A Black couple living in California were outraged when their home was valued by $500,000 more after their white friend posed as the owner.
Paul Austin and Tenisha Tate Austin purchased their Marin City home back in 2016. They spent a substantial $400,000 on renovations before putting it back on the market. The couple built a new deck, added new floors, a fireplace, and kitted the home out with new appliances. The Austin’s also added an additional 1,000 square feet to the home.
The couple called out an appraiser to assess the property’s value, who priced the property at $989,000 — just $100,000 higher than the purchasing cost.
An appraiser lowballed this couple’s newly-renovated home, robbing them of the American dream b/c they’re Black! How many more instances of housing discrimination must we endure before we can build equity & long-term wealth? We must keep fighting to purge racism from our society! pic.twitter.com/Lv3J4dPQoR
— Ben Crump (@AttorneyCrump) February 16, 2021
“I read the appraisal, I looked at the number I was like, ‘This is unbelievable,” Tenisha Austin said.
The couple then turned to a white friend and asked them to pose as the homeowner. “We had a conversation with one of our white friends, and she told ABC 7, ‘No problem. I’ll be Tenisha. I’ll bring over some pictures of my family,'” Austin said. “She made our home look like it belonged to her.”
A second appraiser valued the home at $1,482,000 — almost double.
“I read the appraisal,” Tate Austin told ABC7. “I looked at the number I was like, ‘This is unbelievable.'”
The Black population grew in all of the HOLC zones, but the growth was largely constrained to the lower-rated HOLC zones: +15 and +17 points in the lower-rated zones compared to +1 and +6 in the higher-rated. pic.twitter.com/KGunrTdH2K
— Jonathan Schroeder (@j_p_schroeder) February 15, 2021
Redlining has long been an issue for Black communities in America. The Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) describes redlining as “the practice of denying credit to residents of predominantly minority neighborhoods.”
The term comes from the outlining of areas with sizable Black populations in red ink on maps to warn mortgage lenders against lending to people of color. The system forces Black people to remain in neighborhoods that would yield lower investment levels compared to their white counterparts.
If only I had more time….. made some fascinating and hopefully helpful slides for tomorrow’s lesson on redlining.
— Hayley Breden (@HayleyVatch) February 17, 2021
Denver friends, maybe they can be useful? I used some of the FHA descriptions of neighborhoods in the slides.
https://t.co/qxDVSPvrRi pic.twitter.com/fgsIfMzK8h
Here is the HOLC Redlining map for Omaha. pic.twitter.com/BkLMlCuyJI
— erin, Ph.D😷🏡 (@emfundertaker) January 18, 2021
1930’s Home Owner Loan Corporation map of Boston #redlining #coloroflaw pic.twitter.com/tojxSi5klW
— MAHA (@mahahome) February 19, 2021
In the 1930s, half of all American mortgages were in arrears, so then-President Roosevelt’s New Deal introduced several initiatives — including the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) and Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to provide federal insurance for mortgage loans.
The programs were created before the civil rights era and were crafted to further segregate Black communities from whites and deny them access to homeownership.
Today, HOPE submitted its comments to the @federalreserve on proposed changes to the Community Reinvestment Act, highlighting how this anti-redlining law can be strengthened to close the racial wealth gap, particularly in the Deep South. #TreasureCRA https://t.co/eE42HvxXkq pic.twitter.com/LbDURFIwhu
— Hope Policy Inst. (@HOPE_Policy) February 16, 2021
“There are implications to our ability to create generational wealth or passing things on if our houses appraise for 50 percent less” than their value, said Tate Austin.
The national homeownership rate for Black families is 44%, versus 73.7% for white families.
