The African American rate of homeownership in the United States

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The African American rate of homeownership in the United States has been on the decline despite the nation experiencing low unemployment rate as well as a higher wage rate than in the past years (Bocian, Li & Ernst, 2010). There are lots of barriers that continue to bar African Americans from becoming homeowners. In the year 2017, the rate of homeownership among African Americans was among the lowest ever since the passing of the Fair Housing Act of 1968. There was a stagnant rate in the number of black homeownership with a minute growth for over 22 years. Between 1994 and 2016, the percentage of black homeownership grew with only 0.3% with other groups such as the non-black Latinos, Asians and the whites had higher growth rates.

In the year 2017, the rate of African American homeownership was at 43%, which was behind the homeownership of all Americans at 63.9% (Goodman & Mayer, 2018). The rate of the white homeownership rises 72.9% implying that three-quarters of the white Americans have access to homeownership compared to the rate of blacks that indicate that less than half of the African Americans have access to homeownership. In the same year, 2017, the rate of homeownership among the non-black Hispanic soared to 46.2%. The statistics indicate an overall decline in the rate of homeownership among blacks since 2004.

Various reasons can be attributed to the decline of the black homeownership in the US that includes the lingering effect of the 2007 financial crisis that devastated the Black homeowners leading to the loss of their homes to mortgage (Klyuev, 2008). Another reason is attributed to the lack of affordable housing and the increasing student’s debts that has affected a large number of black graduates. Only 18% of the black young adults owned a home between 1999 and 2015. Racial discrimination also plays a crucial role in reducing the rate of black homeownership as according to statics, 1 out of 5- that is 20 % of African Americans were denied access to the conventional home loans compared to only 7.9% of the white (Kuebler & Rugh, 2013). 39% of the black home loan applications were rejected while only 22.9% of the white applications were denied.

Reference

Bocian, D. G., Li, W., & Ernst, K. S. (2010). Foreclosures by race and ethnicity. Center for Responsible Lending, 4-6.

Goodman, L. S., & Mayer, C. (2018). Homeownership and the American dream. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 32(1), 31-58.

Klyuev, M. V. (2008). What goes up must come down? House price dynamics in the United States (No. 8-187). International Monetary Fund.

Kuebler, M., & Rugh, J. S. (2013). New evidence on racial and ethnic disparities in homeownership in the United States from 2001 to 2010. Social Science Research, 42(5), 1357-1374.