Black Americans And The Racist Architecture Of Homeownership
By Jonaki Mehta
May 8, 2021
, on American democracy.
Last summer, DonnaLee Norrington had a dream about owning a home. Not the figurative kind, but a literal dream, as she slept in the rental studio apartment in South Los Angeles that she was sharing with a friend.
At around 2 a.m., Norrington remembers, “God said to me, ‘Why don’t you get a mortgage that doesn’t move?’ And in my head I knew that meant a fixed mortgage.”
The very next morning she made an appointment with Mark Alston, a local mortgage broker well known in South LA Black community, to inquire about purchasing her very own home for the first time.