New Orleans   A couple of years ago I wrote a book called, Citizen Wealth: Winning the Campaign to Save Working Families. It was commonly known that for low-and-moderate income families the largest index of any wealth they possessed was based on whether or not they had managed somehow to become a homeowner. At ACORN we had fought that battle for years in order to get banks to fairly offer mortgages to lower income families so that they could acquire single-family homes or coops, and in those fights had won billions allowing millions to own their own homes. It was certainly not enough to achieve any semblance of equity, but it was a good step forward, particularly increasing the home ownership percentages of African-American and Latino families to record levels, although almost all of those gains were wiped out by the 2008 Great Recession.

In doing the research for the book, I was shocked that the largest so-called social program in the nation’s budget, dwarfing direct welfare, food stamps, and all other housing benefits, both singly and collectively, was the mortgage interest deduction, which now totals more than $70 billion annually. As disturbing was the degree to which the mortgage interest deduction was largely not a social program which benefited the citizen wealth of lower income families but was disproportionately benefiting middle class and wealthy families. After all, at the threshold where such an income tax deduction had real financial weight and meaning, a family had to be in an income bracket high enough to justify itemizing their deductions.

As the Home Savers Campaign this year has visited with families in a number of cities in the Midwest and South, it has also struck all of us that as blatantly predatory as many of these contract for deed and rent-to-own scams have been to the families victimized by them, many of these families have accepted the risks even accepting the dangers and the deceit, simply because they were desperate for housing they could afford, no matter its condition. For the same reason, the reaction of many victims when they realize they have been swindled has often been as much anger as it has been resignation, and a feeling they should walk away, rather than fighting for justice for their investment, all of which speaks to the crisis in affordability.

Reading “House Rules” by Matthew Desmond in the New York Times there were more facts and figures that underlined the affordable housing crisis which is driving income and racial inequality throughout the country. Some facts:

• The average homeowner boasts a net worth ($195,400) that is 36 times that of the average renter at $5400.
• With rising housing costs the housing standard where 30% or less of a family’s income equals affordability, half of all poor renting families spend more than 50% of their income on housing costs and 25% spent more than 70%.
• In 2011, the median white household had a net worth of $111,146, compared with $7113 for the median black household and $8348 for the media Hispanic household. If black and Hispanic families owned homes at the same rate as whites, the racial wealth gap would be reduced by almost a third.

There was much more, but you get the point. Worse, the consensus is that there is no political constituency for reform of the mortgage interest deduction, nor in the absence of reform an equivalent program or benefit that would help renters or bring balance to this wealth and racial inequality.