Since pulling herself out of homelessness a decade ago, Nadia Johnson has worked tirelessly to achieve what no one else in her family has accomplished: owning a home in the Bay Area.
Johnson, a manager at a local Starbucks, and her husband, Andre, a driver for a private bus service, now rent a two-bedroom duplex in the Contra Costa County suburb of Rodeo with their 13-year-old daughter, Raiena.
The couple has been saving to buy a house of their own in the working-class community known for its sprawling Phillips 66 oil refinery. But their modest incomes make it nearly impossible to qualify for a mortgage, even in one of the more affordable parts of the increasingly unaffordable Bay Area.
“We’re trying to own a little piece of Rodeo, just a little bitty piece,” said Johnson, 48. “I just want to be able to leave something to my grandchildren.”
Buying a home, a crucial stepping stone to wealth that can be passed down over generations, has long been a struggle for Black families like Johnson’s, who are left to cope with the lasting impacts of the Bay Area’s historic housing discrimination — including racist lending practices and property agreements. But as local real estate prices have soared over the past two decades, homeownership has gotten even more out of reach for many Black residents, furthering deep-rooted economic disparities.
In 2019, just 34% of Black households in the nine-county Bay Area owned their homes, down from 41% in 2000, according to researchers with the Bay Area Equity Atlas. White homeownership, meanwhile, dipped by only a percentage point to 63%. Black residents make up about 6% of the region’s population. White residents make up roughly 40%.
The homeownership gap widened in all nine Bay Area counties between 2000 and 2021, according to a Bay Area News Group analysis of census data. Black households consistently had among the very lowest homeownership rates of any racial group.
The benefits afforded to homeowners — including home equity, tax breaks and access to good schools — can exacerbate “inequality when they’re not shared across the population,” said Carolina Reid, a housing researcher with UC Berkeley. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the nationwide homeownership gap is one of the main reasons Black households have less than one-tenth the wealth of White households. Local data was not available.
In the Bay Area — where the median single-family house price now tops $1 million — barriers to homeownership have prompted many families to move from historically Black neighborhoods in cities such as Oakland and East Palo Alto to far-flung parts of the region and state, boosting commute times and pulling them away from friends and relatives.
Between 1990 and 2018, the Black population dropped 40% to roughly 97,000 in Oakland, while soaring more than 1,000% to nearly 23,000 in Antioch on the northern edge of Contra Costa County and 5,000% to over 18,300 in Elk Grove outside Sacramento, according to an analysis by news publication CalMatters.
Alameda County, home to the Bay Area’s largest Black population, saw the gap between Black and White homeownership increase by 4% between 2000 and 2021, according to the Bay Area News Group analysis. The homeownership rate among the county’s Black residents, who were hit hard by the late 2000s foreclosure crisis, dropped from 36% to 31%. White homeownership dipped from 62% to 61%.
Santa Clara County, meanwhile, saw the largest widening of the homeownership gap in the Bay Area. Black homeownership cratered from 40% to 26%, while White homeownership slid from 65% to 63%. The steep spike in the homeownership gap could be because home prices in Silicon Valley soared higher than most everywhere else in the region, Reid said.
Experts agree the glaring imbalance can be traced back to racist local, state and federal housing policies that lasted well into the 1960s.
Reid pointed to redlining, the process by which the federal government effectively denied home loans to minority communities, and racially restrictive covenants, which prohibited people of color from owning properties throughout the Bay Area and across the country.
Such practices excluded entire communities from the housing market, which prevented many Black families from amassing generational wealth and moving to areas with more opportunity, reflected in patterns of segregation that persist today.
“Without more intentional policies to undo the legacy of discrimination, we’re never going to get to equity or parity in closing that racial homeownership gap,” Reid said. She called for reforms to “eliminate bias that continues to exist in financial and housing market systems.”
Just last month, a Marin City couple reached an out-of-court settlement with a real estate appraiser they alleged undervalued their house because they are Black. And earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Justice announced a $31 million settlement with a Los Angeles-based bank accused of redlining.
Montana Gabrielle Hooks, a Black real estate agent in Oakland, said it’s not uncommon for Black homebuyers to remove family photos or African American art to avoid appraiser discrimination.
“It’s a known, unspoken fact that Black homeowners that are going through the appraisal process are aware of,” Hooks said.
To combat that discrimination, Hooks works with Oakland’s Young Realtist Division, a group that teaches students about homeownership and pursuing a career as a real estate agent. “If more of us are Black, then we will be able to reduce some of that racism that Black homebuyers and Black homeowners feel.”
In recent years, local governments and nonprofits have also started efforts to help Black homebuyers cover down payments and closing costs. State officials are pushing cities to build more affordable homes. And a state Reparations Task Force is considering payments of up to $360,000 to many Black Californians, partly as compensation for past housing discrimination.
Such a payment could make all the difference in helping Johnson and her husband buy a home.
She’s proud of how far they have come since escaping homelessness. The couple now has 13 years in recovery from addiction, steady jobs and two cars. But long working hours are taking a toll on their health, and Johnson’s worried they may run out of time to buy before retirement. Still, she remains confident they’ll find a home that can stay in their family for years.
“I know if I work hard enough, it can be done,” Johnson said. “I’m going to keep trying until somebody tells me yes.”
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(Mercury News reporter Harriet Blair Rowan contributed to this story.)
