Homeownership trends appreciation data and forecast for the Latino community in Corona CA, by Jenny Gonzalez.

Homeownership trends appreciation data and forecast for the Latino Community in Corona CA

By Jenny Gonzalez

Over the past two years, the Californian housing market saw dramatic increases in home values. At the same time household incomes remained relatively unmoved- a gap that’s now having profound impact on the Latino community which makes up at least 40% of the total population.

According to new research published by the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the universt=ity of California, Berkeley, household incomes rose by about 23 percent between years 2000 and 2019 and at the same time, the median home values rose by about 7.8 times. In counties like San Joaquin where Latinos make up over 40 percent of the residents, there was a significant drop in affordable homes for sale for the middle income families. In 2010, 91 percent of homes were affordable to middle-income families. This number has since dropped to 58 percent and similar trends can be seen in other counties such as Alameda, Santa Clara and Riverside.

“These areas that used to be affordable to working-class families, middle-income households, are increasingly becoming out of reach,” David Garcia, a policy

director at Terner Center who co-wrote the report, told NBC News. “I think what a lot of people don’t always realize is that these [people] are essential parts of our workforce. These are people who are gainfully employed, and pay a percentage of their income towards their rent to stay in these residences.”

Another report from the California Association of Realtors supports findings from the Terner Center for Housing showing that housing affordability for all Californians worsened during the pandemic largely due to the skyrocketing home prices.

The report found that 26 percent of all Californians earned the minimum income needed to purchase a home in 2021 which is 2 percentage points down from 2020. At the same time, the housing affordability for the Whites feel from 38 percent in 2020 to 34 percent in 2021. 17 percent of the Black and Latino households could afford the median priced home in 2021 which is down from 19 percent and 20 percent in 2020 respectively. There’s already an impending crisis going into 2022 as the significant difference in housing affordability in the communities of color is bound to worsen.

And while the interest rates remained relatively low, the gaps in housing affordability did not improve in 2021. In fact, if we look at the affordability gap for the Blacks as compared to the overall population in California, it remained virtually unchanged at 9.2 percentage points I 2020 and 9.3 percentage points in 2021 and for the Hispanics, the gap widened slightly from 8.3 percentage points in 2020 to 8.9 percentage points in 2021.

“Homeownership has an unparalleled ability to provide stability and economic security for working families and is vital to the health of our state and its citizens because it strengthens communities across California,” said C.A.R. President Otto Catrina. “Promoting access to homeownership is one way to close the racial wealth gap and foster economic equity for all Californians, and that’s why C.A.R. is committed to addressing ongoing fair housing and equity issues that persist in our state that have made it harder for Blacks, Latinos and other underserved communities to access and afford housing.”

The affordability crisis is worse especially in the expensive counties like San Francisco, where the median price of home was $1,825,000 was only affordable to 17 percent of the Latino Households.

San Bernardino, Fresno and Solano were the counties most affordable for the Latino community at 49, and 40 percent respectively while the least affordable county in 2021 for the Hispanic homebuyers was Orange County.