The Housing Bubble Also Left Our Neighborhoods More Segregated

The collapse of the housing market in 2008 and the credit crunch that followed it continues to disproportionately affect minorities. Black homeowners in the United States are so likely today to return to renter status that the gains made by blacks in homeownership since the 1970s have been effectively wiped out. Black and Hispanic households have largely been frozen out of the recovery, suggesting those gains may be one-sided.

And it's not just the credit collapse that has left minorities worse off. Even at the height of the housing bubble, black households were losing out to white households in terms of access to neighborhoods with the best schools and public amenities. Research shows that U.S. neighborhoods actually grew more segregated as a result of the housing bubble, independent of the effects of the credit collapse that followed.