“When you see interest rates rising — and mortgage payments rising faster than income — that means affordability overall should decline in 2022,” Wei said. “The housing affordability gap between ethnic groups … could widen.”
California’s Black and Latino families earned median incomes less than those of the state’s white and Asian families. And higher housing prices would likely make it harder for Black and Latino families to save for down payments, Wei said., spurring demand for single-family homes as families sought more space and were able to move further away from their places of employment given the rise of remote work.
Nikki A. Beasley, the executive director of Richmond Neighborhood Housing Services, an affordable housing organization that helps first-time buyers, said her organization has helped many people in the organization’s hometown of Richmond, as well as throughout the greater Bay Area. Qualifying for a mortgage in recent years has not been as big of a barrier as has the low availability of homes for sale, she said.
The nonprofit is itself a property manager, advocate and urban developer currently working on a West Oakland project of nine, single-family homes with accessory dwelling units, she said.