The Fragile Black Middle Class | Blacks hurt by gap in home values
BY CHERYL L. REED AND MONIFA THOMAS
Staff Reporters
Chicago Sun-Times
Her two-bedroom bungalow in Avalon Park, a middle-class, black neighborhood on the South Side, has nearly doubled in value since she bought it 15 years ago. But Laverne Haynes is certain of this: If her neighborhood was largely white, her home would be worth much more.
"Whites don't consider our property values as high because of what they think goes on in our neighborhoods," said Haynes, a receptionist downtown. "They think we have high crime rates and drugs or that we don't take care of our property."
Haynes and many other black homeowners have long suspected that home values in black neighborhoods don't appreciate as fast as they do in white neighborhoods. Now, new research shows that not only do African-American homeowners typically get less when they sell their homes, but the disparity is feeding a growing wealth gap between blacks and whites.
"There's a segregation tax that operates on home values," said Thomas Shapiro, a professor at Brandeis University's Heller School for Social Policy and Management who has researched the black-white wealth gap. "Middle-class, African-American homeowners feel it's just another way they've gotten shafted."
Being middle class is a far more fragile experience for blacks than it is for whites, according to interviews with Shapiro, other experts and dozens of black and white homeowners in Chicago and the suburbs. There are more hurdles to get there and stay there, and less support, a growing field of research is finding.
Comments