Homeownership is more than a milestone. For generations in New York’s Black community, it has represented stability in the face of uncertainty, dignity in the face of exclusion, and a pathway to something our ancestors were systematically denied: intergenerational wealth.
When Council Member Chi Ossé was arrested while protesting an eviction stemming from deed theft, it shed light on one of the many crises that have plagued homeowners for years.
For communities like ours, the right to own a home was neither gifted nor guaranteed. It has been earned, inch by inch, through generations of barriers that made ownership difficult to attain and harder to sustain. Even with this progress, Black New Yorkers hold only 12 percent of the city’s housing wealth despite making up 20 percent of the population. That gap is structural and will not close without deliberate policy intervention.
From redlining and discriminatory lending to racially restrictive covenants, Black families were deliberately locked out of homeownership opportunities. Those legacies persist today in appraisal gaps, unequal access to refinancing, and neighborhood disinvestment. When a Black family becomes a homeowner, it is not just a financial milestone, it is an act of repair in a system that was not designed for their stability.
In the church, we preach faith, but we also preach stewardship. We must be wise about what we build and what we leave behind. It is not enough to shout on Sunday if we are not equipping our communities on Monday. Homeownership is a form of stewardship. It provides stability for children, consistency in education, and a foundation for long-term wealth-building. For many families, housing equity is their largest asset and the primary driver of intergenerational wealth. But that stability is increasingly fragile without stronger policy protections.
Today, Black homeownership is being squeezed from multiple directions: rising property taxes, predatory lending, deed theft, corporate acquisition of small housing stock, and barriers to refinancing that prevent families from accessing the equity they have already built. These pressures are not abstract. They determine whether longtime residents remain in their communities or are pushed into homelessness.
