Black Communities and the Bay Area's Housing Crisis

The Bay Area’s regionwide housing crisis affects the majority of residents but is especially harmful to Black homeowners, renters, and prospective homebuyers. Between 2010 and 2020, the Bay Area lost over 5,000 Black owner-occupied households and saw Black renters and homeowners alike displaced from historically Black communities into other parts of the region, especially the inland East Bay and Solano County. The Bay Area’s Black residents are less likely to own homes, face higher levels of housing cost burden, and reap smaller financial benefits from homeownership than the broader public. Generations of housing segregation and disinvestment from Black communities, as well as the recent foreclosure crisis, have cemented the racial wealth gap. Consequently, bold systemic change is necessary to achieve housing equity and reverse the displacement of the Bay Area’s Black communities.

By Ryan Fukumori, Ezinne Nwankwo, and Alex Balcazar*

Contents

1. Introduction
2. Data and Methods
3. Findings
4. Recommendations
5. Authors
6. Acknowledgments
7. Related Resources

Introduction

In the fall of 2024, the Bay Area Equity Atlas launched two new research series: one on the Bay Area’s Black communities and another examining the region’s affordable housing crisis and housing equity movements. This analysis is a survey of recent trends in Black homeownership, housing burden, and intra-regional migration and serves as the second release in both series. While the systemic underproduction of affordable housing creates hardships for all residents across the region, many Black residents face heightened challenges in achieving homeownership, paying for housing, and building wealth. Despite modest population gains in the 2010s, Black homeowners and renters in the Bay Area still face the threat of displacement due to housing costs and other costs of living.

Historic exclusionary housing policies and practices continue to shape current Black homeownership patterns. Black families migrating to the Bay Area from the South in the mid-20th century were subject to mortgage redlining, where federal loan agencies and private lenders tied a neighborhood’s investment risk to the racial composition of its residents. Assessors deemed communities of color too risky to approve federally backed home loans. Prospective Black homebuyers were denied access to the all-white neighborhoods that lenders favored, forcing these households into usurious loans or preventing them from owning homes altogether. Black families in the Bay Area were unable to build equity in their homes, reap the educational and employment benefits of suburban life, and pass their property on to their children. These disparities in homeownership between Black and white Americans have accumulated over generations and are one of the root causes of the nation’s racial wealth gap.

Black homeowners were also disproportionately harmed by the foreclosure crisis of the late 2000s and early 2010s. During the housing boom of the 2000s, lenders targeted many prospective homebuyers of color for higher-interest subprime mortgages, underwriting riskier loans to people whose credit or income might usually disqualify them. Consequently, millions of people defaulted on their mortgages during the Great Recession and lost their homes. Roughly 13 percent of foreclosed homes in the US between 2007 and 2015 were located in predominantly Black communities, despite those communities containing only eight percent of all the nation’s homes.

As this analysis explores, the effects of 20th-century housing segregation and the more recent foreclosure crisis are both evident today, even as the Bay Area’s Black communities have become increasingly diverse in recent years. Housing scarcity and rising costs of living have also displaced many residents from the region’s historically Black communities, compelling families to move to other parts of the Bay Area or leave the region altogether. While drastic measures are necessary to remedy the housing crisis that affects all Bay Area residents, it is just as important to ensure that these efforts include strategies attentive to the particular history and present circumstances of housing inequity in Black communities.

The key findings include:

1. The Bay Area lost over 5,000 Black-owned households during the 2010s, with significant declines in historic Black communities in the East Bay, San Francisco, and Solano County.

2. Black Bay Area households are significantly less likely to own their homes than the overall population, and Black immigrants are less likely to be homeowners than immigrants on average.

3. An increasing share of Black homeowners are senior citizens, and a majority of Black owner-occupied households are headed by women.

4. Black homeowners’ properties have lower median values than overall median home values, and Black median home values appreciated less over the 2010s.

5. Black homeowners are more likely to have mortgage debt than the overall homeowner population.

6. The share of cost-burdened Black homeowners has declined since 2010, but Black homeowners still face higher rates of housing burden than homeowners as a whole.

Findings

The Bay Area lost over 5,000 Black-owned households during the 2010s, with significant declines in historic Black communities in the East Bay, San Francisco, and Solano County.

As of 2020, the Bay Area is home to about 70,000 Black owner-occupied households and about 128,000 Black renter households. Yet Black households make up an increasingly smaller share of the Bay Area population, as other communities of color have grown at faster rates and many Black families have departed from the region altogether. Between 2010 and 2020, the 9-county Bay Area lost about 5,000 Black owner-occupied households: a seven percent decline compared to a two percent rise in all owner-occupied households. The number of Black renter-occupied households remained relatively consistent, growing by just 0.25 percent during the 2010s compared to a 12 percent increase in the Bay Area overall. However, Black households also make up a shrinking share of the renter population, from 12 percent of all renters in 2010 to slightly over 10.5 percent in 2020.

As explored in our previous analysis, Black households in the Bay Area are significantly concentrated in the counties and cities that initially absorbed the influx of Black migrants from the Jim Crow South in the mid-20th century. The East Bay is home to the majority of Black households: 60 percent of Black homeowners and 59 percent of Black renters reside in Alameda or Contra Costa Counties, largely in areas along the San Francisco Bay shoreline and the waterways that form the northern boundary of Contra Costa County.

However, there is a key difference between these two counties: the comparatively more suburban Contra Costa County has the second-highest rate of Black homeownership in the Bay Area, whereas Alameda County has the second-lowest rate. Alameda County, home to three of the six largest cities in the Bay Area (Oakland, Fremont, and Hayward), has nearly 30,000 more Black renters than homeowners. In Contra Costa County, where no city has more than 130,000 residents, there are only about 4,500 more Black renters than homeowners. While home to only 21,000 Black households, San Francisco has three times as many renters as homeowners. The only county with more Black homeowners than renters is Napa County, which has the smallest Black population in the region at fewer than 1,000 households.

While the East Bay remains a hub for many of the region’s Black communities, looking at sub-county data reveals that many Black households left some cities and neighborhoods while other parts of the East Bay simultaneously gained Black residents.¹ For instance, over the 2010s, flatland and coastal neighborhoods in Richmond, Berkeley, and Oakland – areas with deep histories of Black community life – saw a net loss of nearly 4,000 Black homeowners. At the same time, neighborhoods across Contra Costa County gained thousands of Black homeowners, including suburban cities like Concord, Antioch, and San Ramon, as well as agricultural and exurban spaces like Brentwood. The easternmost parts of Solano County – areas like Vacaville and Dixon – also gained hundreds of Black homeowners, while the rest of the county (such as Vallejo and Fairfield) lost homeowners.

Black renters moved in a similar pattern over the 2010s, with neighborhoods in Oakland, Richmond, and Western Contra Costa County losing the most rental households. There are some core differences, though: while Black homeowners settled throughout Contra Costa County and eastern Solano County, Black renters moved to Antioch and Fairfield in much larger numbers than surrounding cities. Significantly more Black renters than Black homeowners left San Francisco in the 2010s, but this is also due to how few Black homeowners live in San Francisco overall.

Because these maps highlight population trends since 2010, they do not display the full impact of residents’ displacement from historically Black communities, which has occurred for much longer. For instance, the Bayview-Hunters Point area, located in southeastern San Francisco and the historic epicenter of the city’s Black communities, lost approximately 2,500 Black residents during the 2010s, after already losing over 3,000 Black residents in the 1990s and over 3,500 Black residents in the 2000s. While Bayview-Hunters Point does show up on the above maps as an area with comparatively more Black residents than other parts of San Francisco, its Black population was more stable than in places like Oakland and Richmond during the 2010s, in part because a critical mass of Black residents had already been displaced by 2010.

Black Bay Area households are significantly less likely to own their homes than the overall population, and Black immigrants are less likely to be homeowners than immigrants on average.

As of 2020, 56 percent of Bay Area households are owner-occupied, with homeownership slightly more common among US-born households (58 percent) than immigrant households (53 percent). However, only 35 percent of Black households in the Bay Area are owner-occupied. The gap in homeownership rate is even larger between Black immigrants (30 percent) and all immigrants (53 percent). This suggests that many Black immigrants in the Bay Area have faced systemic marginalization prior to arriving in the US – such as underdevelopment in the Global South or racism and exclusion in other Western nations – and/or have faced structural barriers in the US that have prevented an increase in homebuyers.

Black homeownership rates are lower in nearly every Bay Area county. Even as homeownership rates vary by county – the counties with the largest cities (San Francisco, Alameda, and Santa Clara) have a greater share of renters – Black homeownership rates are consistently below 15 to 30 percentage points of the county average. These gaps in homeownership extend to counties with deep local histories of mortgage redlining and pre-civil rights housing discrimination (San Francisco, Alameda, and Contra Costa), as well as counties whose Black populations did not reach critical mass until after the implementation of fair housing laws in the 1960s (San Mateo, Santa Clara, and Solano). The sole exception is Napa County, which is home to fewer than 1,000 Black households overall, or just 0.5 percent of all Black households in the region. The low-density, sparsely-populated, and relatively wealthy Napa County has no historically Black communities, so its small Black population is more likely to include a larger share of homeowners with the means to live in the county.

An increasing share of Black homeowners are senior citizens, and a majority of Black owner-occupied households are headed by women.

Among Bay Area residents, the likelihood of being a homeowner increases with age: only 22 percent of householders aged 18 to 34 own their homes, compared to 73 percent of householders aged 65 and older. The same trend is true for Black residents, but Black residents in every age bracket are far less likely to own their homes. For instance, among the overall Bay Area population, a majority of householders over the age of 35 are homeowners. However, Black senior citizens are the only age bracket where a majority of Black householders own their homes.

Notably, the Bay Area’s homeowner population in 2020 was older on average than homeowners in 2010. This trend also applied to the region’s Black homeowners. Over the 2010s, the share of Black homeowners under the age of 50 fell substantially, a nearly 50 percent decline. Black older adults were the only age bracket to see an increase in the number of homeowners. It is possible that the substantial decline in younger Black homeowners is partly a consequence of the subprime mortgage crisis, which disproportionately harmed Black homeowners whom lenders had targeted for predatory loans.

The decline in younger Black homeowners also might be a consequence of the Bay Area’s Black population becoming older as a whole.² Between 2010 and 2020, the number of Black renters under 50 also declined, while the number of Black renters over 65 grew by about 50 percent. This data suggests that the Black population is aging, with a growing share of seniors and a smaller share of young adults. Moreover, since the number of older Black renters grew at over three times the rate for Black senior homeowners, this suggests that Black people who have recently aged into senior citizenship are far likelier to be renters than homeowners.

This rising concentration of Black-owned homes among the older population raises additional questions about the long-term preservation of the Bay Area’s historically Black communities, especially as the overall number of Black homeowners shrinks and younger adults make up a smaller share of local Black communities. While some older homeowners may pass their property to their children, others may downsize their homes and/or move to more affordable areas of the region (or country), accelerating neighborhood turnover and the gentrification of neighborhoods like Bayview-Hunters Point, West Oakland, and the Richmond flatlands.

Despite the recent population shifts within the Bay Area’s Black communities, one consistent trend is that the majority of the Bay Area’s Black households are headed by women, regardless of ownership status. Across the Bay Area, 46 percent of all heads of household in owner-occupied homes are women, and 48 percent of all rental householders are women. By comparison, among Black heads of household, 54 percent of homeowners and 57 percent of rental householders are women. These households are diverse in makeup, including single-parent households, single women with no children, same-sex partnerships and families, widows, and heterosexual partnerships where a woman is the primary income earner.

This prevalence of Black women-led households stands out among Bay Area residents. Among homeowners, only one other racial group – people in the “Other” category – has a majority of householders who are women. Among renters, only multiracial and Native American residents also have a majority of female householders.

Black homeowners’ properties have lower median values than overall median home values, and Black median home values appreciated less over the 2010s.

In the Bay Area, the median value for homes owned by Black people is just two-thirds the median home value for all homeowners, regardless of race.³ Moreover, homes owned by Black residents appreciated in value at a far lower rate over the 2010s: while the overall median home value rose by 14 percent, homes owned by people who only identify as Black gained less than four percent in median home value. For all Black homeowners (including multiracial people), the median home value rose by eight percent.

This discrepancy in median home values cannot be attributed to Black homeowners living in smaller homes on average. As the graph below shows, Black-owned homes vary in the number of bedrooms at the same rates as all owner-occupied homes, regardless of race: 64 percent of Black-owned homes are three bedrooms or smaller, the same amount as for all homeowners. Nor can this disparity in home values be explained by a disproportionate number of condominiums or townhomes among Black homeowners. In fact, Black homeowners are more likely to own single-family homes, compared to the overall homeowner population (at a rate of 91 percent compared to 88 percent of all homeowners).⁴

A better explanation for the discrepancy in median home values is the endurance of de facto segregation for the Bay Area’s Black communities, even as many Black households have been displaced from historically Black communities in recent years. Long-term systemic underdevelopment and institutional disinvestment in majority-Black, working-class neighborhoods have depressed housing values across entire communities. Additionally, many Black homeowners face anti-Black racism in the home valuation industry, as appraisers are more likely to value homes in majority-Black and Latinx neighborhoods at lower prices than what buyers are willing to pay. A 2018 Brookings analysis discovered that homes in majority-Black neighborhoods in the Bay Area were valued at 27 percent less than comparable homes in local neighborhoods with less than one percent of Black residents. A recent case in the historically Black community of Marin City, where a Black couple pretended that their home was owned by a white person and received a substantially higher home valuation, suggests that some bias in the appraisal market benefits or harms individual homeowners based on their race.

Just as disparities in homeownership fuel a growing wealth gap between Black and white households as a whole, racist practices in home valuation create and worsen inequity within the homeowner class, too. Black residents seeking to build equity through homeownership thus face additional barriers to intergenerational wealth, as lower home values and lower rates of appreciation prevent those homeowners from growing their net worth and leveraging those assets. While mortgage redlining was outlawed over half a century ago, discrimination in appraisals preserves and prolongs the long-term effects of redlining: tying home value to the race of the homeowner and eliminating any level playing field in the real estate market.

Black homeowners are more likely to have mortgage debt than the overall homeowner population.

As of 2020, 79 percent of Black owner-occupied households had a mortgage, compared to 70 percent of all homeowners and 67 percent of white homeowners. Black homeowners were also more likely than other homeowners of color to have mortgage debt, with the exception of homeowners who are multiracial or identify with another (i.e., unlisted) racial group. However, residents who identify as multiracial or “Other” skew younger, making it more likely that they are still paying off a home loan, whereas older adults make up an increasingly larger share of Black homeowners.

Notably, the share of homeowners with a mortgage fell for every racial group between 2010 and 2020. While some of that drop could be attributed to an uptick in homebuyers paying in full with cash, the foreclosure crisis also led to many borrowers losing their homes in the early 2010s. It is possible that many of those former borrowers left the region and/or have not re-entered the homebuyers market since.

The gap in mortgage debt between Black homeowners and all homeowners grows the longer an owner has been in their home. Among homeowners who moved into their homes within the past 5 years, 86 percent of Black homeowners have mortgage debt, compared to 81 percent of all homeowners. However, for residents who have been in their homes for over 30 years, that gap increases to 17 percentage points: 59 percent of Black homeowners and 42 percent of all homeowners are still paying off their mortgages.

Given that the 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage has been a mainstay of US lending practices since the mid-20th century, it is notable that the majority of Black homeowners who have lived in their homes for over three decades are still in debt. Additional research is necessary to determine the share of households with second mortgages and/or refinanced home loans. Moreover, these figures cannot account for homeowners who sell their homes before their 30-year mortgage is paid off. The large share of long-term Black residents who are still paying off their loans decades later challenges the idea that homeownership is a guaranteed way to build wealth, given the many inequities that shape the financial well-being of Black residents.

The share of cost-burdened Black homeowners has declined since 2010, but Black homeowners still face higher rates of housing burden than homeowners as a whole.

On average, Black homeowners in the Bay Area spend more of their income on mortgage payments, utilities, and other housing costs than the overall homeowner population. As of 2020, 37 percent of Black homeowners are cost-burdened (paying at least 30 percent of income on housing), compared to 29 percent of all homeowners. Nearly one in five (18 percent) of Black homeowners were extremely cost-burdened, spending at least half of their income on housing; by comparison, 13 percent of all homeowners are extremely cost-burdened. However, the share of cost-burdened Black homeowners fell by nearly 20 percentage points between 2010 and 2020. In 2010, wages were depressed due to the global recession, and more homeowners had taken on high-interest home loans that drove up housing costs.

The effects of the subprime mortgage crisis are particularly evident when comparing changes in homeowner cost burden to changes in rent burden. The share of cost-burdened renters in the Bay Area changed far less dramatically over the 2010s for both Black renters and all renters, regardless of race. However, this also means that rent burden levels have barely improved since 2010, when the US was in the middle of a years-long recession. Rates of rent burden remain higher for Black renters: as of 2020, nearly half of all renters (45 percent) are rent-burdened, and nearly 60 percent of Black rental households are rent-burdened. One-third of Black renter households are extremely rent-burdened, spending at least half of their income on housing costs. By comparison, about one-quarter (23 percent) of all renters experience extreme housing burden.

The trends in this analysis – burdensome housing costs and low homeownership rates – should raise the alarm about the long-term vitality and well-being of the Bay Area’s storied Black communities. Without robust policy solutions and deep investments in affordable housing production, high costs and limited prospects for homeownership will continue to push Black families out of the region. Moreover, addressing inequities in Black homeownership and housing burden will strengthen institutions and practices that benefit all Bay Area residents.

Recommendations

Based on the findings in this analysis and our conversations with local Black nonprofit leaders and housing justice experts, we recommend the following:

Provide reparations for the victims of 20th-century publicly financed mortgage redlining practices and housing exclusion. In 2023, California’s Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans and the San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee both released detailed proposals to provide reparations for the descendants of enslaved Americans. Both reports detail the many forms of institutional exclusion and structural harm that Black Americans have faced locally since the end of the Civil War, including the region’s extensive regime of housing exclusion and lender discrimination in the mid-20th century. Accordingly, both reports provide potential blueprints for the remediation of these systemic harms, including both individual and family-level compensation as well as comprehensive policy reforms to address enduring community-level patterns of racial violence, voter disenfranchisement, economic dispossession, mistreatment in the justice system, and educational and health disparities. These policy blueprints offer comprehensive remedies to current-day inequities rooted in centuries of accumulated discrimination while also advancing equitable approaches to health, education, housing, and employment that would benefit all Bay Area and California residents.⁵

Invest in a diversity of affordable housing developments outside the speculative real estate market while being mindful of many Black residents’ longstanding distrust of poorly funded public housing projects. As outlined in our recent regional analysis of affordable housing production, massive investments in nonmarket housing solutions – from subsidized low-income housing to nonprofit community land trusts and publicly operated social housing – are necessary to address the Bay Area’s significant shortfall in affordable housing. The Bay Area stands to lose even more Black residents without substantial public intervention in the regional housing crisis. Recent policy developments at the state level create longer-term pathways for these housing investments. In 2023, the state legislature passed a law requiring the California Department of Housing and Community Development to produce a study for a statewide social housing model, which is in development as of the time of writing.

However, many Black families in the Bay Area have negative, if not traumatic, experiences with systemically underfunded and poorly-run public housing projects from the 20th century. Because of this stigma around public housing, implementing new forms of nonprivate housing requires careful public messaging and community engagement practices, as well as a long-term commitment to the adequate funding and management of these housing strategies.

Accelerate housing development in historically white, low-density neighborhoods, including the upzoning of neighborhoods restricted to single-family homes. Addressing the enduring legacy of housing segregation requires a multi-pronged approach: increasing affordability and access in majority-white, more affluent, and historically segregated neighborhoods while simultaneously improving infrastructure and living conditions in historically nonwhite, working-class communities. Many suburban municipalities with superlative employment, educational, and environmental conditions lean on exclusionary zoning practices that overly limit density, inflate housing costs, and prevent local socioeconomic diversity. However, state initiatives aimed at local housing development, like promoting the construction of accessory dwelling units (ADUs) and overriding single-family zoning restrictions, have produced uneven results in the Bay Area. Local governments must leverage these recent state-level policy changes to ensure that ADU and multiplex construction addresses local housing needs across all income levels.

Enact municipal policies that support community acquisition and ownership of affordable housing. While new affordable housing development is crucial, preventing the conversion of existing affordable housing into market-rate properties is equally important. Older low-cost housing may be especially at risk of being redeveloped into luxury housing. In gentrifying neighborhoods, property owners may want to take advantage of rapidly rising property values and “cash out” by selling their property, putting tenants at risk of economic displacement when their home changes ownership. Municipal policies like Community Opportunity to Purchase Acts (COPAs) and Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Acts (TOPAs) can preserve affordable housing by prioritizing sales to existing residents, nonprofit developers, and landlords committed to the well-being of residents in under-resourced communities, rather than focusing solely on maximizing profit. In addition to preserving affordability, TOPA and COPA policies provide an opportunity for long-time residents to stay in their neighborhoods and purchase their homes.

Ensure that existing residents in historically low-income communities of color, as well as residents who were previously displaced, have access to new affordable housing opportunities and redevelopment benefits in those neighborhoods. Many of the Bay Area’s historic communities of color merit comprehensive investment due to infrastructural deficits, poor housing stock and public transportation, and/or environmental hazards. However, redevelopment can come with the risk that existing low-income residents will be displaced as property values and rents rise and new, higher-spending residents are drawn to the area. The regionwide scarcity of affordable housing means that existing residents may find it difficult to access local affordable housing opportunities, and residents who have already been displaced may find it difficult to return. Municipal affordable housing practices in historic communities of color should strike a balance between an inclusive approach that provides opportunity to all residents in need of affordable housing and a preservationist strategy that recognizes the historic importance of said communities to the residents who have long occupied the neighborhood.

Restrict investor ownership of single-family homes and townhomes, including real estate investment trusts (REITs) and corporate landlords. The foreclosure crisis of the late 2000s and early 2010s caused millions of homeowners to lose their homes, especially homeowners of color. The crisis created a window of opportunity for speculators to buy up hundreds of thousands of recently-foreclosed properties at reduced prices, converting owner-occupied homes into rental income. As of 2022, investor-owned homes make up a sizeable portion of the rental market in many US metro areas, especially the Southeast and Rust Belt. Investor-owned homes make up a small percentage of single-family homes in California, but the trend is enough of a concern to prompt state legislators to explore policies restricting investor landlordship statewide. Investor ownership of single-family homes exacerbates the widespread scarcity of housing stock, threatening to price out more prospective Black homebuyers in a smaller, increasingly competitive market. While restricting investor ownership does not resolve the broader issue of insufficient housing supply, these policies do help to create a more level playing field for residents with aspirations of homeownership and reduce the affordability, accessibility, and quality issues common to many investor-owned rental homes.

Strengthen fair housing protections and enforcement resources against racial discrimination in the home valuation and appraisal industries. The systemic undervaluation of Black-owned homes and properties in majority-Black communities exacerbates the wealth gap between Black homeowners and the overall homeowner class and makes it likely that Black homeowners do not receive a fair return on their investment. It is crucial that home valuation firms and appraisers correct for these longstanding discriminatory practices, whether through the voluntary adoption of racial equity practices or through robust government regulation of private appraisers. If stronger fair housing protections are implemented through government action, policymakers must also provide the necessary fiscal resources for adequate and regular fair housing testing and enforcement. 

Increase investments in financial planning supports for Black homebuyers and homeowners in historically underbanked communities. Many majority-Black communities are systemically underbanked, with a scarcity of financial institutions besides check-cashing and payday lending firms. In addition, the relatively lower levels of Black homeownership over multiple generations means that fewer Black residents are equipped with the experience of navigating financial systems and property markets – best practices that more readily circulate within middle-class families and majority-white communities. Histories of predatory financial practices and racial discrimination may also lead to higher levels of distrust in banking institutions among some Black residents. Moreover, the financial planning workforce is overwhelmingly white, so existing planners are far less likely to be familiar with Black community concerns.

These disparities can have real consequences for Black families building intergenerational wealth: for instance, without access to estate planners that help establish living trusts, Black families must contend with probate courts to administer their recently deceased relatives’ estates in a time of mourning. It is crucial that Black prospective homebuyers and existing Black homeowners receive access to the kinds of supports and resources that equip people with the knowledge of how to protect their assets, build wealth, and pass that wealth on to future generations.

Improve Black homeowners’ access to funding and assistance for home renovations and retrofitting. Addressing systemic patterns of underbanking in majority-Black communities will also help remedy Black homeowners’ disproportionately low access to financing for home repairs. These supports are especially important for homeowners in historically Black neighborhoods with older housing stock. A 2024 Urban Institute analysis of national trends found that Black homeowners, who are more likely to live in homes of substandard quality than the general homeowner population, are also less likely to be approved for refinancing and home equity loans. Homes in poor condition have lower values, which in turn lowers the amount a homeowner can borrow against home equity. Moreover, home retrofits are essential in the Bay Area due to the persistent threat of earthquakes and the long-term increase of fire risk from climate change. Removing institutional barriers to renovation financing, diversifying loan products for lower-income homeowners, and investing in more publicly-backed home repair loan and grant programs would help Black homeowners build more home equity and preserve their family assets over generations.

Acknowledgments

We are profoundly grateful for the invaluable guidance and insights provided by many individuals and advisors throughout this research.

We extend our heartfelt thanks to the members of our Equity Campaign Leaders advisory committee and their colleagues who provided their expert feedback on our key findings and recommendations: Nikki Beasley of Richmond Neighborhood Housing Services, Robert Abbott of Young Community Developers, Chris Schildt of Urban Habitat, Melissa Jones and Darris Young of Bay Area Regional Health Inequities Initiative, and Ronnie Boyd, Lindsay Haddix, Joey Flegel-Mishlove and Damion Scott of East Bay Housing Organizations. We are equally grateful to the advocates, researchers, and leaders from our wider Bay Area community networks who offered their insights and experiences: Medro Johnson of Estate Parity; Diana Orozco and David Amaral of All Home California; Wilhelmenia Wilson of Healthy Black Families; and Jacqueline Chan, Brad Presner, and Karen Nemsick of United Way Bay Area.

We also express our sincere appreciation to Tram Hoang and Jasmine Rangel from the housing team at PolicyLink, who contributed to the policy recommendations included in this analysis. Furthermore, we are thankful to Jennifer Tran at PolicyLink and Amanda Lawson for their editing. Your collective efforts have been instrumental in shaping this research.

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