A report from the Washington State Homeownership Disparities Work Group and the Department of Commerce found that more than 143,000 BIPOC households would need to become homeowners to close the gap between white and BIPOC households in the state.
Jasmyn Jefferson, who contributed to the report and is co-owner of Windermere Abode Lakewood, said the homeownership rate among Black Washingtonians is particularly concerning: only 31% of Washington’s Black households are homeowners, even lower than when housing discrimination was legal.
“The effects are worse than how it was in the Jim Crow era,” Jefferson said. “You have less homeownership rates among Black people than you did back in the 60s.”
David Jones, co-owner of Windermere Abode Lakewood, points to discriminatory practices in the industry in the past, and the deep marks they left that are still felt today.
“White families have benefitted from redlining for so many years, and it just continues to expand and compound,” he explained. “How do we solve something that continues to have an exponential, compound effect over time? That’s a really challenging thing, especially coming out of a pandemic where we saw the inequities be magnified because we’re all sitting at home.”
You can read more of the article on the King5 News website.
