Seattle-area residents misplaced tens of billions in wealth resulting from racist housing insurance policies: report

Households led by individuals of coloration residing in King County, Washington — the realm that Seattle sits in — misplaced an estimated $12 billion to $34 billion in wealth since 1950 resulting from racist housing insurance policies. That is based on a report commissioned by King County, which was first reported on this week within the Seattle Times.

The report, performed by consulting agency ECONorthwest, discovered that the sizable totals of misplaced wealth weren’t solely attributable to racially discriminatory insurance policies and practices together with redlining, but additionally to cash that went to lease funds that didn’t assist to determine the expansion of a family’s wealth.

The report additionally accounts for “wealth misplaced due to decrease residence worth appreciations for houses owned by individuals of coloration in contrast with white individuals,” based on the reporting.

When particularly King County’s Black households, the estimated intergenerational wealth loss since 1950 is estimated to be between $5.4 billion and $15.8 billion, and likewise included a rundown of among the insurance policies the report recognized as racist.

“The decrease estimate is predicated on inflationary changes and the upper estimate is predicated on the expansion of the S&P 500,” a abstract of the report issued to county leaders stated.

This features a coverage going again so far as 1855, 34 years previous to the admission of the territory to the Union as a state, when “Washington’s first territorial governor compelled Indigenous Tribes within the space to cede their lands and transfer to reservations,” based on the abstract.

The report additionally recognized federal insurance policies tolerated by state and federal governments that contributed to the melancholy of wealth for individuals of coloration, together with the 1934 institution of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) which “incentivized communities to embrace single-family zoning and racial deed restrictions to be thought-about for mortgage insurance coverage, feeding into the observe of redlining,” the abstract stated.

“Discriminatory practices and insurance policies in authorities, the banking, and actual property industries proceed to impede entry to homeownership for [Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC)] households immediately,” the abstract defined. “These discriminatory practices negatively have an effect on credit score scores, mortgage entry, and the overall monetary safety of BIPOC households, such that getting homeownership has been, and continues to be, a major and unacceptable hurdle.”

In Could, Wash. Gov. Jay Inslee (D) signed a collection of payments designed to handle the state’s housing points, relating notably to produce and housing affordability.

One such invoice is meant to “assist individuals who had been affected by racist housing covenants designed to maintain ethnic and spiritual minorities out of sure neighborhoods, in addition to their descendants, with down funds and shutting prices,” according to previous reporting by the Seattle Times. Sponsors say it’s the primary statewide invoice of its sort.