Housing Counseling’s mission to overcome inequities

In honor of Black History month, we wanted to reflect on the importance of housing and the historical role it has played in economic equity. We recently reached out to our long-standing community partners, ESL Federal Credit Union. We asked How can housing counseling help to overcome inequities in minority communities and improve wealth building? Malik Evans, ESL’s Financial Wellness Manager provided the following:

“We all have heard the sayings, “knowledge is power, and that you don’t know what you don’t know”. For many minority communities’ homeownership has seemed like a distant dream. So much of this is rooted in the historical context of structural racism. For years, minorities have been relegated to certain areas of cities across America and it was written into the law that African Americans specifically, could not buy in certain areas and would not be eligible for certain government and bank loans which would have enabled home ownership. This process of historic systemic discrimination and past red lining has disadvantaged minority perspective home owners in a major way. Consider an individual that had a great grandparent pass on a home through generations. This would allow that grandchild to inherit a home with substantial worth and contribute to the net worth of that child, this creates generational wealth, a marker of long term financial freedom. Data shows that this has not equally benefited minority communities. The first thing housing counseling can do is learn this painful history because it can help inform their approach to helping improve home ownership in minority communities. This knowledge and historical understanding is critical if we are going to increase minority home ownership and ensure that the laws of outright discrimination are ever repeated.

 Housing Counseling should also ensure that their employees are culturally competent and reflect the demographics of their service areas. This dimension of understanding will only improve pre and post counseling sessions and provide housing counseling employees with the perspective of their clients and help with service delivery. Education is also critical to improving housing in minority communities, thus the education curriculum that housing counselors provide must take care to inform minorities about issues such as appraisers, loan to value, credit and other pertinent issues that are critical to the home buying process. Housing Counseling organizations can also encourage clients to save for the future and illustrate its benefits.

According to the Federal Reserve, Black homeownership during the 2nd quarter of 2020 was 47% compared to 76% for Whites. Home Counseling partners are critical to improving this number for minority home owners. Housing is wealth building and to improve inequalities in minority communities housing Counseling can play a major role in this effort.”

For fifty years, The Housing Council at PathStone has remained a trusted source of housing-related services for low income and minority communities for the greater Rochester area. Our vision is to bring the comfort of home to everyone via access to safe, affordable housing, building equity and equality across the board.