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To avoid an increase of residents being pushed out of their homes due to gentrification and rising taxes, Rice says more states need to adopt homestead programs in which tax relief benefits are given to eligible homeowners who are struggling to pay their bills. In Detroit, for example, a third of the city's properties have foreclosed since 2008 as a result of rising costs and tax inflation due to gentrification. Recently, an investigation by The Detroit News found that homeowners in the city had collectively been overtaxed by at least $600 million following the Great Recession, meaning that a majority of residents faced an unfair surcharge in taxes on their property. As a result of this tax foreclosure crisis, Michigan's Black homeownership rate dropped from over 50% in 2000, to 40% in 2016. To fully estimate the implications for homeownership, we would have to consider first-time vs. repeat buying, home sales, and household growth rates which is beyond the scope of this work. However, homebuying trends are indicative of potential shifts in homeownership and an important part of the equation.
The Mortgage Bankers Association has launched Convergence Memphis, an initiative that aims to increase African-American homeownership in Memphis, Tennessee, by employing a “collective action” model of cross-sector partnerships. Golding says homebuyers with less wealth and lower credit scores are still being asked to pay more today. "It seems that we're asking the victims to pay and to pay again for what was really not their fault," he says.
Black Americans And The Racist Architecture Of Homeownership
Prior to the pandemic, Black homeownership had already hit a record low of 40.6% in the second quarter of 2019. Though that figure increased to 47% for the second quarter of 2020, data from the U.S. Since returning home from college in 2012, McAllister says he's seen how homeownership has shifted in his neighborhood with many long-term residents moving out as home prices have increased over the last few years. Right now, homes in Bedford-Stuyvesant are selling for a little over $1 million, according to Zillow. But, with the coronavirus impacting the economy, home prices across the U.S. are expected to fall by 2-3% this year, making it even more important for McAllister to hold on to his family's brownstone.
By the time the Fair Housing Act was passed in 1968, many of those homes that millions of WWII Vets and other Black families might have been able to afford in the 1940s were no longer affordable, Rothstein says. He was incredibly knowledgeable about the areas we visited and gave us plenty of time in each. We went on a small train in Strasbourg then were given about an hour to explore. George also personally walked us around Baden-Baden and made sure we hit all of the highlights.
Eintracht Frankfurt
In May 2021, the number of Black buyers increased by 41.4% YOY, and the non-Black buyers surged by 49.9%. The larger difference in the growth rate could be driven by the skyrocketing price growth last May. In May, the year-over-year increase in median sales price reached a new record high (20%) and has not been surpassed since then. Data shows that several swing states where Black homeownership dropped between 2008 and 2016 — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin —also saw significant decreases in Black voter turnout in an extremely close election. For example, Black homeownership was near 45% in Michigan in 2008, with Black voter turnout north of 70%, but dropped below 40% in 2016, with voter turnout also dropping to 60%.
Homeownership is a major component of individual wealth in America, and racial disparities in homeownership therefore play a role in determining how wealth is distributed across demographic groups. For more data on the demographics of income, plus education, policing and more, visit the race in America page. Presidential candidate Joe Biden recently released the fourth pillar of his Build Back Better agenda focusing on advancing racial equity amidst the nation’s economic recovery from COVID-19.
Topic pages give a complete story through data visualizations
Although more than half a century has passed since the law’s implementation, the homeownership rate gap still exists. In 2018, 50 years after the execution of the law, the homeownership rate for Black families was 42.1%, and the rate for U.S. total families was 64.4%. While Black is not the race group with the smallest number of homebuyers and homeowners, it is the group that experiences the lowest homeownership rates, meaning it has the smallest number of homeowners relative to the total Black population in the U.S., for decades. Back in 1960, the homeownership rate among Black households was 38.4%, and the rate for all U.S. households, of any race, was 61.9%.
LendingTree, a Charlotte, North Carolina-based mortgage website, recently ranked the 50 largest metro areas in the country by the percentage of the black population that owns a home. "Decades of systemic racism have left millions of minority households behind, a system NAR regrettably helped perpetuate a half century ago," the group said. "Over recent years, NAR has recommitted itself to rectifying mistakes of the past, dismantling lingering nationwide housing inequities, and advocating for policies which ensure the market is more accessible in the years to come."
Other sections within the club
Most of the population of Hesse lives in the southern part, in the Rhine Main Area. The principal cities of the area include Frankfurt am Main, Wiesbaden, Darmstadt, Offenbach, Hanau, Giessen, Wetzlar, and Limburg. Other major towns in Hesse are Fulda in the east, and Kassel and Marburg an der Lahn in the north. The densely populated Rhine-Main region is much better developed than the rural areas in the middle and northern parts of Hesse. According to data from the Urban Institute, housing costs, combined with increased health-care expenses, can easily lead to financial insecurity for older Americans who are retired. The increase in neighborhood taxes and home prices due to gentrification often has a disproportionate impact on senior residents of color, McCargo explains, who are then forced to sell their homes to cover other expenses.
Since 1925 their stadium has been the Waldstadion, which is currently named Deutsche Bank Park for sponsorship reasons. Hesse is accessed by many major rail lines, including the high-speed lines Cologne–Frankfurt(op.speed 300 km/h) and Hanover–Würzburg. Other north-south connections traverse major east–west routes from Wiesbaden and Mainz to Frankfurt and from Hanau and Aschaffenburg to Fulda and Kassel.
Technology is a key factor in eliminating the homeownership gap, and the housing and financial services space should prioritize eliminating technology bias. The Tech Equity Initiative, launched by the National Fair Housing Alliance, combats the bias in risk-based scoring systems and automated underwriting systems for home purchases. Because 70 percent of net new households between 2021 and 2025 will be minority headed, addressing technology bias will enhance housing initiatives that take advantage of the digital space. These market gaps highlight a disparity between those with the desire to purchase a home and those able to do so. The panelists, however, stated that this gap could be overcome through homeowner education and counseling.
Given that Black families’ homeownership rates are historically lower than their peers in the past, a faster increase in the number of Black homebuyers relative to other buyers could indicate an improving homeownership rate. The researchers analyzed nearly 10 million home loans and found that Black and Latinx borrowers are still being charged more, even after controlling for risk. That means Black and Latinx homebuyers with the same credit score and percent down payment as white homebuyers are still paying more for their loans, despite posing no additional risk to the lender — which amounts to illegal discrimination, based on past court rulings. A third barrier to homeownership that disproportionately affects Black borrowers is mortgage insurance, which is typically required if a borrower makes a down payment that is less than 20% of the loan amount. In fact, 9 in 10 Black homebuyers pay for mortgage insurance compared to only 6 in 10 white homebuyers. And insurance is just another way the financial system accounts for risk — the cost of which is passed on to the "risky" homebuyer.
A financial innovation called "mortgage-securitization" incentivized investors to sell as many loans as possible. Lenders would often steer homebuyers who could have qualified for conventional government mortgages into riskier loans that put more money in the lenders' pockets — telling buyers they could have a bigger house, lower payments, or both. The underlying idea was to create panic among white homebuyers by creating the expectation that Black homebuyers were moving in and would, in turn, lower property values in their neighborhoods. There are accounts of real estate agents recruiting Black people to walk around white neighborhoods with strollers to create the impression that African American families were settling in. The white plaintiffs claimed Black homeowners in Sugar Hill would lead to declining property values in the neighborhood, even though their Black neighbors had well-maintained properties with increasing home values. Such racist thinking was in line with the dominant logic of the real estate industry at the time — the logic underlying redlining.
In order to secure down payment assistance for first-generation homebuyers, more funding is needed. Stegman proposes parlaying a current fee for single-family mortgages purchased or guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which will expire in October, to a down payment assistance fund for first-generation homebuyers. More recently, predatory lenders specifically targeted Black homeowners during the housing crisis, which stripped them of their home equity and caused many to lose their homes. Within the football section, the sports club directly manages only the youth system and the reserve team. The professional footballers are managed as a separate limited corporation, Eintracht Frankfurt Fußball-AG, which is a subsidiary of the parent club.
People & Society
Not all mortgage brokers help their clients dig through paperwork and small disputes to get a better loan. But Alston says most Americans lack an understanding of a complex financial system, so this kind of guidance goes a long way. "It has nothing to do with intelligence. It has to do with familiarity with financial operations," he says. "I didn't even consider homeownership just because I thought it was out of my grasp — not so much financially, but just the fact that maybe I was too old to own a home and I just didn't want all the responsibility that came with it," Norrington says.
It looked as though they would be out again in 1998–99, but they pulled through by beating defending champions Kaiserslautern 5–1, while 1. FC Nürnberg unexpectedly lost at home to give Eintracht the break they needed to stay up. The following year, in another struggle to avoid relegation, the club was "fined" two points by the German Football Association for financial misdeeds, but pulled through with a win by a late goal over SSV Ulm on the last day of the season.
