It's Your Week: 'This article is not 'woke,' it’s reality.'

A home is a prized possession. But homeownership isn't equal for all in the U.S. Discriminatory lending practices, decades of housing segregation and a persistent income gap have stood in the way of Black homeownership, curtailing a group's ability to build generational wealth. 

👋 Hi! Nicole Fallert here and welcome to Your Week, our newsletter exclusively for Paste BN subscribers (that's you!).

This week, we'll chat with Paste BN National Housing and Economy Correspondent Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy about her reporting about the widening homeownership gap between white and Black Americans. I think you'll be as interested as I was to hear about her work on this piece.

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Why homeownership is increasingly kept away from Black Americans

Earlier this year, Ramaswamy came across a study by the Urban Institute that showed that the Black homeownership rate was expected to be lower in 2040 than it was in 2020. She wanted to know the reasons behind the gap. Here's what she found.

"My initial idea was to look at what it took to become a Black homebuyer through the decades since the Fair Housing Act of 1968,"  Ramaswamy said. "What I quickly realized was that it did not follow a linear progression. My mission was to tell a nuanced story that highlighted both the successes and the failures the community had experienced on the journey to homeownership."

Reporting challenges

Ramaswamy began her search by attempting to interview contract buyers from the 1950s and '60s. Land contract buyers were on the hook for a down payment, high monthly payments and maintenance of the house while the deed remained in the seller’s name until the very last payment was made. A single missed payment was grounds for eviction.

Ramaswamy realized that most of those buyers were not alive today, but she was able to track down the children of a contract buyer who had grown up watching their parents struggle and even attend protests by the Contract Buyers League, a group that fought for the rights of working-class Black contract buyers.

They knew their parents had been contract buyers but did not have any documentation proving the fact. Based on tips from researchers, Ramaswamy was also able to retrieve documents at the Cook County Clerk’s Office in Chicago as well as the National Archives to find details on transactions.

"Luckily, I was not only able to establish that they had been contract buyers but also found documentation showing that they had been a part of a lawsuit along with CBL against the contract sellers," she said.

A possible path forward

Education and awareness are key to battling exploitative financial transactions that create the illusion of homeownership only to leave the victims in dire straits.  A lack of homeownership, especially for low-income families, means an inability to pass on generational wealth – at which point it becomes an intergenerational issue.

As one reader put it: “My family had one of these loans. My grandfather never missed a payment. People want to blow it off, but these barriers and the related impact are real with long-term devastating consequences in Black communities. This article is not 'woke,' it’s reality.”

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Thank you

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Nicole Fallert is a newsletter writer at Paste BN. Send her an email at NFallert@usatoday.com or follow along with her musings on Twitter. Support journalism like this – subscribe to Paste BN here.