Another reason not to believe the poverty-pimps
A greater portion of minority Americans own homes now than ever before, but their homeownership rate still lags far behind whites, according to data released by the U.S. Census Bureau this week.
In the first quarter, 51.6% of minority households owned their own homes, up from 50.8% in the first quarter a year ago. Thirty years ago that rate was 44.4%.
Most of the recent increase occurred among Hispanics, with 49.7% of Hispanics owning homes in the first quarter, up from 47.3% a year earlier.
While low interest rates have no doubt spurred much of the growth, the increase in minority homeownership rates also reflects the Bush administration’s goal, stated two years ago, of adding 5.5 million new minority Americans to the ranks of homeownership by 2010, the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development said in a press release.
To explain the increase in ownership, HUD cited programs such as the American Dream Downpayment Initiative, which subsidizes down-payment and closing costs, the tax credit offered to developers to encourage production of low-income housing and $4 million spent on marketing in minority publications in the last two years…more
The good news here is that black home ownership has gone up in a short amount of time. As usual, news like this is always followed by pointing out the fact that we still lag behind whites, but this is something that we should not place our focus. The mere fact that whites outnumber blacks and other races in this country will have an effect on how these stats are calculated.
The fact that progress is being made in this area is something to celebrate.
April 27th, 2005 at 6:19 pm
So, what “poverty pimps” have said this information is false or that the information is not a good thing?
Or did I misunderstand?
April 28th, 2005 at 2:02 pm
Maybe I am missing something too, Duane. I completely agree that a significant segment of our so-called black leadership peddles the myth that most of us are mired deep in the clutches of poverty, but was there a “poverty pimps” slant to this story. And, because whites do outnumber blacks and other races in the U.S., it IS significant when blacks are significantly behind in homeownership. It’s a proportion of a smaller total number (blacks), and thus should be mathematically easier to achieve an increase. Kind regards to all.