The Sunday Read: ‘How the Real Estate Boom Left Black Neighborhoods Behind’

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 12 December 2021

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In Memphis, as in America, the benefits of homeownership have not accrued equally across race. Housing policy in the United States has leaned heavily on homeownership as a driver of household wealth since the middle of the last century, and, for many white Americans, property ownership has indeed yielded significant wealth. But Black families have largely been left behind, either unable to buy in the first place or hampered by risks that come with owning property. Homeownership’s limitations are especially apparent in Black neighborhoods. Owner-occupied homes in predominantly African American neighborhoods are worth, on average, half as much as those in neighborhoods with no Black residents, according to a 2018 Brookings Institution and Gallup report that examined metropolitan areas. For neighborhoods like Orange Mound in southeast Memphis, the solutions cannot come fast enough.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Today's episode of The Daily is sponsored by BetterHelp.
0:03.5	Why not take the next 10 seconds to focus on your breath, whatever you are doing, wherever
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0:09.1	Breathe in.
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0:35.4	Hi, my name is Vanessa Gregory.
0:44.8	I'm a writer in Oxford, Mississippi and I'm a contributor to the New York Times magazine.
0:51.3	One thing that I'm internally interested in is the concept of place and of home.
0:58.6	I grew up in a military family and I do not have that.
1:01.6	We moved every three years.
1:04.0	This particular story is about place in Memphis, Tennessee.
1:07.0	It's a historically black neighborhood called Orange Mound.
1:12.2	Orange Mound is near an area known as Midtown and Midtown is this beautiful section of
1:20.4	Memphis that has this crown jewel of a park called Overden Park.
1:25.3	It's sort of like the central park of Memphis.
1:28.3	The zoo is there.
1:29.2	There are some museums and there are a lot of really beautiful, big, obviously expensive
	...

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