Fair Housing Act at 50: Have Things Changed?

Nearly 50 years after President Johnson signed into law the Fair Housing Act, some areas of the U.S. have improved housing opportunities for minority households, but considerable work remains, said Trulia, San Francisco.

“Identifying where progress has been made and where Americans continue to face impediments to securing safe and affordable housing is the first step to furthering housing opportunities for communities and ensuring they remain economically resilient,” said Cheryl Young, senior economist with Trulia, in the company’s latest Research Blog (https://www.trulia.com/blog/trends/fair-housing-legacy/).

Young said racial and ethnic minorities still face few housing opportunities than all other households: they own homes at a lower rate, spend more of their income on rent and continue to contend with residential segregation:

–Nationally, the homeownership gap between all households and black and Latino households has changed little since 1970.

–Homeownership increased the most for black households in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic from 1990 to 2015, increasing the most in Washington, D.C., Peabody, Mass. and Fairfield County, Conn. Latino households saw double-digit increases in homeownership in Chicago, Hartford, Conn. and Houston.

–The share of households that are rent burdened (spend 30% of their income or more on rent) increased after the housing crisis. More than 55% of black and Latino households are rent burdened compared to 47% of all households.

–Residential black-white segregation decreased in 94 of the largest 100 metros from 1980 to 2015, improving the most in in the Florida metros of Fort Lauderdale, Sarasota and Cape Coral. Texas metros of El Paso and San Antonio saw the largest decreases in white-Latino segregation.

The paper noted the national gap between the homeownership rate for all households and black households has remained nearly the same whereas the gap between all households and Latino households has narrowed slightly since passage of the Fair Housing Act. This gap is even starker when comparing non-Latino white homeownership with black or Latino homeownership: since 1980, the gap between non-Latino white homeownership rates and black homeownership rates has widened from 24.1% to 30.63%, but the gap between non-Latino white households and Latino households has remained the same. The homeownership rate among Latino households overtook the homeownership rate among black households after 2000. Ownership rates across all groups have remained relatively flat. The housing crisis erased any gains in homeownership, with black homeownership facing the steepest decline from 2000 to 2010.

Those unable to buy have seen rent as a share of income increase as the cost of housing has outpaced income growth. The share of rent-burdened households, or those that spend 30% or more of their household income on rent reached nearly 50% of all renter housing in 2010. For black and Latino households, the share of those burdened by rent remains at more than 55% for both groups, while in 2015 the share of those rent burdened eased for the rental population at large

The report said among black renters, Grand Rapids, Mich., (69.4%), Riverside, Calif., (67.1%), Rochester, N.Y. (66.9%), Fresno, Calif. (66.9%) and West Palm Beach, Fla. (66.0%) are the metros with the highest share of rent-burdened households. Peabody, Mass. has the second lowest rate of rent-burdened black households at 47.1%. Among Latino renters, Miami (66.8%), Honolulu (64.1%), Ventura County, Calif. (63.5%), Fairfield County, Conn. (63.4%) and Orange County, Calif. (63.2%) have the highest share of rent-burdened households.

Young said residential segregation between blacks and whites decreased in all but six of the 100 metros. Half of these metros were also those that saw the largest increase in black homeownership: Rockville, Md., Peabody, Mass. and Honolulu.

“The combination of higher rates of homeownership and increased segregation for blacks in these metros suggests that upper-income African-Americans may have formed enclaves in these metros,” Young wrote. “Increases in Latino-white segregation on the other hand is likely due to recent influxes of Latinos settling in communities across Tennessee and the mid-South.”

Young added while the report notes “considerable reductions in segregation, the improvements come from a very high starting point.”