In Texas, Foundation Communities, a NeighborWorks organization, is working hard to keep residents housed with the help of an emergency fund. So far, they've helped more than 700 residents with rental assistance. A grant from NeighborWorks America, in partnership with the Wells Fargo Foundation, made a difference. 

The gap between Black and white homeownership widened this year, according Harvard's annual housing study, released last week from the university's Joint Center for Housing Studies. A panel moderated by the Wall Street Journal's Nicole Friedman convened to talk about the findings and implications of the report.

Hilly Jacklin had wanted to own a house for years, and the one she finally found was beyond her wildest dreams: a Victorian-style duplex, built in 1895, in Hannibal, Missouri. Half, she would be able to rent to help her afford the mortgage. The other side, she would live in herself.

"We must, as a country, keep the pathways of property ownership and homeownership open," NeighborWorks President and CEO Marietta Rodriguez said during a panel at the National Fair Housing Alliance's 2020 conference. Rodriguez said it's particularly important to keep those pathways open to people of color and to communities that have been disenfranchised."In this country, the ownership of land gives the property owner power and a voice that a non-property owner doesn't have.

When she first started working as a homebuying educator in 2006, "it was a buyer's boom," says Gabriela Luna, now an educator and housing counselor at Tejano Center for Community Concerns in Houston, Texas. "Everyone was buying. There was so much support from all banks."