Study finds whites own houses at 28 more percentage points than blacks in 1900, 2014.
BY JACOB PALMER | OB DIGITAL NEWS EDITOR
Real estate website Zillow released a study recently found that the racial gap in house ownership has maintained for over a century.
In 1900, whites owned houses at a 28-percent-higher rate than blacks; in 2014, the gap remains 28 percentage points.
Portland does not buck the national trend, OregonLive.com’s Mike Francis writes in his report on the study.
In Portland, where African-Americans make up 6.3 percent of the city’s population, the gap is less pronounced — but not by a lot. Zillow reports a homeownership rate of 64 percent for the city’s whites, while the rate for blacks is 39.7 percent. The city is taking steps to address a history of housing inequity, including the recent embrace of its North/Northeast Housing Strategy, a $20 million program intended to address a history of “displacement and gentrification”
Katrina Holland, a community activist who testified on the strategy at a Jan. 28 city council meeting, called Portland’s historical housing patterns as “frankly horrific, ridden with racism, with shame, (and) targeted displacement.”
