The homeownership rate for black Americans fell under 41% in 2019 — pushing it below the levels in the years immediately after racial discrimination in housing was banned more than 50 years ago.
Gaps in homeownership rates exacerbate existing racial wealth disparities and hamper the financial stability of the broader community, said Donnell Williams, president of the National Association of Real Estate Brokers, who recently spoke to the group’s Charlotte chapter.
“It affects generations. Your children and your children’s children,” he said. “Because once we own our home, it is financial security.”
During the second quarter of 2019, 40.6% of African Americans nationwide were homeowners. That’s lower than the rate in 1970, just two years after the Fair Housing Act passed. It protects Americans against housing discrimination based on race, religion, sex and other demographic characteristics.
The homeowner rate for black Americans rebounded to 44% by the end of 2019, but was still far lower than 73.7% of white Americans and 65.1% of all Americans who owned a home, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Williams shared the findings of his organization’s annual “State of Housing in Black America” report, which details homeownership rates, loan patterns and economic mobility for African Americans.
That disparity now has reached a key demographic: white millennials are homeowners at nearly three times the rate of their black counterparts — 46% to 16%, respectively, according to the report.
About 1.7 million black millennials in the United States earning $100,000 a year are financially ready to buy but haven’t, Williams said. People in that generation — those born between 1981 and 1996 — aren’t buying homes at the rate their parents and grandparents did, the report shows.
“These are the lingering effects of the recession,” Williams said. “They may have seen Mom and Dad get foreclosed on. They may be, for first time in their whole family, homeowners.”
Other factors, including student loans and credit issues increase financial pressure on younger potential borrowers and leave many thinking buying a house isn’t possible for them, said Faith Triggs, a real estate broker and member of Charlotte Crown Black Real Estate Association.
Financial counseling and down payment assistance can help get them ready, she said, but it can take much longer than other clients. Triggs said she sees the long-standing effects of now-outlawed discriminatory practices like redlining, when the government and private sector excluded African Americans from buying homes in certain neighborhoods and denied access to loans and other financial services.
“We have all of these all these issues with particularly within the black community because we have been abused by the system,” she said. “We (as real estate agents) have to go back in and build trust.”
This work was made possible in part by grant funding from Report for America/GroundTruth Project and the Foundation For The Carolinas.
Credits: Lauren Lindstrom | Charlotte Observer