Racist housing policies have decimated black homeownership. Is change coming?

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To save time, we’ll ignore the generational wealth created by unpaid slave labor and the racial terror their ancestors endured after the federal government abandoned Reconstruction-era policies, and move on to the massacre of Black Wall Street in 1921. Three decades later, the targeted destruction of black communities was deployed to create paths from the suburbs to downtown areas for white commuters.

As the country moved toward ending racial segregation, the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 paved the way for transportation projects to pass through areas where blacks thrived. Private property has been seized. Homes and businesses in hundreds of neighborhoods across the country have been demolished. More than a million people have been displaced, according to estimates by the US Department of Transportation.

Half a century after the start of the infrastructure project, a cyclonic financial crisis engulfed the nation. Guess who paid the price? Crosley was like many black homeowners in the early 2000s who were targeted with subprime loans and adjustable rate mortgages. People who refinance their home with loans that include rising rates and payments are more susceptible to foreclosure. Attracted by initially low interest rates, buyers were unable to maintain their payments when rates rose.

A 2014 report from the Pew Research Center found that the median net worth of black households fell 43% during the recession that followed the 2008 financial crisis. An estimated 240,000 black people lost the homes they owned.

A ‘No Trespassing’ sign hangs on Faye Crosley’s door in Richmond on Jan. 14, 2023. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)

The fight to save Crosley’s home began in January 2009 when she defaulted on her loan for the first time, according to public records. In an effort to stay afloat, public records show she refinanced five times through four different lenders from 2001 to 2007. Her loan amount swelled to double the value of the home. She was underwater.

“That’s really when the mortgage crisis really started to get attention, and it started to heat up, and consumers weren’t able to make their mortgage payments because that there was an adjustable rate mortgage on the property,” said Verleana Green, an attorney with a specialty in elder law and estate planning.

Green reviewed public records obtained by KQED that show there have been 30 deed transfers on the Crosley home over three decades. Green told us she had never seen a situation where a loan had been reassigned so many times. She said when banks give loans to other banks, it turns into a web of confusion for consumers.

“So by the time this person says, ‘Hey listen, I want to refinance, I need a loan modification because I can’t make payments’, they probably didn’t know who to make payments to. “, said Green.

In the fall of 2012, long after the big banks bailed out, the lender stopped cashing Crosley’s checks.

“My daughter, she knows all about computers and everything, so she knew how to send that money into the computer,” Crosley said. “We could send it to the post office. We were sending it in different ways and they blocked it. They would not accept any payment.

Crosley told KQED the lender offered her a deal — increasing the mortgage from $1,715 to $3,900 — that the retired realtor couldn’t afford with the $2,900 a month she receives from the government to take care of her daughter and her alimony.

According to data from the US Census Bureau, black homeownership has declined 15% in the state since 2004. In 2021, the black homeownership rate in California was 36%, nearly 30 points less than white residents. To put the gulf in perspective, the black homeownership rate was 42% in the 1960s, when it was legal to discriminate against black buyers. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 banned redlining, but the effects of the discriminatory practice still reverberate.

“Everybody was able to kind of rise through the ranks, but black people weren’t,” task force member Donald K. Tamaki told my colleague Maria Fernanda Bernal. “They gained ground in the 2000s. They lost it during the mortgage crisis.

So will the task force proposals keep black homeowners like Crosley in their homes?

No.

“It covers things like making loans available, providing more affordable housing,” Tamaki told Bernal. “Dealing with the consequences of racial zoning and redlining, these proposals which are submitted [are] simply the beginning of asking the legislature to do something about the harm that has been done.

The task force recommends direct financial assistance to increase black homeownership in the state. In a draft of the final report, members also recommend collecting data on housing discrimination, providing anti-racism training to housing workers, and returning homes confiscated by eminent domain, among other proposals.

Photos show several generations of Faye Crosley’s family, at their home in Richmond on January 14, 2023. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)

The Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge were visible from the floor-to-ceiling windows in Crosley’s living room. Decades of family photos were the first things I noticed after walking through the front door in January.

The polka dot dress Crosley wore was loose on her slight frame. She told me that a third of her stomach was removed when she had stomach cancer. In May 2021, she said, she broke four ribs and punctured a lung in a fall that landed her in hospital for nearly two weeks.

Documents were scattered on a table. Former neighbors, lawyers and paralegals, including one known as Tiger Bob, provided Crosley with legal advice, but all of his attempts to keep the house were repeatedly rejected by judges.

Faye Crosley (center left, in leopard print) walks down Highland Ave. in Richmond with a group of friends, neighbors and family members, including grandson Kevin Hayes (right foreground), to protest his recent eviction from his decades-old home just down the street , February 12, 2023. (Kori Suzuki/KQED)

Hayes, who posted Crosley’s story on Instagram, has raised over $23,000 on GoFundMe. The money was used to pay legal fees and storage space and to rent a two-bedroom apartment near the Richmond Marina with her daughter. Rent is $2,500 and storage $600.

When Bernal and I visited Crosley in April, she offered us cookies and juice. We noticed that there was only room for a fraction of the pictures and trinkets that once decorated her home. His dog lives with Hayes’ sister.

“I didn’t believe they were going to kick me out,” Crosley said.

Hayes said Crosley’s health has declined since his expulsion. The house that Crosley bought for $235,000 in 1992 is now up for sale for nearly $1 million. Decades of memories have disappeared and the equity that could have been passed on to his heirs has been erased.

After months of housing instability, Hayes, 31, now lives in a communal space in Oakland.

“I just want her to be happy and I think the only way to achieve that is for her to come back to her house,” he told Bernal. “I think that’s what, like, really breaks me down too. It hurts so much to know that this pain is there, and this is what the last part of his life was like.

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