Racial Gap In Homeownership Widens In U.S. Slump : NPR: ...Experts say the Great Recession is erasing slow but steady economic gains made by blacks in recent decades. The foreclosure crisis is having a particularly devastating impact, they say, erasing years of racial progress.
Recent data show blacks are losing their homes — and their wealth — at a far faster pace than whites. A study by the Pew Research Center found that as of 2009, the median wealth of a white family was 20 times greater than that of the average black family. That's the largest gap since the government began collecting the data a quarter of a century earlier.
Blacks are nearly twice as likely as whites to have already lost their homes, according to the Center for Responsible Lending. The nonprofit advocacy group also estimates that as many as a quarter of all blacks who bought a home just before the recession hit may lose it.
