DeOndra Parker is a single mom who recently bought her first home in the Penn Hills area. (Photo by Lucas Zheng/PublicSource)
DeOndra Parker, a single mother who lived on the North Side, did not originally plan to move from her two-bedroom apartment to a new house last year.
But with a 2-year-old and another child on the way, Parker said she was concerned about the safety of living in a third-floor apartment. When she started to look for other rentals nearby, she realized that the costs were “just insane.”
She decided that buying a house made more sense than renting a different apartment.
Parker knew the journey to homeownership was going to be difficult. But until she started her search, she didn’t realize how many barriers she’d have to overcome, from rising prices to lack of options nearby to credit requirements that knock potential buyers out of the running.
In Pittsburgh, those challenges have contributed to a widening racial disparity in homeownership, according to a recent report by the Pittsburgh Community Reinvestment Group [PCRG].
While housing disparities have a deep history tied to overt discrimination such as redlining, the report notes that modern-day barriers continue to limit the ability of people of color to own homes.
“It doesn’t seem like we’ve changed the needle on the meter,” said PCRG executive director Ernie Hogan. “We think it’s a much more complicated issue of just banks not lending to Blacks.”
As a possible solution, PCRG and other community organizations are pushing for statewide Community Reinvestment Act [CRA] legislation to increase racial equity in loans made to homebuyers.
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