Who Owns Your Home?

I’ve started my Highland Rising research in Highland proper–that is, the North York Street neighborhood. Walnut St was where Rev. J.A. Rollins, the first headmaster of Highland School, lived. Several other prominent black families lived there. Now, it is the street adjacent to the county jail. I’ve finally found some source documents that begin to explain how this prestigious area of Highland became government property, but that will be another blog post.

What immediately struck me about North York Street is that the addresses of the lot owners was usually not the same as the address of the home. Often they weren’t even in the same city. I know from reading Family Properties that white speculators in Chicago often bought homes and sold them to black families on contract, creating the slums we hear about now. Back then, mortgage companies did not loan money to black families, but the Fair Housing Act of 1968 was supposed to change that. Technically black people have plenty of opportunity to buy their homes. In Highland, that’s not true at all.

Home ownership in the United States is currently 63.6% according to the US Census. In Gastonia, it’s 53.6%. As you can see, on North York Street (and satellite streets), it’s 16.6%. I’m still learning the GIS data, so maybe further research will prove me wrong. The largest owners of the 247 homes in this neighborhood are real estate investors, with Fort Foundation being the largest by far (23 homes). Fort Foundation was founded in 1994 by a Gastonia family, but the two sons currently live out of town. I followed one of the other investors to a Meetup group in Charlotte founded by Bonnie Laslo, writer of the book Hobby Millionaire.

My dad and my uncle together own four homes in the neighborhood. Of course they only live in two. My dad is also listed in the c/o line of a shotgun house we briefly stayed in on Caldwell St. More about my dad, the real estate investor, in a future post.

Whole generations missed out on home ownership due to discriminatory housing laws in the United States. My grandmother rented all her life; her family never accumulated equity that could have been passed on to her six children and then to their children. The Color of Law says that a white family who bought a home in Levittown PA in 1948 now has over $200,000 more in generational wealth than a black family that was denied a mortgage. Even if you did own, homes in black neighborhoods have 18% less value than similar homes in white neighborhoods.

Who owns your home?


Originally published at highlandrising.wordpress.com on July 21, 2017.

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Crystal Byrd Farmer

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Writing about #highlandrising and other interests

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