Black homeownership rose nearly as fast as white without government backing

Evidence

FHA insurance can be credited for the significant growth in white homeownership rates, with a majority of white Americans (57 percent) owning homes by 1950. Just ten years earlier, only 46 percent of white Americans had been homeowners. Despite being denied access to FHA insurance, homeownership among black Americans increased from 23 to 34 percent during that same period. They bought homes with costlier mortgages and navigated racially restrictive covenants, yet somehow they still increased their homeownership rate by 10 percentage points—similar to their white peers, but without the preferential treatment. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 372

Categorization

• QUESTION: If Black families grew homeownership 10 points while being locked out of FHA, how much more would they have gained with equal access? This is a counterfactual gap worth chasing — it bears directly on reparations-damages quantification.