Chicago Sun Times, May 30, 2019: ‘A plunder of black wealth’: predatory housing contracts gouged Chicago’s black homeowners, new report says
Black home buyers in Chicago lost at least $3.2 billion in today’s dollars because of racist real estate policies and predatory contracts between 1950 and 1970, according to a report published Thursday.
In those 20 years, black homeowners purchased 60,100 homes in Chicago. At least 75% of those homes were sold through so-called “home sale contracts.” Those contracts allowed the seller to hold the deed until the buyer paid off the home in full. Until then, buyers did not accumulate equity in the home and owners were allowed to evict them for missing a single monthly payment.
“These contracts offered black buyers the illusion of a mortgage without the protections of a mortgage,” according to a report published by Duke University’s Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity.
