Over the summer, D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser convened a group of local advocates and city officials and tasked them with an ambitious directive: to come up with suggestions to increase the number of Black residents who own houses in the District, which has experienced a net loss of Black homeowners in the past decade.
On Monday, the Black Homeownership Strike Force helped Bowser’s administration set a new long-term goal to create 20,000 new Black homeowners in the District by 2030. Members of the strike force said that goal, and the 10 recommendations they put forth to help the city reach it, will help the city overcome decades of historical, discriminatory housing policies once common throughout the United States that continue to fuel inequitable homeownership rates today.
About 34 percent of Black D.C. residents own their homes — a decrease from 46 percent in 2005, according to American Community Survey data cited in the report. Meanwhile, White homeownership in the city increased from 47 percent to 49 percent between 1990 and 2019.
