Race and Racism

This August, we at Enterprise Community Partners presented our comments on the proposed rulemaking changes to the Community Reinvestment Act, the 1977 law that was designed to undo the racist underinvestment in low-income and communities of color.

As the country heads toward a pivotal midterm election, we outline the key policy priorities Congress and the White House must enact to create more affordable housing in America.

Through extensive literature review and qualitative data, this brief draws from the community development sector’s experience to identify best practices, interventions and key common-sense reforms to make land contracts a safer and more effective homeownership tool.

Cities are not homogeneous by race and ethnicity, however, with some neighborhoods still majority non-Hispanic white. Nor are changes within these neighborhoods consistent; for example, those that have experienced gentrification – or the in-migration of higher-income households into traditionally low-income communities – likely have different patterns of racial change than non-gentrified neighborhoods, given inequalities in income distributions across households by race and ethnicity.

The impact of institutional and structural racism in education, criminal justice, housing, employment, health care, and access to opportunities cannot be denied: homelessness is a by-product of racism in America.

This paper is the first in a series that looks at gentrification and its implications for policymaking. It highlights the importance of measurement to framing our perceptions about gentrification and its consequences. Subsequent papers will demonstrate the extent of overlap between different measures, and the intersections of gentrification and education policy decisions.