This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Fair Housing Act, implemented to protect individuals from discrimination when renting, buying, or securing financing for any housing. New research evaluates where inequality still exists in housing.
In partnership with the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA), Trulia examined four metros, Atlanta, Detroit, Houston, and Oakland, Calif., finding, "on a per person basis, majority-nonwhite areas have significantly fewer amenities such as traditional financial services, health services and fitness and outdoor amenities compared to majority-white areas." This research is in keeping with Trulia's previous research, showing that housing opportunities such as homeownership, rent burdens, and housing values are imbalanced across racial and ethnic groups.
Access to mainstream financial services such as banks, credit unions and mortgage lenders enables individuals to save money securely, borrow funds safely and establish credit which can lead to building wealth and longer-term financial security. As we demonstrated earlier, majority-white tracts have more mainstream financial-service establishments than majority-nonwhite areas, and this holds true for all of the metros separately. Although the difference was not statistically significant in Oakland.