Photo by Ronnie R.
D.C. has seen the country’s largest increase of black homeowners over the past two decades, according to a new report from Trulia.
The real estate site looked at the U.S.’s 100 largest metro areas to see how homeownership among African Americans and Latinos has changed nearly 50 years since the Fair Housing Act of 1968.
D.C. was one of few places that saw gains in homeownership for both African Americans and Latinos. Between 1990 and 2015, there was a 9.6 percent increase of African American homeowners—the largest increase for blacks in the report. And D.C. saw a 10 percent increase of Latino homeowners, which ranks it fifth nationally among these households.
The only other two areas that were in the top 10 for increases in both black and Latino homeownership were Fairfield County, Connecticut and Worcester, Massachusetts.
Locally, Rockville ranked sixth for increases among black households with an eight percent change.
Chart courtesy of Trulia
Trulia also looked at the national share of households that are rent burdened, or spend 30 percent of their income or more on rent. This number has increased since the housing crisis of 2008, and currently, 55 percent of black and Latino households are rent burdened compared to 47 percent of all households.
According to a recent DC Fiscal Policy Institute report, there are 43,000 D.C. households with families of at least four that have incomes below 30 percent of the area median income (AMI), which equates to $32,100 a year. And 26,000 of these households spend more than half of their income on rent.