Policymakers get ahead of themselves sometimes, especially when it comes to the complicated world of housing policy. How often do we stop and ask if our system can produce the results we seek — things like stability, affordability, quality, equitable access, and narrowing the racial wealth gap? Will tinkering work or do we need to overhaul the whole system? A cold look at the facts raises some real questions about the viability of our current system, and increasingly progressive leaders are talking about major interventions in the housing market.
“The American housing market is existentially, institutionally, systemically, irredeemably, unalterably racist to its core. It has always been. It will always be. As long as we rely on it to produce housing, these are the outcomes we will continue to get-50+ yrs after Fair Housing,” author and Princeton professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor tweeted recently, citing an article showing a widespread pattern of discrimination against people of color among mortgage lenders. Taylor’s most recent book is Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Home Ownership.
The Fair Housing Act of 1968 was intended to rid the housing industry of racist, discriminatory practices that enforced a segregated America and denied stability and wealth-building opportunities to Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC). However, as Taylor noted, America’s housing landscape has continuously reproduced those inequalities and found new ways to discriminate against BIPOC folks.
Black household wealth formation has never caught up to White households and the reasons are myriad and many of them are by design. Some are blatant like the aforementioned mortgage lending discrimination, but others are more subtle, like exclusionary zoning and the fact homes in Black neighborhoods will be valued less than equivalent homes in White neighborhoods, denying Black families wealth-building chances and making them more likely to be underwater on their mortgage. Relatedly, Black households were much more likely to lose their home during the Great Recession and their household wealth was much slower to rebound.
