Study: Worcester Black homeownership gap rose 426% between 2010 & 2021
Photo | Timothy Doyle
Single-family homes in Worcester
The gap between homeownership rates between Black and white households in Worcester is 32.8 percentage points, up from 6.1 percentage points in 2010, according to a study from Today’s Homeowner, an online home improvement publication.
The study released Feb. 6, where Today’s Homeowner used data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, shows 23.7% of Black households own their homes versus 56.5% of white households in the city.
Throughout Massachusetts, the gap between Black and white homeownership is about the same as in Worcester at 33 percentage points. This compares with a national rate of 29 percentage points.
Since 1960, the gap has worsened nationally, despite anti-discrimination laws being passed, according to the study. It blames discriminatory selling and lending practices and the Black community’s vulnerability to economic downturns like the Great Recession and the economic fallout from the COVID pandemic.
“The data also shows that Black homeowners are more vulnerable to economic shocks. During the Great Recession, the white homeownership rate was largely stable at around 75% through 2008 and 2009. The Black homeownership rate, on the other hand, went from 47.7% down to 46% during the same time period. It would continue to drop until reaching its nadir of 40.6% in late 2019,” journalist Shadi Bushra wrote for Today’s Homeowner.
Like a number of communities throughout the country, Worcester’s communities of color suffer from the legacy of redlining, as WBJ Staff Writer Kevin Koczwara wrote in his Trapped: Worcester neighborhoods still suffer from the legacy of redlining in December as part of a partnership with the Worcester Regional Research Bureau about the legacy of discriminatory housing practices in Worcester.
That redlining report followed another joint WRRB-WBJ study in 2021 showing how discriminatory lending practices in Worcester have created a segregated city.
According to Peabody research company The Warren Group, the median sale price of a single-family home in Worcester almost doubled from $172,000 in 2010 to $338,000 in 2021.
Median condominium prices in the city, considered to have a lower barrier of entry and seen as a way to build wealth, rose over 90% in the same timeframe from $107,950 to $206,000.
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