When Nathan Connolly and his wife, Shani Mott, saw that their home in Baltimore had been appraised at $472,000, they knew something was wrong. They had bought it four years earlier, in 2017, for $450,000. They had made $40,000 in renovations. Home prices had been rising throughout the pandemic. It just didn t make sense. So a few months after that first appraisal, they applied to refinance again with another company and decided to try something different. This time, the African American family removed all the photographs of themselves and had a white colleague meet the appraiser. The second appraisal came back at $750,000. Same house. Same location. Three-hundred-thousand-dollar difference.
When Nathan Connolly and his wife, Shani Mott, saw that their home in Baltimore had been appraised at $472,000, they knew something was wrong. They had bought it four years earlier, in 2017, for $450,000. They had made $40,000 in renovations. Home prices had been rising throughout the pandemic. It just didn t make sense. So a few months after that first appraisal, they applied to refinance again with another company and decided to try something different. This time, the African American family removed all the photographs of themselves and had a white colleague meet the appraiser. The second appraisal came back at $750,000. Same house. Same location. Three-hundred-thousand-dollar difference.
<p>Peniel Joseph's book looks to the past struggles to define and achieve freedom and equality to ask what America's Third Reconstruction – begun with Obama's election and attacked since– must do to survive and advance. </p>
Researchers found evidence of a persistent practice that gives higher values to homes when the occupants are white, and devalue them if the owners are people of color.
In law, the Fair Housing Act (FHA) is focused on equality and inclusion in the housing market and reached its 50th year in 2018. Although the FHA and fair housing advocates have done.