An updated report shows local Black households continue to own homes at a disproportionate rate compared to white households; by some metrics, the problem has gotten worse in recent years.
"We're deeply concerned that there's still a legacy of housing discrimination in mortgage lending and in home ownership in our region that dates back to explicit racial discrimination from federal policies like redlining," said Elisabeth Risch, executive director of the nonprofit, fair housing organization Housing Opportunities Made Equal, or HOME.
HOME released a roadmap for increasing Black homeownership in 2022. The 2026 update, released Friday, includes more recent data and revised recommendations for local officials and lending institutions. You can see the full report at the end of this article.
Risch says a lot has changed in the last four years.
"We've seen the federal government really constrain what resources are available to enforce fair housing and fair lending laws," she told WVXU.
The region has also seen significant increases in property values, and consequently, in property taxes.
"There's opportunities to expand homeownership with new home buyers, but it really is important that we're focusing on preserving homeownership," Risch said. "How can we make sure that families pass down their homes, that they are keeping that wealth, that asset, in the family?"
Risch says two property tax relief programs from the city of Cincinnati offered support, but she'd like to make them easier to access.
"I think there are programmatic changes that can really help make that most effective," she said. "How can people participate in programs that they're eligible for without jumping through a lot of hoops in terms of contacting someone, calling someone, responding to a letter, all of those barriers?"
New data on Black homeownership
"We see some incremental progress in terms of the Black/white homeownership gap in the region," Risch said. "We see an increase in Black homeownership in the larger metropolitan area. ... In Hamilton County and in the city of Cincinnati, the gap is pretty much the same."
The Black/white homeownership gap in the whole metro area was about 39% from 2018 to 2023. Last year, it dropped to 33%. Risch says there's also been a decrease in the number of total Black households.
"There could be speculation that Black households and Black homeowners are actually leaving Hamilton County and moving out to Butler County, particularly," she said.
| Homeownership Rate | Hamilton County | City of Cincinnati | Cincinnati Metro Area |
| All Households | 59% | 40% | 69% |
| White | 70% | 51% | 74% |
| Black or African American | 34% | 25% | 41% |
| Two or More Races | 44% | 32% | 54% |
| Hispanic or Latino (of any race) | 45% | 33% | 52% |
| Black-White Homeownership Gap | 36% | 26% | 33% |
One significant cause of this Black/white homeownership gap is disparities in mortgage lending.
HOME released a report last year showing Black households are denied at 1.9 times the rate of white borrowers, regardless of income. An additional year of data in the new report shows that disparity is unchanged.
For upper-income Black borrowers, however, the problem is worse — they are denied mortgages at 3.8 times the rate of upper-income white borrowers. That's compared to the 2.8 times disparity originally identified in last year's report.
Risch says that metric is especially sensitive to small changes in actual numbers, since this upper-income group is smaller than the overall household numbers.
"Upper income white borrowers are denied only 5% of the time, so any kind of increase or decrease in that would really shift that percentage," Risch said. "Comparatively, 19% of upper income Black borrowers are denied."
Read the full report
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