The Washington Post has a column, It's a Change, Not a Conspiracy, from a black resident of Takoma on the changes he's seen over the years. Recommended, but the bit I'd like to focus on is this:
"In the 16 years that I've lived in Takoma, I've seen three houses that were, arguably, sold out from under black owners who'd been there for decades. Two of the homes had been owned by couples whose children and grandchildren developed problems with drugs and alcohol. By the time the original owners died, the properties were heavily mortgaged. The heirs were forced to let the banks take the houses."
I'd pair this observation with data from New Orleans where the lower Ninth Ward had a very high home ownership rate. We, the mobile, college-educated elite, tend to assume that home-ownership is the result of buying. Thus it's important for the government to subsidize home-ownership, by allowing mortgage interest to be deducted on tax returns. What we forget is lots of homes are acquired by inheritance. Just like lots of farms are acquired by inheritance.
The old phrase about rags to riches to rags in x generations applies. Hurricanes like Katrina and epidemics like crack both result in the loss of status, the loss of inheritance. It's my belief that such things affect the social margins and the lower classes more heavily than the upper classes--there's just less margin of error and reserves available.
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