The percentage of Black homeownership east of the Anacostia River is declining, new report says

AMANDA MICHELLE GOMEZ

Wards 7 and 8 east of the Anacostia River have long been majority Black communities, but the percentage of Black homeowners is decreasing, according to a new report from the Urban Institute. Meanwhile, researchers found that mortgages taken out by non-Black residents are increasing, particularly in rapidly gentrifying areas near the Anacostia River and Anacostia Freeway.

The report found that the proportion of home purchase mortgages sold to Black households is declining, while those sold to non-Black households have increased.

In 2007, 92% of home purchase mortgages in communities east of the river went to Black households, according to researchers’ analysis of Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data, compared to 75% in 2021 — a drop of about 18%. Despite the significant increase in non-Black buyers in recent years, the overall racial composition of homeowners is changing more slowly, in part because only around 7.5% of all homes in the area are sold each year. (One caveat to these numbers is that the overall percentage of Black residents across the city has also steadily shrunk in recent decades. What was once a majority-Black city is now 45% Black.) But the trend is clear: Between 2005 and 2009, 94% of homeowners east of the river described themselves as Black, compared to 87% between 2017 and 2021.

What’s behind the decline? “Gentrification,” says Brett Theodos, the lead researcher on the report and a senior fellow and director of the Community Economic Development Hub at the Urban Institute. “Home prices have really increased east of the Anacostia River and homes are a lot less affordable.” Skyrocketing home prices across the city also have had an impact, he says, drawing more people to buy east of the river, where prices are still lower than in

Researchers found that the average home east of the river sold for $292,734 in 2019, excluding renovation costs, but the average renter can only afford an estimated $185,000. But the price of a home east of the river is still significantly less than the average home in other parts of the city. The median price for a D.C. home reached $621,000 in June 2019, according to Urban Turf, a 63% increase compared to July 2009 or a 37% increase when adjusted for inflation. As of December 2022, the median sale price was $626,650, according

Theodos says while homes located east of the river are still among the most affordable citywide, prices have gone up considerably due to demand for homes. That means residents in these communities, many of whom are native Washingtonians, risk displacement. However, he does not anticipate Ward 7 and 8 communities to experience the kind of displacement and gentrification that neighborhoods like Shaw and U Street Corridor did, in part because D.C.’s population growth has slowed. But certain communities east of the river are seeing higher shares of non-Black homeowners — like historic Anacostia, Deanwood, and Hillcrest — due to their proximity to transit, among other factors, so change will vary

“For people who are new first time homeowners or people who are looking to trade up to a bigger home, if their family is growing, it’s harder and harder to stay in communities east of the Anacostia River,” says Theodos. “It’s really important that the city do all that it can to support homeownership because home prices are out of reach for a lot of people. And this study illustrates that that’s happening even in the communities that have historically been the

This data would not surprise residents in Wards 7 and 8 east of the river who have noticed their communities changing. People have varying opinions because gentrification can be a squishy, misunderstood word.

“I don’t want to see my community still look like it did 20 years ago. How can I grow from that? You change managers, you change presidents, you change. You have to evolve around that,” Anacostia resident Bruce Holmes told DCist/WAMU.

Another resident who’s lived east of the river his entire life, Kyle Williams, had a different take. “Rundown neighborhoods are getting turned into million dollar neighborhoods overnight and in the last six to 10 years, things have definitely changed. They’re definitely capitalizing off the land that we’ve been on for years.”

The findings of the report come amid an ambitious goal set by Mayor Muriel Bowser’s administration: 20,000 new Black homeowners by 2030. Just 34% of Black residents own their home, according to the mayor’s office, a 26% decrease from 2005. A panel of housing experts the mayor convened recommended several ways to increase Black homeownership, including some policies Urban Institute researchers support.

The report calls for a combination of building more homes and supporting homeowners financially. Recommendations include increased funding for subsidy homeownership programs to assist with down payments and closing costs, dedicating more Housing Production Trust Fund dollars to homeownership, and investing in more subsidies for housing cooperatives and community land trusts. (Disclosure: Theodos is on the board of the Douglass Community Land Trust, which is land acquired by a nonprofit in order to keep housing built there affordable.) Theodos says 14.5% of land east of the river is undeveloped — and D.C. owns a significant portion of that land, one in seven acres. He says that means the D.C. government can encourage new housing construction on vacant or underused land.

The Bowser administration had set a goal of creating 36,000 new housing units by 2025, 12,000 of which would be affordable. But much of that housing stock is rental units. Theodos says D.C. needs to strike an appropriate balance between renter and owner-occupied buildings given the importance of homeownership as a primary source of wealth building.

“Certainly, we will need new rental units east of the river. But in terms of proportion or share, it’s really the ownership units that are further behind east of the Anacostia River,” says Theodos. “Some of that is not just about housing stock. There are single family homes that are being rented as well. So it’s about housing stock, but it’s also about who lives in the housing.”

Theodos says it’s not the sole responsibility of the D.C. government to change the troubling downward trend, but also federal government policies and affordable housing developers. And he cites the resistance new housing developments often face in the community. “Most fundamentally, not opposing increase to density is also an important step,” says Theodos. “We’ve had a real growth and homes are just so unaffordable in many of the west of the river communities that people looking to buy a home are increasingly looking east of the Anacostia River. And so it’s just part of a broader trend that has been happening over the past several years of home prices successively getting higher.”

This story was originally published by WAMU/DCist