Why Black Homeownership Rates Lag Even As The Housing Market Recovers
By Gail MarksJarvis, Chicago Tribune | July 21st, 2017 A decade after the housing crash destroyed the American Dream for millions of homeowners, black homeownership rates have dropped to levels not seen since the 1960s, hobbling African-Americans' efforts to build their wealth. Nationally, only 42.2 percent of blacks owned homes in 2016, compared with 71.9 percent of whites, according to a new report by Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. And in Chicago, the gap between black and white homeownership rates is even more extreme. Only 38.9 percent of African-Americans owned homes in the Chicago area in 2015, compared with [...]