Housing

Housing involves the purchasing, upkeep, and location of real property (property affixed to land or is land). Our lens will look at the treatment of customers who purchase property and how the loan system has historically discriminated against people of color.

After the passing of "The 1968 Fair Housing Act", many people imagined that outright housing discrimination would decrease. The act made redlining (an action done by the federal government that labeled black communities on maps as red and labeled them hazardous to lend in) illegal. However, redlining among other racially discriminatory methods are still persistent in the institution of housing.

By 2019, black ownership of homes is at a 50 year low. Black families make up just 2% of the median wealth of white families. The reasons behind this come down to redlining and municipality control of urban development.

Not only is redlining still a persistent problem in modern America, discriminatory real estate agents and companies also contribute to the housing inequality. According to a recent study conducted by the U.S. Department of housing:

To understand racism in the housing system, knowing the history of housing is important. Many of the existing housing inequalities among black and white communities are centered around redlining which is where the government labeled black communities as undesirable for housing loans.
Additionally, the federal government is also responsible for pushing out black families with initiatives such as the "American Housing Act of 1949" which granted the federal government eminent domain rights. This, in turn, led to over 300,000 families removed from there homes, most of which were black.

Minority customers are shown fewer houses than compared to white customers.
This preferential treatment of white customers extends past simply buying homes but also includes renting homes or apartments.
Black customers, as referenced by the statistics, are told about 17% fewer homes in comparison to there white counterparts and 17.7% less shown homes.
These issues also extend outside the scope of blacks but also into other minority groups such as Hispanic and Asian groups.

Reveal, from The Center of Investigative Reporting found that among 61 metro areas, mortgages are continuing to be denied or are being charged at much higher rates for people of color.
Through analyzing 31 million records, Reveal found that 48 cities turned away black applicants for loans at significantly higher rates than white applicants.
To make matters worse, bank regulation agencies seldom call out the obvious racism evident in loan application acceptance. In fact, bank regulatory evaluations have grown even laxer during the Trump Administration.

When looking at individual cities, Reveal found that in the case of the U.S. capital. Minority groups are actually discriminated against the most.
Denial of loan applications may not seem like it matters. But loan applications translate over to being able to purchase a home. Property is one of the largest producers of income and wealth and without it, minority groups are subjected to higher rates of poverty.
In the case of Philadelphia, Reveal shows a huge inequality between loan applications for home purchases. From the years 2015-2016, over 12,000 white applicants were given home-purchase loans.
In comparison to that, only 2500 black applicants were given home-purchase loans.

Another component of racial discrimination in the real estate industry is the common practice of steering. According to a case study of Long Island, New York, "Where whites composed 20 percent or less of the population, agents provided seven out of 10 listings to minorities. Only when whites hit 56 percent of the population did agents give most of the listings in a community, 63 percent, to whites.". [8] Steering in this sense is where real estate agents actually show listings of potential homes to minority customers where the community is majorly composed of minority people. "...in 21 of 86 Newsday tests – 24 percent – agents located white and minority house-hunters in areas that were different enough to suggest evidence of steering."

So How do We Fix the Housing Crisis?

The lack of action the government takes on addressing these issues allows for the segregation of communities.
In 2016 alone over 28,181 complaints were made regarding housing discrimination, and experts think this number is extremely low.
Estimates of housing discrimination actually might range as high as 4 million cases a year.
The issue with this is that the complaints that are filed, tend to barely be addressed in themselves because the organizations addressing them are poorly funded and tend to be local.