Losing Precious Ground in The Housing Bust

Most Americans are finding that the real estate crash is finally behind them and that their personal wealth is back to where it was during the boom. For many blacks in the U.S., though, years of economic progress have vanished. The homeownership rate fell from 50 percent during the property boom to 43 percent in the second quarter, the lowest since 1995. The rate for whites stopped falling two years ago, settling at about 73 percent, only 3 percentage points below the 2004 peak, according to the Census Bureau.

Helene Pearson’s belief in homeownership was shattered in Roseland, the mostly black Chicago neighborhood where President Obama got his start as a community organizer. Pearson, who bought her two-bedroom, red-brick bungalow on South Calumet Avenue for $160,000 in 2006 with a high-interest loan, put it on the market a year ago for $55,000—and didn’t attract a single offer. Her bank has agreed to take it back in exchange for canceling her remaining mortgage debt. “I was so excited to buy my first house right down the street from my mother, but they got me good,” says Pearson, a 35-year-old guidance counselor and mother of two girls. “This scarred me so badly that I never want to buy again.”

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