According to a survey by the Federal Reserve, U.S. homeowners have 40 times the wealth of non-homeowners. Despite best intentions and recent efforts, the homeownership gap for Black and Latino communities remains stubbornly wide. In January, the U.S. Census Bureau released the homeownership rates for 2022, which showed that white people have a 74.4% homeownership rate, Black people are at 45.9%, and Hispanics come in at 48.6%.
Homeownership percentages and generational wealth only increase when a large number of first-time buyers can enter the market and remain homeowners through economic cycles. This is not an easy problem to solve. Here’s how we can make meaningful progress:
Improve housing affordability by increasing the housing stock: In order to improve housing affordability, a substantial increase in housing stock is necessary. The limited supply of affordable housing is, in part, driven by the fixed costs — land, zoning, permits — related to development, which remain excessively…
Read the full story from the Washington Business Journal.
