Dear Friend,
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the enactment of the Fair Housing Act. This legislation was passed, shortly after Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination, as part of the larger Civil Rights Act of 1968; however, to this day the Act’s full potential has yet to be realized. As study after study regrettably but repeatedly confirms, the number of minority homeowners in the United States continues to be far too low and the wealth gap far too large.
I’m proud to sit on a committee of housing leaders called the Fair Housing Act 50th Anniversary Advisory
Council. While former United States Vice President Walter Mondale, who co-authored the Fair Housing Act, is the Honorary Chair of the Advisory Council, the day-to-day work of the Council is driven by Lisa Rice, currently the Executive Vice President at the National Fair Housing Alliance. Lisa will assume the role of President and CEO of this influential group soon. Congrats, Lisa!
Lisa is our “Five Questions With…” guest this month and she addresses some key issues and
ways in which we can work together to break down the barriers to access responsible credit.
Along the same lines, we’ve also included in this issue of The Score a number of reports from the Urban Institute that shed light on the current housing finance situation. Our friend and colleague Alanna McCargo, Co-Director of the Housing Finance Policy Center at the Urban Institute, has shared a series of research papers that discuss the decline in African-American homeownership and how we can help restore it.
One article paints a clear path to how we can rectify this situation by using the correct strategies and the right people. Such steps may include helping in the responsible expansion of the credit box so that more renters may become sustainable home owners, reforming government policy on tax foreclosures and land contracts, and reinvesting in predominantly African-American neighborhoods.
On a more positive note, Hispanic-Americans are the only sector of the population to have increased their rate of homeownership in each of the last three years, as reported in the recently released “State of Hispanic Homeownership Report,” which we also have included with our newsletter this month. The Report, spearheaded by both the Hispanic Wealth Project and the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals, presents a positive outlook for Hispanic-American homeownership. The Report reveals that more than a quarter (28.6 percent) of the new household formations made in the U.S. in 2017 involved consumers of Hispanic-American descent. Although this increase is sizeable, the Report also suggests other ways to open more doors to Hispanic homeownership, such as the construction
of more affordable housing.
Finally, this month’s newsletter includes an article advising consumers how to avoid simple credit card
mistakes as well as an update to our DefaultRiskIndex.com, a tool that represents the most accurate way to use credit scores to evaluate and compare loan pools.
It has been said that “it takes a village,” and I couldn’t agree more when it comes to increasing minority
homeownership. Without the support of the entire mortgage finance industry, end to end, we cannot advance minority homeownership in America. It is a pivotal time right now, but it is also in moments like
these that we should be opening more lines of communication, so we may also open the doors of opportunity for others. Now more than ever, each of us should do our part to secure fair housing opportunities for all.
Regards,
Barrett Burns
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