A Dream Deferred or Realized: the Impact of Public Policy on Fostering Black Homeownership in New York City throughout the 1990's
Author(s)
Freeman, Lance; Hamilton, Darrick
Abstract
Homeownership disparities between blacks and whites have been a persistent feature of American life. For example, in 1950 the black homeownership rate stood at 63 percent of the total homeownership rate, and nearly a half century later, in 1996, the black homeownership rate stood at 67 percent of the national homeownership rate (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2001a). Although there may not be consensus among social scientists that housing discrimination continues to play a role in racial homeownership disparities, a vast majority of social scientists would not dispute the historical role of housing discrimination, and during the late 1980’s and 1990’s policymakers acted under the implicit assumption that discrimination was a driving force behind the black-white disparities in homeownership. This paper seeks to explore how policies of the 1990’s that were designed, in part, to combat mortgage lending discrimination affected black-white homeownership disparities in New York City (NYC).
