The Continuing Home Foreclosure Tsunami: Disproportionate Impacts on Black and Latino Communities

Posted by on November 16, 2009

The Continuing Home Foreclosure Tsunami: Disproportionate Impacts on Black and Latino Communities, a white paper by the William C. Velasquez Institute

This William C. Velasquez Institute White Paper analyzes recent data from select U.S. metropolitan areas to highlight the depth and breadth of the current economic crisis and housing downturn. While particularly acute in certain urban areas, the extent of the economic decline has spanned the country and has especially impacted Blacks and Latinos both as a threat to homeownership and as a cause of unemployment. This White Paper supplements our June 2009 report “The End of the American Dream for Blacks and Latinos: How the Home Mortgage Crisis is Destroying Black and Latino Wealth, Jeopardizing America’s Future Prosperity and How to Fix It,” which is available [here] . This report makes the following key findings:

* The foreclosure crisis is highly concentrated in areas of recent high growth, such as the West and Southwest and regions that have seen steady economic decline and deindustrialization, such as the South and Midwest;
* At the peak of the recent housing expansion, black and Latino homeowners held high-cost mortgage instruments with two to nine times the frequency of whites in selected foreclosure regions and are at a proportionally greater risk of defaulting or vacating their homes;
* Nationally, blacks and Latinos have higher rates of unemployment than whites. In regions strongly effected by the foreclosure crisis, these groups have lost thousands of jobs in homebuilding and construction sectors. This aggravates an already acute risk of mortgage default and foreclosure among black and Latino homeowners.

http://www.wcvi.org/data/pub/housingwhitepaper102309.htm?msource=EU2