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Cityscape: Volume 21 Number 1 | The Fair Housing Act at 50 | Endowments and Minority Homeownership

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The goal of Cityscape is to bring high-quality original research on housing and community development issues to scholars, government officials, and practitioners. Cityscape is open to all relevant disciplines, including architecture, consumer research, demography, economics, engineering, ethnography, finance, geography, law, planning, political science, public policy, regional science, sociology, statistics, and urban studies.

Cityscape is published three times a year by the Office of Policy Development and Research (PD&R) of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.



The Fair Housing Act at 50

Volume 21 Number 1

Mark D. Shroder

Michelle P. Matuga

Endowments and Minority Homeownership

Arthur Acolin
University of Washington

Desen Lin
University of Pennsylvania

Susan M. Wachter
The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania


Fifty years after the adoption of the 1968 Fair Housing Act that prohibits discrimination in the housing market, homeownership rates have not increased for Black or Hispanic households. The current homeownership rate for Black households is 42 percent, identical to the 1970 census reported level, and 48 percent for Hispanic households, lower than that in 1970. Using data from the 1989, 2005, and 2013 American Housing Surveys, we identify the extent to which group differences in household endowments account for persistently low minority homeownership levels.


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