Black Homeownership Still Falling

"Forty-three percent of blacks owned homes in 2017, according to an annual report from the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University," Jonnelle Marte writes for the Washington Post. That's a lot lower than the 72 percent home ownership rate for whites.

"The gap persists even as African Americans have experienced other major financial gains since the downturn," Marte writes. Black unemployment is down to 5.9% nationwide, but, while many have been able to find work after the 2008 downturn, the effects of that period still linger for a population that was more likely to have been foreclosed on or to have lost their employment.

In 1968 after the passage of the Fair Housing Act, the percentage of African American families who owned a house rose, closing some of the gap between black and white home ownership, but those gains have been wiped out. The current gap is bigger today than it was 30 years ago.