The Housing Divide examines the generational patterns in New York City's housing market and neighborhoods along the lines of race and ethnicity. The book provides an in-depth analysis of many immigrant groups in New York, especially providing an understanding of the opportunities and discriminatory practices at work from one generation to the next. Through a careful read of such factors as home ownership, housing quality, and neighborhood rates of crime, welfare enrollment, teenage pregnancy, and educational achievement, Emily Rosenbaum and Samantha Friedman provide a detailed portrait of neighborhood life and socio-economic status for the immigrants of New York.

The book paints an important, if disturbing, picture. The authors argue that not only are Blacks—regardless of generation—disadvantaged relative to members of other racial/ethnic groups in their ability to obtain housing in high-quality neighborhoods, but that housing and neighborhood conditions actually decline over generations. Rosenbaum and Friedman's findings suggest that the future of racial inequality in this country will increasingly isolate Blacks from all other groups. In other words, the “color line” may be shifting from a line separating Blacks from Whites to one separating Blacks from all non-Blacks.