Why blacks in Atlanta can't build equity in housing purchases.
The nation’s housing recovery is leaving blacks behind
SOUTH DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — When the new subdivisions were rising everywhere here in the 1990s and early 2000s, with hundreds and hundreds of fine homes on one-acre lots carved out of the Georgia forest, the price divide between this part of DeKalb County and the northern part wasn’t so vast.
Now, a house that looks otherwise identical in South DeKalb, on the edge of Atlanta, might sell for half what it would in North DeKalb. The difference has widened over the years of the housing boom, bust and recovery, and Wayne Early can’t explain it.
The people here make good money, he says. They have good jobs. Their homes are built of the same sturdy brick. Early, an economic development consultant and real estate agent, can identify only one obvious difference that makes property here worth so much less.
“This can’t happen by accident,” he says. “It’s too tightly correlated with race for it to be based on something else.”
The communities in South DeKalb are almost entirely African American, and they reflect a housing disparity that emerges across the Atlanta metropolitan area and the nation. According to a new Washington Post analysis, the higher a Zip code’s share of black residents in the Atlanta region, the worse its housing values have fared over the past turbulent housing cycle.
Predominantly black neighborhoods have been left out of the recovery across Atlanta
In the Atlanta region, the racial makeup of a Zip code predicts how well home values have fared there. Values are down in almost all Zips where the population is at least 40 percent African American. The difference is especially stark in DeKalb County.
Homes in
North DeKalb
Zip codes in areas with a low black population increased in value.
DeKalb County
Increase in home values
CHANGE IN HOME VALUES,
2004 TO 2015
Decrease in home values
Homes in
South DeKalb
Other metro Atlanta zip codes
Zip codes in areas with a high black population decreased in value.
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BLACK POPULATION
More
Nationwide, home values in predominantly African American neighborhoods have been the least likely to recover. Across the 300 largest U.S. metropolitan areas, homes in 4 out of 10 Zip codes where blacks are the largest population group are worth less than they were in 2004. That’s twice the rate for mostly white Zip codes across the country. Across metropolitan Atlanta, nearly 9 in 10 largely black Zip codes still have home values below that point 12 years ago.
And in South DeKalb, the collapse has been even worse. In some Zip codes, home values are still 25 percent below what they were then. Families here, who’ve lost their wealth and had their life plans scrambled, see neighborhoods in the very same county — mostly white neighborhoods — thriving.
“I don’t think it’s anything local residents did that caused that to happen,” Early says. “I think it’s all outside forces that did this.”
The region reflects the complex ways that housing and race have long been intertwined in America. Across the country, blacks are less likely to own homes; those who did were more likely during the housing bust to slip underwater; and as a result, a larger share of black wealth has been destroyed in the years since then.
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side of Cascade. Right across from Family Dollar. Literally just saw it for the first time earlier today while riding past that way. Think it used to be a Yasins back in the day if I remember correctly.
