Working Group: More Entry-Level Homes Could Help Solve Housing Crisis

Antonio‌ ‌Ray‌ ‌Harvey‌ ‌|‌ ‌California‌ ‌Black‌ ‌Media‌ (CBM) – The Community Housing Working Group hosted a briefing on April 23 at Cafeteria 15L in Sacramento.  Discussions focused on how the housing crisis in California affects Black and Brown communities and explored ways to provide low-income families and individuals with affordable housing.   Tia Boatman Patterson, CEO and President of the California Communities Reinvestment Corporation, said “entry-level housing” is not available as it was in the past, adding that affordable units were a major point of entry into homeownership for many families in the Black community.& “My mother bought her first house when I was in junior high. It was an 850-square foot, two-bedroom and one-bathroom house in 1978. That house cost $30,000,” Boatman-Patterson said. “A woman working part-time at JCPenney was able to afford that house. We don’t build these types of housing now. We do not build entry-level homeownership,” she added. TheCommunity Housing Working Group is a collection of diverse community organizations from across California working together to address housing challenges in their communities. The organization believes that solving the affordable housing crisis will require creating enough smaller, lower-cost, multi-family homes located near jobs, transit, and good schools. Tunua Thrash-Ntuk,...