Tacoma/Pierce County Habitat for Humanity announcement.
June is National Homeownership Month and we also celebrate Juneteenth, otherwise known as Freedom Day. While our nation has come a long way since Juneteenth, one of the chief drivers of racial inequities that persists today is historic discrimination in U.S. housing policy—particularly discrimination against Black Americans.
The City of Tacoma’s recent Housing Disparity Report revealed that from 1990 to 2020, Black households have experienced a stark trend of decreased homeownership while other racial groups have either experienced increased or stabilized rates of homeownership. Historically, 60% of Habitat homeowners in Pierce County are people of color. At Tacoma Habitat’s Fern Hill development, 75% of the homes are matched with Black buyers.
Tacoma Habitat is also a participant in Habitat for Humanity International’s Advancing Black Homeownership Initiative, and is involved locally in both the Coalition for More Housing Choices to Increase Black Homeownership Opportunities and the Black Home Initiative led by Civic Commons. We are going to move the needle, leading with housing justice and firmly rooted in our vision that everyone deserves a decent place to call home.
While I applaud your efforts to match housing with Black families I wouldn’t necessarily blame discrimination or racism as the major cause of home ownership disparity. You only have to look at demographics to get a sense of why this disparity exists. In 2016-20, the share of families headed by single parents was 75% among African American families, 61% among Hispanic families, 39% among white families and 23% among Asian families. When 75% of African American families are headed by a single parent, specifically a mother, you don’t have the financial wherewith all to qualify for a mortgage let alone a down payment. Just raising rent money can be problematic and often a significant amount of income comes from public assistance. This is a problem that must be addressed by and within the African American community, not by well meaning outsiders. Fix that and the housing disparity will begin to fix itself.