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Number of black homeowners in Chattanooga falling

Chattanooga Neighborhood Enterprise has sold seven new houses in the 600 block of North Holly Street in the Bushtown community, and has five more for sale.
Chattanooga Neighborhood Enterprise has sold seven new houses in the 600 block of North Holly Street in the Bushtown community, and has five more for sale. Chattanooga Neighborhood Enterprise has sold seven new houses in the 600 block of North Holly Street in the Bushtown community, and has five more for sale.

By Judy Walton 3 min read

The head of Chattanooga Neighborhood Enterprise sees issues with foreclosure and damaged credit from the Great Recession behind an 18.1 percent drop in African-American homeownership locally.

Figures from the Joint Center for Housing Studies showed the share of African-Americans who own their homes in the Chattanooga Metropolitan Statistical Area fell from 48.1 percent in 2005 to 39.4 percent in 2015.

White homeownership shrank, too, but far less: from 75.7 percent in 2005 to 73.1 percent in 2015, or 3.4 percent.

Martina Guilfoil president and CEO of the nonprofit that works to help low-income people buy homes, said many people were hurt when the housing bubble of the last decade burst.

“One huge contributing factor [for the fall-off in homeownership among blacks], is, I think, that African-Americans were hardest hit with foreclosures” in the housing collapse.