In Fort Wayne, Indiana many years ago, there was a shortage of affordable decent housing. The federal government would have provided money to help the city in building housing. But the city did not like the federal government telling them who to build houses for, especially African-Americans families. African-Americans were locked out of homeownership, period. Some years later, African-Americans were able to make inroads for purchasing homes in the city. Sellers of these homes needed the money to leave integrated neighborhoods, sold under contract rather than mortgages. Some African-Americans were even denied the opportunity to build homes!!
Many of the homes purchased by African-Americans were already in decline. No option from lenders unwilling to lend money, families purchased homes that were losing their values. Some programs intervened and purchased some of these houses that were in disrepair. The goal was to rehabilitate these houses into homes for families who may have never thought in their life time they could or would be a homeowner. Lincoln Life was one such program. Other program followed Lincoln Life such as the Fort Wayne Neighborhood Housing Partnership, Inc and Project Renew.
Unfortunately, the purpose for Lincoln Life entering the housing business was different for some programs that followed. Lincoln Life proved a point that there was a market and the people were creditworthy. But just like the underbelly of a program, the human elements could not help but hamper the progress from personal biases. Lincoln Life was about home ownership; but some other programs could be viewed as about getting as much money from unsuspecting clients searching for the American Dream-home ownership. Taking a closer look at some programs' offering could be viewed as predatory lending, but in report after report the choir from one group sings, everything was above board.
Recently, I found that contracts are being drafted to reduce landlords’ property taxes. This practice is not offered to the many families for reducing their property taxes. Is this not fair or illegal? How long will African-Americans bear the burden of the inequalities in this City? For my African-American brothers and sisters how long will we continue to be a people who fail to remember the lessons from the past.
