Homes for equity
Sign our petition: Close the racial wealth gap in Boston by establishing
Homes for Equity.
Report release: City, state, and industry roles in housing discrimination
To achieve housing and wealth equity requires that we acknowledge historic and current discriminatory housing practices and explicitly commit to remedying the economic harm.
We and our partners at StarLuna Consulting have done extensive research to document the history of harm caused by housing discrimination in our Homes for Equity pilot neighborhood, Roxbury, Massachusetts.
Our reports show the pervasiveness of housing discrimination across many decades, and illustrate the ways both historical and current policies and patterns of discrimination harm potential homebuyers of color.
The Housing Ownership Loan Corporation, established by the US Congress in the 1930s, created Residential Security maps color-coded based on the “risk” level of the area: red for hazardous, yellow for declining, blue for desirable, and green for best. Thus the harmful practice of “red-lining” began.
Source: www.bostonpoliticalreview.org
What is Homes for Equity?
Homes for Equity (HFE) is a first-of-its-kind initiative that creates equitable access to homeownership for People of Color who have experienced housing discrimination, allowing them to build intergenerational wealth.
Why is homeownership so important?
Homeownership is not only part of the American dream, it is also how many families build economic security. Parents use the equity in their homes to pay for college or provide home purchase assistance for their children. Yet for decades, white households bought homes and generated wealth supported by public policies and private actions that excluded Black households from buying homes, contributing to stark racial inequality in wealth.
Stories of discrimination
As part of our research on housing discrimination, we interviewed Roxbury residents who have experienced it. Meet the participants of our oral history project and hear their stories.
Did you know?
Decades of redlining, predatory lending, and other discriminatory practices have denied Black households both access and opportunity to own homes.
Massachusetts ranks 46th in the country for homeownership disparities, and white families are two times more likely to own a home than Black families.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston found that white households in Boston have $247,000 in assets on average, while Black households have assets of only $8.
A legal basis in the Fair Housing Act
The Fair Housing Act prohibits housing discrimination based on race. It also establishes an obligation to remedy or reverse conditions of housing discrimination.
The Homes for Equity team posits that the economic harm caused by housing discrimination is so great, it creates an obligation to remedy the harm. Our goal is to employ a racial disparity lens to address housing supply, affordability, and financing. We seek to sponsor race-conscious buyer selection for affordable homes with greater owner access to the equity and appreciation of their homes.
We are prepared to make and test our model in Massachusetts, and then lift up our program design so it is readily deployed nationwide.
A dual approach to restorative homeownership
The Homes for Equity pilot focuses on two areas key to restorative homeownership: financing and policy changes that allow:
Explicit race-conscious marketing and buyer selection; and
Greater home equity appreciation to build wealth among buyers of color.
We will work with individual cities and towns, starting with the City of Boston, to negotiate the terms of the Homes for Equity initiative in each locality.
Our goal is to reform policies to begin to redress the economic harm through housing discrimination experienced by generations of Black families. Within the affordable housing sector, subsidy terms limit the ability of homeowners to realize the market value of their homes, and deed restrictions on affordable homes cap resale prices and limit equity that homeowners can earn. Even inheritance of home may be restricted. No such policies were applied to the programs historically used by white households when government programs supported their home purchase, accelerating racial wealth disparities across generations. Homes for Equity promotes a path forward that balances affordable homeownership goals while creating wealth-building for households long-denied such opportunity.
Homes for Equity featured at CHAPA Fair Housing Symposium
Thank you CHAPA for the opportunity to share information about this initiative at their recent Fair Housing Symposium. The presentation by Maria Latimore and Neenah Estrella-Luna starts at 16:50.
Partners
This initiative is a collaboration between Opportunity Communities (OppCo), Nuestra Comunidad, and the Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance (MAHA). By pairing our affordable home production with MAHA’s homebuyer training and services, we are breaking down barriers to homeownership.
ADDITIONAL SUPPORTERS
““The goal of our minority homeownership initiative is to invest in strategies that move the needle on racial equity in homeownership. The Homes for Equity Initiative will do exactly that, and it’s our pleasure to support the program.””