The persistence of racism in the housing market

American society continues to defy John Roberts’s assertions that racism is now over:

White homeowners can expect their homes’ values to increase at twice the rate of homeowners of color, a stark confirmation of systemic racial bias in home appraisals, according to a new report.

Despite ongoing accounts of ingrained discrimination over the past two years, researchers exploring racial inequality in the housing market have not had access to appraisals. This changed last week, when, following a directive from the Biden administration, the Federal Housing Finance Agency released 47 million appraisal reports to the public for the first time.

The appraisals, which were compiled between 2013 and 2021, present evidence of a persistent, widespread practice in the home appraisal industry to give higher values to homes when the occupants are white, and devalue them if the owners are people of color.

Analyzing the millions of appraisals by using census tracts as a proxy for neighborhoods and comparing communities with nearly identical housing stock, two researchers found that the results showed a clear correlation: The higher the proportion of white residents in each community, the higher the appraised value of individual homes.

The researchers restricted their study to neighborhoods in metropolitan areas with at least 500,000 people and at least 50,000 residents of color, and ensured that not only did the houses in the compared communities look similar, but residents were of the same socioeconomic status, and amenities like parks, grocery stores and local services such as banks and post offices were on par.

Clearly, the solution is to just stop researching things like this because thinking about racial disparities makes my head hurt. It’s what MLK and the framers of the 14th Amendment would have wanted!