CONCLUSION

Black households continue to struggle to achieve homeownership. Given the level of historic, systemic, federally sanctioned and enforced discrimination against Blacks in the housing market, its impressive that Blacks have achieved any meaningful level of homeownership.

The fact that nearly half of Black households were homeowners in 2004 speaks to the tenacity of Black America and its willingness to continue to struggle for equality in this nation.

Blacks, however, should and must not be perpetually forced to overcome unfair and unreasonable hurtles to achieve the American Dream of homeownership. White households did not achieve a homeownership rate of nearly 75 percent without substantial federal assistance designed to meet their needs and increase their wealth. Powerful federal housing finance institutions have offered to White households, low-cost financing, long-term, fixed rate loans since the 1930s.

This report has listed several steps that should be taken to level the playing field between Blacks and Whites related to ensuring fair access to homeownership opportunities. Those recommendations include eliminate loan level pricing, remove fees associated with downpayment assistance, recalculate the way in which student loan debt is treated in the underwriting process, eliminate appraisal bias, and restructure the housing finance system to create new and innovative programs that meet the needs of America’s 21 Century housing challenges. Fixing these basics could greatly increase Black homeownership without the need for excessive amounts of federal funding or risking the safety and soundness of the housing finance system. Most importantly, however, is to fix the broken federal housing finance system itself. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac must be removed from the current conservatorship status to a federal housing finance corporation structure and allowed to pursue broadly, housing and community development. The current system was not designed to deal with distressed innercity communities with high levels of homes in need to renovation or replacement.

The current system was also not designed to meet the needs of households whose incomes and credit profiles differ from those of White households. And by fixing the system itself, innovative programs, such as SPCPs can be better supported, and actions such as appraisal bias, can be more aggressively prevented.