For Sale Homes
Homeownership is the primary way most people build wealth. Typically, one’s home is the largest asset on a household’s balance sheet. Yet homeownership remains out of reach for many Atlanta residents of color.
Disparities in home and property ownership - crucial drivers of generational wealth – contribute to the racial wealth gap. The 30% gap in homeownership between White and Black homeowners (in the US and in metro Atlanta) is a direct result of the discriminatory policies of redlining and real estate covenants that sabotaged black homeownership for nearly a century.[3]
Lenders deny mortgages for Black applicants at a rate 80% higher than that of white applicants, according to 2020 data from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act.[4] Combined with the generally lower incomes and credit scores experienced by Black and Brown populations, these discriminatory practices mean that Atlanta residents of color struggle to access the wealth that homeownership brings.
Closing the homeownership gap would close the racial wealth gap between white and black households by 31%, according to a 2016 report by Demos and the Institute on Assets and Social Policy.[5]
LISC ATL increases the supply of affordable for-sale homes in gentrifying and mixed-income neighborhoods.
How we do it:
- We finance developments using the community land trust model and other models that guarantee affordability
- We educate bankers, appraisers and potential homebuyers about the land trust model, so that home buyers are able to purchase land trust homes
- We raise funds to provide predevelopment capital to community land trusts and other affordable for-sale projects.
Project Highlight: Habitat for Humanity
LISC provided $6M in New Market Tax Credits to Atlanta Habitat for Humanity to support the development of up to 150 affordable and market rate homes at Browns Mill Village
Using Land to Restore Neighborhoods and Build Community
LISC Lending Products:
Housing