arson. He argues the Fair Plan policies were expensive and subpar. He says that the rest of the market used the existence of the Fair Plan as an excuse to completely withdraw from those markets. He criticizes the Fair Plan for over insuring properties which can be a motive for arson.
I was somewhat confused by the arguments. The fact that the insurance was expensive would make arson less profitable. The policy didn't have liability or theft coverage, but that would not affect the decision to burn the property. The over-insurance argument is difficult to evaluate. Standard polices require an insurer to provide replacement cost coverage. This is particularly important in a Fair Pan since the goal is having damaged homes repaired and not abandoned.
Several years after the fair Plan was created a Lloyds Syndicate from England began using a Miami broker to back policies in the Bronx that were much less expensive than the NYPIUA policies. Many property owners in the Bronx switched to them and then burned their property. Ansfield tells the interesting story of how those policies where reinsured by a Brazilian reinsurer. The reinsurer refused to pay because the broker committed fraud. The Lloyds "names" became personally responsible. They filed suit against Lloyds, which was an unimaginable thing. It ended up causing a fundamental change in how Lloyds operates. The story is fascinating, and it is a very good look into the huge global world of insurance, but it is something of a digression from the main story.
My takeaway from the Lloyds story is that the arson continued, if not increased, when the price of policies was lowered, so NYPIUA's high prices didn't seem to be a cause.
Ansfield is telling this story in order to make a broad point about the effects of the financialization of the world economy. He argues that by the 1970s insurance companies viewed premiums as a source of funds to use in their investment portfolios. Paying claims and making underwriting profits was a secondary concern. As a result, the industry moved away from its traditional commitment of fighting arson and became less rigorous about investigating claims.
Eventually the arson subsided. Ansfield argues that tenant activism finally prompted governmental and industry action. The NYPIUA became active in fighting arson, as did the industry in general. The Bronx DA, Mario Merola, eventually made arson a priority. Probably the biggest factor was that property values started to go back up in the Bronx. It doesn't make sense to burn your property if you can sell it at a substantial profit.
This is a well told story. At times it bogs down in some of Anfield's theorizing. He clearly wants this to be seen as an example of the inherent flaws in our economic system. I lean more towards seeing it as a case of unintended consequences leading to tragic results.
The Plans were successful in providing insurance access in many states. (Disclosure, I worked for the Massachusetts Fair Plan for 30 years.)
This book is about a very serious unintended consequence of the Fair Plans. In Bronx, New York unscrupulous property owners bought up distressed properties for small amounts. They insured them at much higher amounts with the New York Fair Plan, "NYPIUA", and then burned them in an arson for profit scheme.
The scope of the arson damage in the Bronx in the late 1970s is mind boggling. The Bronx lost 20% of its housing stock between 1970 and 1981. Whole blocks were burnt in the South Bronx. The area became the symbol for urban decay in the 1970s America.
Ansfield, in this deeply researched and well written books makes several important points.
First, the media and politicians at the time argued that the Bronx was burning because of fires set by black residents. There was even a theory it was being done to get welfare benefits. Ansfield is appropriately outraged that the victims were blamed for the crimes. The fires were intentionally set by organized gangs of wealthy, predominantly white, property owners who were defrauding insurance companies, and gave no thought to the lives and property of their tenants.
Second, he blames NYPIUA and the insurance industry for creating the conditions that lead to the arson. He argues the Fair Plan policies were expensive and subpar. He says that the rest of the market used the existence of the Fair Plan as an excuse to completely withdraw from those markets. He criticizes the Fair Plan for over insuring properties which can be a motive for arson.
I was somewhat confused by the arguments. The fact that the insurance was expensive would make arson less profitable. The policy didn't have liability or theft coverage, but that would not affect the decision to burn the property. The over-insurance argument is difficult to evaluate. Standard polices require an insurer to provide replacement cost coverage. This is particularly important in a Fair Pan since the goal is having damaged homes repaired and not abandoned.
Several years after the fair Plan was created a Lloyds Syndicate from England began using a Miami broker to back policies in the Bronx that were much less expensive than the NYPIUA policies. Many property owners in the Bronx switched to them and then burned their property. Ansfield tells the interesting story of how those policies where reinsured by a Brazilian reinsurer. The reinsurer refused to pay because the broker committed fraud. The Lloyds "names" became personally responsible. They filed suit against Lloyds, which was an unimaginable thing. It ended up causing a fundamental change in how Lloyds operates. The story is fascinating, and it is a very good look into the huge global world of insurance, but it is something of a digression from the main story.
My takeaway from the Lloyds story is that the arson continued, if not increased, when the price of policies was lowered, so NYPIUA's high prices didn't seem to be a cause.
Ansfield is telling this story in order to make a broad point about the effects of the financialization of the world economy. He argues that by the 1970s insurance companies viewed premiums as a source of funds to use in their investment portfolios. Paying claims and making underwriting profits was a secondary concern. As a result, the industry moved away from its traditional commitment of fighting arson and became less rigorous about investigating claims.
Eventually the arson subsided. Ansfield argues that tenant activism finally prompted governmental and industry action. The NYPIUA became active in fighting arson, as did the industry in general. The Bronx DA, Mario Merola, eventually made arson a priority. Probably the biggest factor was that property values started to go back up in the Bronx. It doesn't make sense to burn your property if you can sell it at a substantial profit.
This is a well told story. At times it bogs down in some of Anfield's theorizing. He clearly wants this to be seen as an example of the inherent flaws in our economic system. I lean more towards seeing it as a case of unintended consequences leading to tragic results.
November 29, 2025
Wow, really fascinating! I had never heard of the Bronx fires but I sure knew capitalism sucked - it was an insane read.
November 20, 2025
An important book that connects a lot of dots! Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City continues the stories started in the rest of my New York history reading series. The start of Bench Ansfield’s book runs concurrently to Fear City: New York's Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics by Kim Phillips-Fein, but continues on for the entirety of the 1970s arson wave and its aftermath. In some ways, it is a precursor to Jonathan Mahler’s book, The Gods of New York: Egotists, Idealists, Opportunists, and the Birth of the Modern City, 1986-1990, because while this book does not focus as much on the Bronx, it does highlight the impact of financialization on New York in the late 80s and early 90s—something Ansfield previews in the 70s. And of course, the ghost of Robert Moses hovers large over this entire story, particularly his demolition of East Tremont to construct the Cross-Bronx Expressway and his overconcentration of public housing in the South Bronx. This makes Robert A. Caro’s The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York another important companion to Born in Flames, among others. This book also has left me wanting to read more about the history of co-op city and the Grand Concourse. If anyone has recommendations, I would welcome them!
How it worked: literally
Like I said, Born in Flames is focused on the 1970s arson wave, particularly its causes within the insurance and real estate industries, as well as its impacts on the neighborhoods of the Bronx. Ansfield shares that while many people peg late 1960s riots and uprisings as the main cause of destruction in the urban core, the arson wave actually did way more damage—and for less moral purposes. Here’s the narrative Ansfield lays out:
Landlords would buy residential apartment buildings from local savings banks who were offloading them for super cheap as the Bronx transitioned from a white immigrant enclave, and began to experience mortgage and insurance discrimination. These new landlords would then defer all maintenance while milking as much from rent collection as possible. Then, after stripping all sorts of value from the building and its residents, the landlords would set fire to their buildings and collect insurance payouts. This was only possible because while the landlords were not keeping up with repairs, tax bills, or any other charges, they were keeping up with their insurance premiums, in expectation of this payout. Because of the tangled web of reinsurance, many of the insurance agencies didn’t even feel the cost of paying out premiums for years and years. Their eventual losses were hidden by the investment gains they made from raking in lots of new money through the premiums.
Fire and FIRE: the twin perils of the time
While the tenants were often blamed for the fires, Ansfield reveals that the blame really lied with the period’s growth of FIRE sector (Finance, Industry, and Real Estate.) Unlike the thousands of residents who lost their homes, landlords were incentivized under the new system to burn down these buildings. The value of the homes became separated from the provision of actual housing, or even the receipt of rental income. In other words, the endless and heartless commodification of housing requires people to see houses as convertible assets, rather than places to live. When you see it this way, you begin to realize that at certain times, you can make more value off burning people’s homes than preserving them. Ansfield says it best:
Far from placing all of the blame on landlords themselves (though Ansfield is certainly not sympathetic to their destruction of people’s homes), Ansfield reveals how the growing specter of financialization allowed the insurance agencies to share in the profits of the arson wave, even as they paid out massive settlements. The companies hiked up premiums to pass on the losses, spread the risk across many industry peers through reinsurance schemes, and took payouts on the chin to avoid more costly lawsuits. This was only possible because their profits were no longer about the ratio of losses to premiums earned. They were about how much gains their investments could earn…like what they did with the cash sitting around from their premiums!!! They were no longer making money from selling insurance, they were making money from INVESTING the money from selling insurance. This critical shift had ruinous causes for many people in search of decent housing.
Brownlining = predatory inclusion
A lot of Ansfield’s work is about criticizing the New York Property Insurance Underwriting Association (NYPIUA), and how their desire to “correct” redlining in the insurance industry actually led to different problems (read: arson for profit.) While policymakers attempted to frame insurance access as a form of racial justice, it was clear that the broader austerity regime of 1970s New York could never be resolved by access to insurance coverage—particularly since the NYPIUA policies failed to provide any coverage for renters, who were the vast majority of Bronx residents impacted by the fires. If anything, this form of greater “access” just created more incentives for landlords to displace their tenants.
If you couldn’t get from what I’ve said so far, Born in Flames is a close bedfellow with Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor’s Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership. They even have a similar opening focus on the riots and the Kerner Commission (which was well known but never implemented.) However, Ansfield expands from this focus to cover the Hughes Commission, a simultaneous report that was immediately implemented to support insurance “reform.” Unfortunately, by attempting to separate the insurance gap from all other systems of oppression and forms of industry discrimination, the result was the sort of predatory inclusion that Taylor focuses on in the mortgage sector.
Lastly, I appreciated how Ansfield looked back to the ruinous start of the insurance field—this is far from the first time insurers have profited off other people’s demise. Ansfield covers insurance’s role in the slave trade and hand-in-hand formation with racial capitalism, particularly when discussing secondary insurers like Lloyd’s of London.
Relevance for today
I’d like to close with the many ways that this book feels incredibly important for where we are now, particularly in the affordable housing world. First, 1970s professionals’ claims that insurance access necessitated insurance fraud and arson is the exact sort of false equivalency that we see today, with people claiming that there’s no way to provide deeply affordable housing that doesn’t lead to profiteering. As Ansfield notes, there are some truly troubling patterns—such as how today, many of these unresolved societal problems are transferred onto affordable housing operators, who cannot solve the entirety of systemic issues with a $10K/unit operating budget. (There’s actually been a lot of recent coverage about how this issue, particularly with rising insurance costs, is impacting affordable developers in New York!!! However, maybe this is just one of many reasons why it will NEVERRRR work for affordable housing to hinge on a profitable business model!!!
Chapter 8’s focus on “corrective capitalism” and how the fire-decimated neighborhoods were rebuilt through the private property path of community development corporations (CDCs) is also so essential to where the affordable housing world is today as an industry. We have seen how that approach couldn’t fully address the challenges in need for housing, but are failing to meaningfully support other alternatives. We see one such alternative, the sweat equity approach, modeled by the People’s Development Corporation, a Bronx community organization that pegged its ownership less on the private property model, and more on the concept of people’s contributions to repairing housing qualifying them as owners of the homes. I love this model, but also see Ansfield’s points of how it was quickly co-opted to show that the government didn’t “need” to provide ample support for affordable housing development.
On the other hand, the CDCs also often started as community groups, and weren’t always intended to become mega-landlords, but it’s partially because their approach to rebuilding was more easily co-opted by the “Black capitalism” forces that were powerful at the time. (Marcia Chatelain’s Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America explains how these forces simultaneously influenced another industry.) Basically, the CDCs offered corporate and government interests this off-ramp to the more structural demands of the 1960s and 1970s. They were like “don’t worry about ending capitalism, just help us build this thing!” And the businesses were like “no structural change, just building a building? We know how to do that!!! AND I get reputation laundering AND a tax haven? Sign me up!!” Ansfield notes this as a model for rehabilitating revolutionaries into developers who were rehabilitating buildings…a parallel that might be worth thinking about in our modern goals of creating an enabling environment for community ownership models.
There are many other things Ansfield covers that brought up questions for me, but since this review is long, I’m going to try and rapid-fire the rest of it. The Bronx nostalgia about the “good old days” of white immigrants calls to mind Brandi Thompson Summers’ focus on how planners, historians, and developers often manufacture respectable or partial neighborhood histories. This concept is masterfully discussed in her book Black in Place: The Spatial Aesthetics of Race in a Post-Chocolate City. Insurance companies are also heavily invested in the modern affordable housing world, as primary funders for many CDFIs, and even investors in LIHTC projects. NYCHA buildings were the only ones that weren’t impacted by the arson wave, because it wasn’t profitable to burn them. This runs contrary to the last several decades’ attack on public housing preservation and expansion. Ansfield notes that the greatest defense against arson was tenant and community organizing, which sometimes even led to building buy-outs and co-op conversion. Some of the groups deeply involved in these fights, like the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, are still active today, and supporting the formation of CLTs in New York. The resident groups also shaped the tax lien policies created by the City, even though these ended up paying out bankers (who got first dibs on settlements.) Either way, these groups continued to help the powers that be understand that arson was an economic problem, not a crime problem. Finally, I will end with a quote from Ansfield that will be important for me to remember as another sort of underwriter:
Final thoughts
I would highly recommend this book—it taught me so much!!! I did feel like it was longer than it needed to be, but I get that Ansfield wanted to be exhaustive, and show the aftermath as well as the advent of the arson waves. However, I think maybe a few less detours would’ve been appropriate—I found myself losing interest as a reader during the Lloyd’s of London controversy and the protests against the Fort Apache: The Bronx movie. But, I’m sure another reader would find these detours to be essential context-builders. And, I guess it’s all important in the end!!!
How it worked: literally
Like I said, Born in Flames is focused on the 1970s arson wave, particularly its causes within the insurance and real estate industries, as well as its impacts on the neighborhoods of the Bronx. Ansfield shares that while many people peg late 1960s riots and uprisings as the main cause of destruction in the urban core, the arson wave actually did way more damage—and for less moral purposes. Here’s the narrative Ansfield lays out:
Landlords would buy residential apartment buildings from local savings banks who were offloading them for super cheap as the Bronx transitioned from a white immigrant enclave, and began to experience mortgage and insurance discrimination. These new landlords would then defer all maintenance while milking as much from rent collection as possible. Then, after stripping all sorts of value from the building and its residents, the landlords would set fire to their buildings and collect insurance payouts. This was only possible because while the landlords were not keeping up with repairs, tax bills, or any other charges, they were keeping up with their insurance premiums, in expectation of this payout. Because of the tangled web of reinsurance, many of the insurance agencies didn’t even feel the cost of paying out premiums for years and years. Their eventual losses were hidden by the investment gains they made from raking in lots of new money through the premiums.
Fire and FIRE: the twin perils of the time
While the tenants were often blamed for the fires, Ansfield reveals that the blame really lied with the period’s growth of FIRE sector (Finance, Industry, and Real Estate.) Unlike the thousands of residents who lost their homes, landlords were incentivized under the new system to burn down these buildings. The value of the homes became separated from the provision of actual housing, or even the receipt of rental income. In other words, the endless and heartless commodification of housing requires people to see houses as convertible assets, rather than places to live. When you see it this way, you begin to realize that at certain times, you can make more value off burning people’s homes than preserving them. Ansfield says it best:
Across the 1970s, the policies sold by the NYPIUA came to have less and less of a direct relationship with the safety and well-being of their corresponding properties. In the growing space between the building and the policy, between the property and its protection, between the thing and the abstraction dwelled the tenants of the Bronx, stranded in the brownlined American city. (70)
Far from placing all of the blame on landlords themselves (though Ansfield is certainly not sympathetic to their destruction of people’s homes), Ansfield reveals how the growing specter of financialization allowed the insurance agencies to share in the profits of the arson wave, even as they paid out massive settlements. The companies hiked up premiums to pass on the losses, spread the risk across many industry peers through reinsurance schemes, and took payouts on the chin to avoid more costly lawsuits. This was only possible because their profits were no longer about the ratio of losses to premiums earned. They were about how much gains their investments could earn…like what they did with the cash sitting around from their premiums!!! They were no longer making money from selling insurance, they were making money from INVESTING the money from selling insurance. This critical shift had ruinous causes for many people in search of decent housing.
Brownlining = predatory inclusion
A lot of Ansfield’s work is about criticizing the New York Property Insurance Underwriting Association (NYPIUA), and how their desire to “correct” redlining in the insurance industry actually led to different problems (read: arson for profit.) While policymakers attempted to frame insurance access as a form of racial justice, it was clear that the broader austerity regime of 1970s New York could never be resolved by access to insurance coverage—particularly since the NYPIUA policies failed to provide any coverage for renters, who were the vast majority of Bronx residents impacted by the fires. If anything, this form of greater “access” just created more incentives for landlords to displace their tenants.
If you couldn’t get from what I’ve said so far, Born in Flames is a close bedfellow with Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor’s Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership. They even have a similar opening focus on the riots and the Kerner Commission (which was well known but never implemented.) However, Ansfield expands from this focus to cover the Hughes Commission, a simultaneous report that was immediately implemented to support insurance “reform.” Unfortunately, by attempting to separate the insurance gap from all other systems of oppression and forms of industry discrimination, the result was the sort of predatory inclusion that Taylor focuses on in the mortgage sector.
Lastly, I appreciated how Ansfield looked back to the ruinous start of the insurance field—this is far from the first time insurers have profited off other people’s demise. Ansfield covers insurance’s role in the slave trade and hand-in-hand formation with racial capitalism, particularly when discussing secondary insurers like Lloyd’s of London.
Relevance for today
I’d like to close with the many ways that this book feels incredibly important for where we are now, particularly in the affordable housing world. First, 1970s professionals’ claims that insurance access necessitated insurance fraud and arson is the exact sort of false equivalency that we see today, with people claiming that there’s no way to provide deeply affordable housing that doesn’t lead to profiteering. As Ansfield notes, there are some truly troubling patterns—such as how today, many of these unresolved societal problems are transferred onto affordable housing operators, who cannot solve the entirety of systemic issues with a $10K/unit operating budget. (There’s actually been a lot of recent coverage about how this issue, particularly with rising insurance costs, is impacting affordable developers in New York!!! However, maybe this is just one of many reasons why it will NEVERRRR work for affordable housing to hinge on a profitable business model!!!
Chapter 8’s focus on “corrective capitalism” and how the fire-decimated neighborhoods were rebuilt through the private property path of community development corporations (CDCs) is also so essential to where the affordable housing world is today as an industry. We have seen how that approach couldn’t fully address the challenges in need for housing, but are failing to meaningfully support other alternatives. We see one such alternative, the sweat equity approach, modeled by the People’s Development Corporation, a Bronx community organization that pegged its ownership less on the private property model, and more on the concept of people’s contributions to repairing housing qualifying them as owners of the homes. I love this model, but also see Ansfield’s points of how it was quickly co-opted to show that the government didn’t “need” to provide ample support for affordable housing development.
On the other hand, the CDCs also often started as community groups, and weren’t always intended to become mega-landlords, but it’s partially because their approach to rebuilding was more easily co-opted by the “Black capitalism” forces that were powerful at the time. (Marcia Chatelain’s Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America explains how these forces simultaneously influenced another industry.) Basically, the CDCs offered corporate and government interests this off-ramp to the more structural demands of the 1960s and 1970s. They were like “don’t worry about ending capitalism, just help us build this thing!” And the businesses were like “no structural change, just building a building? We know how to do that!!! AND I get reputation laundering AND a tax haven? Sign me up!!” Ansfield notes this as a model for rehabilitating revolutionaries into developers who were rehabilitating buildings…a parallel that might be worth thinking about in our modern goals of creating an enabling environment for community ownership models.
There are many other things Ansfield covers that brought up questions for me, but since this review is long, I’m going to try and rapid-fire the rest of it. The Bronx nostalgia about the “good old days” of white immigrants calls to mind Brandi Thompson Summers’ focus on how planners, historians, and developers often manufacture respectable or partial neighborhood histories. This concept is masterfully discussed in her book Black in Place: The Spatial Aesthetics of Race in a Post-Chocolate City. Insurance companies are also heavily invested in the modern affordable housing world, as primary funders for many CDFIs, and even investors in LIHTC projects. NYCHA buildings were the only ones that weren’t impacted by the arson wave, because it wasn’t profitable to burn them. This runs contrary to the last several decades’ attack on public housing preservation and expansion. Ansfield notes that the greatest defense against arson was tenant and community organizing, which sometimes even led to building buy-outs and co-op conversion. Some of the groups deeply involved in these fights, like the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, are still active today, and supporting the formation of CLTs in New York. The resident groups also shaped the tax lien policies created by the City, even though these ended up paying out bankers (who got first dibs on settlements.) Either way, these groups continued to help the powers that be understand that arson was an economic problem, not a crime problem. Finally, I will end with a quote from Ansfield that will be important for me to remember as another sort of underwriter:
The history of insurance redlining and brownlining shows us that entering into an insurance contract is never a neutral act. Insurance is, at its core, an apparatus for spreading and sharing risks; industry judgments about which risks are pooled together, who receives what type of coverage, and at what rates they are covered are all political decisions. (86)
Final thoughts
I would highly recommend this book—it taught me so much!!! I did feel like it was longer than it needed to be, but I get that Ansfield wanted to be exhaustive, and show the aftermath as well as the advent of the arson waves. However, I think maybe a few less detours would’ve been appropriate—I found myself losing interest as a reader during the Lloyd’s of London controversy and the protests against the Fort Apache: The Bronx movie. But, I’m sure another reader would find these detours to be essential context-builders. And, I guess it’s all important in the end!!!
October 6, 2025
Going into this with almost no knowledge of the insurance industry, economics, or Community Development Corporations, this whole book was very eye-opening (though occasionally over my head). Really well-written and organized, it felt very coherent throughout, and really painted a picture of both the problems and the solutions to the complex landlord arson mess of the 1970s.
November 15, 2025
Deeply researched and well-told story of how the housing market and the insurance industry orchestrated the burning of thousands of buildings and the displacement of 300,000 people in the Bronx. One angle into the nature of the housing crisis in American cities. Essential book for that.
August 18, 2025
I haven't gotten to read the whole thing yet but as a friend of the author, I've been following their work for years and know what a brilliant, heartbreaking and important work this is.
November 22, 2025
How poor government policy and capitalism combine to create an inferno.
September 9, 2025
When one reaches a certain age, the need and pricing of insurance becomes much more important to affordability and daily concerns. Bench Ansfield's Born in Flames: The Business or Arson and the Remaking of the American City excoriates the greed and wolves overseeing sheep nature of fire insurance. The post war years saw the birth and explosive growth of the suburbs in American life, lowering the capabilities and funding of cities to the point where insurance companies joined the flight.
Ansfield's main focus is on the Bronx where landlords or their hired pawns managed to burn 20 % of the boroughs available housing. The governmental response to the insurance vacuum was the implementation of Fair Access to Insurance Requirements that did not have the same level of criteria or even application, causing some landlord to be able to insure beyond their property's actual value.
The book traces these political and company changes, showing how insurance companies and their representatives were well placed to control much of the laws for longer than anyone should be comfortable. But Ansfield also shows the resident side of this, the ones burned out of home, sometimes multiple times. In the eye opening introduction, Ansfield uses the found object artwork of Roberto Ramirez painting of burning brick as the entry point to the concerns and psychological toll of always needing to be ready to leave at too loud sounds or the smell of gasoline.
Recommended to readers of true crime, life in American Cities and myth busting.
I received a free digital version of this book via NetGalley thanks to the publisher.
Ansfield's main focus is on the Bronx where landlords or their hired pawns managed to burn 20 % of the boroughs available housing. The governmental response to the insurance vacuum was the implementation of Fair Access to Insurance Requirements that did not have the same level of criteria or even application, causing some landlord to be able to insure beyond their property's actual value.
The book traces these political and company changes, showing how insurance companies and their representatives were well placed to control much of the laws for longer than anyone should be comfortable. But Ansfield also shows the resident side of this, the ones burned out of home, sometimes multiple times. In the eye opening introduction, Ansfield uses the found object artwork of Roberto Ramirez painting of burning brick as the entry point to the concerns and psychological toll of always needing to be ready to leave at too loud sounds or the smell of gasoline.
Recommended to readers of true crime, life in American Cities and myth busting.
I received a free digital version of this book via NetGalley thanks to the publisher.
December 8, 2025
A tight history of how efforts to end redlining met the rapidly financializing insurance industry in the late 60s to 70s, causing waves of landlord arson which devastated the Bronx. This devastation was possible in no small part thanks to the assumed criminality of the borough's large Black and Latinx population, allowing the profit trail from the fires to exist in broad daylight without much investigation from the insurance industries, or the government.
The first half is more of a larger cultural overlook regarding various social institutions and how they interlocked. The second half leans more towards history. However, the timeline really pings back and forth throughout the book so I often had to flip back and cross-reference what was happening when/simultaneously.
In the current context of the destruction of Gaza, this book provides a very recognizable frame regarding the advancing of industry at the cost of the lives and livelihoods of a people labelled savage and self-destructive. The booming business of war (whether it's overseas or against marginalized surveilled populations within America) and how it's 'insured' by a collusion between private and public investment is a rich topic.
The first half is more of a larger cultural overlook regarding various social institutions and how they interlocked. The second half leans more towards history. However, the timeline really pings back and forth throughout the book so I often had to flip back and cross-reference what was happening when/simultaneously.
In the current context of the destruction of Gaza, this book provides a very recognizable frame regarding the advancing of industry at the cost of the lives and livelihoods of a people labelled savage and self-destructive. The booming business of war (whether it's overseas or against marginalized surveilled populations within America) and how it's 'insured' by a collusion between private and public investment is a rich topic.
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September 9, 2025A very well researched exploration of arson in the Bronx. I appreciated the way Ansfield traced so many intersecting lines of power and thoroughly deconstructed the bizarre but persistent myth that lower income residents were the ones setting their own homes on fire.
I do wish there had been some broader context about arson in other cities. I get that this is focused on the Bronx, but the subtitle references "the American City," while the book only really addresses "an American City." A little more comparative analysis would have really strengthened this, for me, even if it was just at the end or part of an appendix.
I also didn't totally get the point of all the pop culture analysis? There are some narratives that definitely deserved exploration, because they clearly influenced policy makers' attitudes, treatment by the policy and fire brigade, etc. But the sections dedicated to how fire was referenced in popular music? Sorry, it just felt like a stretch to me.
I do wish there had been some broader context about arson in other cities. I get that this is focused on the Bronx, but the subtitle references "the American City," while the book only really addresses "an American City." A little more comparative analysis would have really strengthened this, for me, even if it was just at the end or part of an appendix.
I also didn't totally get the point of all the pop culture analysis? There are some narratives that definitely deserved exploration, because they clearly influenced policy makers' attitudes, treatment by the policy and fire brigade, etc. But the sections dedicated to how fire was referenced in popular music? Sorry, it just felt like a stretch to me.
December 31, 2025
Insightful study of the relationship between finance and insurance firms and urban neighborhoods, with a focus on arson, decay, and revitalization in the mid-20th century Bronx. Thoroughly-researched and full of interesting details.
Given my interests, I was happy to see a lot of economics under the hood: competition between public and private providers, adverse selection, moral hazard, equilibrium sorting, and optimal stopping, to name a few. Adding it to my growing list of books by historians and sociologists that urban economists should read.
My primary knock on the book is that it contains a lot of not-so-subtle shots at modern financial capitalism, namely private insurance providers, without explaining how or why alternative systems would improve outcomes. My suspicion is that private insurers, while profit-maximizing, are not the almost uniformly bad actors that the author makes them out to be. The design of regulation seems the first-order problem.
Given my interests, I was happy to see a lot of economics under the hood: competition between public and private providers, adverse selection, moral hazard, equilibrium sorting, and optimal stopping, to name a few. Adding it to my growing list of books by historians and sociologists that urban economists should read.
My primary knock on the book is that it contains a lot of not-so-subtle shots at modern financial capitalism, namely private insurance providers, without explaining how or why alternative systems would improve outcomes. My suspicion is that private insurers, while profit-maximizing, are not the almost uniformly bad actors that the author makes them out to be. The design of regulation seems the first-order problem.
October 4, 2025
systematic racism deems some zip codes unprofitable for real estate investment; most of those who live in these zips are renters, at the whims of investors lamenting lost profit. real estate unprofitable bc renters are 1) poor 2) pissed about being poor so will occasionally fuck shit up.
a VERY SMALL % o capitalists use arson to exploit the blame to renters/legislation inefficiencies/ to get more profits outta real estate. a VERY SMALL % o renters use arson to exploit getting to top of list of less shitty (section8) apts, or to exploit their systematic racism anger and frustration.
this book acknowledges all, yet concludes the capitalists are worse than renters... a subjective argument (as voters weigh in on side of conservative capitalist policies), which this book claims is an objective good (renters) vs bad (capitalists).
a VERY SMALL % o capitalists use arson to exploit the blame to renters/legislation inefficiencies/ to get more profits outta real estate. a VERY SMALL % o renters use arson to exploit getting to top of list of less shitty (section8) apts, or to exploit their systematic racism anger and frustration.
this book acknowledges all, yet concludes the capitalists are worse than renters... a subjective argument (as voters weigh in on side of conservative capitalist policies), which this book claims is an objective good (renters) vs bad (capitalists).
November 25, 2025
I found the premise of this book interesting, but I really disliked the writing. I found the narration annoying: the author uses pejorative language when quoting people his dislikes — one person “babbled,” another “droned.” He shoehorns other issues into the text: there’s a mention of Chicago’s Disco Demolition Night into a section on gay connections to arson, and there’s a mention of climate change at the end. Neither is relevant.
My biggest complaint is how the author minimizes and excuses bad behavior on the part of building residents in order to pin more blame on the landlord villains. For sure, the landlords who paid torches to burn their buildings are awful, but tenants who burn their own homes to get priority in public housing are not? Both are breaking laws in response to incentives.
My biggest complaint is how the author minimizes and excuses bad behavior on the part of building residents in order to pin more blame on the landlord villains. For sure, the landlords who paid torches to burn their buildings are awful, but tenants who burn their own homes to get priority in public housing are not? Both are breaking laws in response to incentives.
July 20, 2025
WOW.
This in depth history of the wave of arson crimes in the 1970's was FASCINATING. The author brings in pop culture, firsthand historical documents, analysis of architecture as well as city planning, the experience of people living in the "inner city ghettos," the impact upon law enforcement and firefighters, and the evils of the insurance companies and landlords.
Like watching a true crime story unfold, you discover that the young men of color who were arrested for burning their own neighborhoods weren't the true criminals.
Not an easy read, but for me, at least, it thoroughly covered a slice of history that was completely unknown to me. Really great illustrations throughout make the dense scholarships lightened up.
This in depth history of the wave of arson crimes in the 1970's was FASCINATING. The author brings in pop culture, firsthand historical documents, analysis of architecture as well as city planning, the experience of people living in the "inner city ghettos," the impact upon law enforcement and firefighters, and the evils of the insurance companies and landlords.
Like watching a true crime story unfold, you discover that the young men of color who were arrested for burning their own neighborhoods weren't the true criminals.
Not an easy read, but for me, at least, it thoroughly covered a slice of history that was completely unknown to me. Really great illustrations throughout make the dense scholarships lightened up.
October 3, 2025
While this was a very important book about housing displacement, greed, racism, and urban neglect, it was too didactic, detailed, and repetitive to keep my interest for long. I would read one chapter, but then, the writing would become too academic and thesis oriented to the point I couldn't remember what I had read. I also wanted more context and history for how the Bronx transformed from the 50s to the 60s with interviews and stories beyond the financialization of insurance. That detail was crucial for the why of the book, but it doesn't get to its emotional center since personal accounts are scant and underdeveloped.
November 20, 2025
It’s an important book and I learned a lot. It isn’t exactly riveting and it starts off pretty slow with a masters class in insurance and some pretty technical financial history. It picks up as it applies those concepts, exposes the systemic racism and gets more into the history. But ultimately it’s really a book about insurance. Which is still a very necessary book and an overlooked companion to the mortgage redlining that gets much more attention. Definitely glad I read it. Would hesitate to recommend to any of my less stalwart reader friends.
August 23, 2025
While it's not my style of reading, it was extremely well written and very informative. The writer bio states that the author won a prize for best dissertation in American history. I believe this may be said dissertation. It is full of facts and footnotes. For anyone interested in the arson epidemic of the past, this is the book for you. Again, while it is not my style, I encourage everyone interested in the recent history of some of the bigger cities to read this book.
December 14, 2025
Amazing book. I would give it more stars if there were more to give. Should win many awards. Deeply and impressively researched. Now the truth is finally out as to why the Bronx and other urban areas burned. A huge contribution to the history of the Bronx in particular and of American cities and American capitalism in general.
September 9, 2025
Interesting, highly detailed read for the right person that's interested in a form of institutionalized racism combined with insurance fraud.
October 9, 2025
Fascinating read about arson, insurance, fear, perseverance. Probably read and learned more about insurance than all other books combined. Insurance = scam?
November 9, 2025
I thought the topic sounded fascinating but wasn’t prepared to spend so much time reading about insurance, reinsurance, globalization of risk, etc. Not the author’s fault.
December 29, 2025
Learned a lot, but the lack of personal narrative kept it from being engaging enough to keep my interest
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