Black homeownership is stuck near 30-year lows

In many way, African-Americans have regained the ground lost during the financial crisis. Many are finding jobs and getting raises.

But the holy grail of homeownership remains elusive. Forty-three percent of blacks owned homes in 2017, according to an annual report from the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. In contrast, 72 percent of whites did, a gap that has mostly widened during the past three decades.

"The overall frustration is, I am a working citizen. I pay my taxes. I'm doing a job to help kids," said Tillery, whose nonprofit helps children with disabilities. "It's better for me to own a home. I'm 42. I don't want to continue renting."

There aren't many homes in the area that fall into her price range of $200,000 or less. When she sees a listing she can afford, she either loses out to a buyer who will pay more or waive contingencies or learns that the property isn't approved for Federal Housing Administration mortgages, which she is relying on because they require lower down payments than conventional loans.

The housing market is recovering nearly a decade after the financial crisis. But a recent increase in the national homeownership rate — the first in more than a decade — has done little to close the stark gap between black and white households. Blacks have also had smaller gains in homeownership since the recession compared with whites, Hispanics and Asians.

The gap persists even as African-Americans have experienced other major financial gains since the downturn. The unemployment rate for black workers dropped to 5.9 percent in May, hitting a record low. African-Americans' wages have risen as much as the average since 2008. But when it comes to homeownership, one of the pillars of building wealth, black households are worse off than they were 30 years ago.

"We haven't made any progress in homeownership since the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968," said Nikitra Bailey, an executive vice president with the Center for Responsible Lending, a nonprofit group that researches abusive lending practices. "The little progress we did make has been wiped away by the foreclosure crisis."