State of Gentrification: Home Lending to Communities of Color in California

Communities of color continue to be excluded from homeownership, a crucial wealth building vehicle for families in the U.S. With concerns about gentrification and displacement rising in many areas, homeownership rates are not equally distributed along racial and ethnic lines, and people of color do not access mortgages at equal rates as their White counterparts. We used home mortgage data collected under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act to provide insight into lending patterns to communities of color in California and the three cities of Fresno, Oakland, and Long Beach. Findings reveal that people of color are largely underrepresented in loans received across California, and especially in the urban areas of Long Beach and Oakland. Additionally, communities of color do not access home purchase loans at rates comparable to non-Hispanic Whites.