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hello everybody my name is daniel patrell i am the director of communications for maryland realtors and we have an exciting panel today to talk about racial and equity and housing uh we are going to open it up with a short announcement from our ceo chuck caskey who is going to help to frame this discussion and then we will go forward in there and hear from the congressman and delegate barnes chief of staff dwayne london so uh chuck please take the stage as the old saying goes if you're not part of the solution you're part of the problem systemic racism refers to the oppressive racist realities that have been institutionalized and manifest in all of society's parts including the economy politics education among others so again good afternoon as dan said i'm chuck caskey ceo of maryland realtors and we're committed to addressing inequalities especially in light of organized real estate's role in perpetuating discriminatory housing policies in the color of law which is required reading for anyone serious about understanding these issues richard rostein provides troubling insight into the history of racial discrimination in america he describes the impact of residential segregation and the role that state entities and private entities played in creating and maintaining the nation's racial status quo black americans were unconstitutionally denied the means the opportunity to live in many neighborhoods and because this denial was state-sponsored the nation is obligated to remedy it local state and federal governments must take responsibility for the economic and social disparities and we are eager to begin the conversation about what that looks like and we are going to be part of this solution it's my great pleasure to turn the program over to jessica coates who's been ceo of howard county association of realtors since 2018. not only is she having an impact in maryland the national association of realtors recently appointed jessica to chair nar's association executives young professionals network forum before joining our maryland family she served as vice president of government and community affairs for the birmingham alabama association of realtors thank you jessica for moderating this webinar now i'm going to go away and you can take it away thank you all for coming thank you chuck and thank you for that amazing introduction um before i introduce our panelists i wanted to take a moment to invite a couple of our leaders some elected officials on the national and state stage to speak on this subject chuck you definitely set the tone for today's discussion it is my honor and pleasure to introduce our first guest the honorable anthony anthony brown that currently serves as congressman to maryland's 4th congressional district encompassing portions of prince george's county as well as anne arundel counties as a veteran congressman brown serves as vice chair of the house armed services committee before that he served eight years as maryland's lieutenant governor congressman brown welcome you have the stage well thank you thank you very much uh jessica uh and uh um welcome to maryland uh thank you thank you with the howard county realtors and uh moderating uh today's discussion i want to thank chuck uh and the entirety of the maryland realtors um not just for convening today's very important program uh but for everything that you and your your members do you are the face of maryland um as uh people consider uh moving to maryland staying in maryland um often the the front line of telling our story uh the communities that we have the schools we have the opportunities uh rests on the shoulders of our realtors i want to thank you uh chuck you your team your members i want to thank my good friend bill costelli for uh ensuring that i got to uh today's program um i think uh jessica already mentioned daryl barnes i think you'll hear from him later today doing an extraordinary job as chair of maryland's legislative black caucus uh and with under his leadership have focused a great deal on homeownership issues uh and the disparities uh and and and and systemic barriers uh that are presented to communities of color in maryland and then finally let me thank antoine thompson and brian greene uh bringing your expertise to advance equitable housing policies our country faces several crises all at once which are change in the business of realtors and um how americans conceive of and even understand home ownership over the last several months as the country has grappled with a global pandemic our homes have turned into offices and schools as we've stayed home to stop the spread of the virus the economic strain of the last few months has undoubtedly created uncertainty for realtors and for the families who you serve and as our country this summer confronted long-standing racial injustices we must recognize that addressing these issues will require a comprehensive look at every facet of our society we need action to fix the injustices that exist in our criminal justice system which we've seen once again on display with the shooting of jacob blake by officers who are sworn to protect him we need solutions to address the racial health disparities that this pandemic has illustrated in stark detail disparities that have resulted in disproportionate infection and deaths for black and brown communities we need to recognize that gaps in our education system will continue to widen if we don't invest in our schools and in students in need and we must acknowledge how our neighborhoods and homes connect all of these systems and can play an important role in making our communities more equitable more diverse more inclusive housing is an important factor in promoting an individual's educational wealth a job and health well-being black ownership consistently rates 20 to 30 percentage points lower than home ownership rates for white families in maryland and you know this data the prince george's county gap is about 20 percent while in baltimore our city it's nearly 30 percent in fact a a college educated african-american has a lower home ownership rate right as a group than non-college educated white americans from the years 2000 to 2017 and again i'm sure that you're familiar with this data african-american home ownership rates uh have dropped the urban institute estimates uh that had black ownership rate remain the same during that time there would be an additional 700 000 african-american homeowners nationwide and we know that this is such an impact particularly on net worth uh and wealth accumulation because so many americans not just um african-americans point to the equity in their home as the primary source of net worth which supports so many families through retirement home ownership is tied to our job prospects and opportunities the schools our children attend and the quality of the communities they grow up in home ownership provides families with stability peace of mind and the ability to build strong communities that look out for one another and we know that home ownership is shaped by government policies at the federal state and local level we can create a more equitable and just system by advancing policies that promote black ownership and by reversing decisions that undermine those efforts in recent weeks the trump administration has undermined the landmark fair housing act through executive action the fair housing act not only banned discrimination but required action to undo decades of federal state and local discriminatory policies and practices that perpetuated segregated communities president trump has discarded requirements for meaningful data to show compliance and instead is forcing us to rely solely on the word of local officials that's not good enough we need greater accountability to ensure that discriminatory practices of the past never return as we work to prevent discrimination and increase oversight we must also advance policies that remove historical barriers to black home ownership barriers like the current process we use for credit scoring which is essential to being approved for mortgages particularly low interest mortgages and other home loans pilot models have shown that utilizing rent and utility payments as part of credit scoring could increase lending to african-american and latino home buyers by over 16 these home buyers have demonstrated responsibility in their finances and it's time that that is reflected in their credit scores in january of this year the house passed legislation to help make this a reality we established new oversight of credit scoring models to ensure accuracy and to root out discrimination we also directed the consumer financial protection bureau to study how alternative credit scoring models could benefit individuals who are currently left behind by traditional credit scoring but as we work to fight discrimination and promote black home ownership we must also recognize and aid those who are struggling right now during this pandemic in may the house passed the heroes act to give hard-working americans throughout this country the relief that they need to put food on the table and to keep a roof over their heads the heroes act includes several important provisions to protect homeowners and renters including extending the foreclosure moratorium for all homeowners for six months including a ban on repossessing mobile mobile homes or recreational or motor vehicles uses dwellings we ensure all homeowners can request forbearance for up to a year and require notifications from lenders to help borrowers understand their options ensuring both new and long-standing homeowners can hold on to the homes they've earned we require loss mitigation to ensure that no borrower is forced to pay a lump sum at the end of the forbearance period ensuring we don't see a wave of foreclosures and evictions following this crisis and we create a 75 billion dollar homeowner assistance fund to prevent mortgage delinquencies or defaults foreclosures or the loss of utility services and we fund housing counseling and fair housing enforcement to educate homeowners and help them navigate their housing options and rights these policies and aid can help ease the fears and concerns that far too many families are feeling right now yet the senate still refuses to act or even offer alternatives and that's unacceptable we have to continue to pressure the administration the republican-led senate to put politics aside and deliver for the american people these are trying and uncertain times for this country for homeowners we've seen over the last several months our communities step up and help those in need we are stronger when families can rely on the stability of home ownership and the peace of mind that they will be able to stay in the home they've created it'll take cooperation between federal state and local governments as well as realtors and the private sector to continue to make home ownership attainable for every american who seeks it so again thank you for the work that you do thank you for today's very important forum for allowing me to bring uh brief uh words com and observations uh and i thank you for the work that you're going to do now and into the future so back to you jessica thank you congressman brown and thank you for reminding us that of the importance of fair housing and and that homeownership directly affects um our quality of life um somebody who has always been very vocal and interested in racial equity and fair housing in the maryland state house is delicate daryl barnes delegate barnes has served served maryland's 25th district since 2015 and since 2017 barnes has served as deputy majority whip and since 2018 he has been the chair of the legislative black caucus of maryland while delegate barnes was not able to join us today representing him is his chief of staff dwayne london welcome to wayne you have the stage thank you so much jessica i appreciate that i'm not going to try to follow the congressman i will keep my remarks brief but once again good afternoon everyone i am duane london i'm the chief of staff for delegate barnes i'm also a 1l law student at the university of baltimore and i have about five years of experience working in state government once again thank you for the opportunity in hosting this very important discussion on behalf of delegate barnes our entire office and the constituents of district 25 the legislative black caucus of maryland i would just like to thank the members of this panel for coming together during our unprecedented circumstances to explore ways to address racial inequities in homeownership delegate barnes believes that this discussion is absolutely critical and we look forward to working with each and each and every one of you and exploring potential policy prescriptions that we can bring back to the maryland general assembly in order to eliminate some of the issues as it relates to racial inequities and real estate across the state of maryland so once again thank you so much and i look forward to the discussion thank you dwayne we appreciate that and and thank you for your service now allow me to introduce today's panelist mr brian greene he serves as the director of fair housing policy for the national association of realtors in this capacity brian represents nar on all fair housing related federal regulatory and legislative matters to ensure that consumer and real estate industry interests are protected this makes brian an ideal panelist for today's very important discussion thank you for joining us brian yeah there you go well it's it's great to be here and i i want to uh commend uh the maryland real realtors on um your leadership and uh for focusing attention on this important day should i just jump in jessica um i'm actually going to flow thank you for the oh oh sorry sorry i have i have a script but i'm sorry all right and next we have on the panel we have anton antoine thompson as executive director of the national association of real estate brokers he heads the nation's largest and oldest minority trade association in this country and this organization is focused on its mission of democracy in housing antoine is focused on fair housing issues throughout his career including public service in his hometown of buffalo new york where he authored buffalo's fair housing law i gotta get that his work in real estate and fair housing makes him an ideal panelist for today's discussion thanks antoine for for joining us today and finally i'd like to introduce to you someone we all know my colleague mr bill costelli he serves as maryland realtors senior vice president for government affairs bill will highlight some very interesting actions that can be taken ahead to the coming legislative session i'm so excited to hear this um thank you bill for joining us for now back to you brian i apologize for that um let's move forward and let's get into it all right well thanks jessica so uh the new york times uh ran a story two days ago uh which was still making news yesterday about a mixed-race couple who were seeking home refinance and they live in jacksonville florida and they estimated that their home would be appraised at about somewhere between 350 and 550 000 and they went and they had the appraisal done and the appraiser came back with 330 000 so lower than even their low end and um this couple is an african-american woman and a white man and the african-american woman had a suspicion and she said to the bank that you know she wanted to order a new appraisal and the bank said yeah this is surprisingly low there must be some mistake and so um the wife she uh removed all pictures from the home and she removed her toni morrison novels and her alice walker novels and anything else that might suggest that black people lived in this home and she and her child went out to the mall and her white husband stayed home when the appraiser came and the new appraisal came in at 465 thousand dollars so over a hundred thousand dollars difference forty percent different um this underscores uh several problematic issues uh one the obvious one of just the fact that uh this would appear to be uh discrimination and appraisals when there's knowledge that a black family may live there it's low and then when uh it's apparent that a white person liv s there significantly higher i think it also underscores that even when we're achieving minority homeownership too often african-american homes are devalued and so what we are shooting for to close the home ownership gap and to close the wealth gap may still be failing us if uh african americans are not getting uh the appraisals they're entitled to and this is some work that andre perry of the brookings institution uh has been highlighting so when we succeed uh we're still being thwarted and then you know i think it also underscores um the importance of testing that we would not know that this is occurring but for this kind of evidence and this family was smart that they did their own test but not everyone's in the position to do that right not everyone has that privileged information which may be necessary for people to act and to obtain justice so it's incumbent on us as professionals to make sure this practice isn't occurring it's also incumbent on the government uh who are charged with enforcing the laws to do the investigations uh and to gather the evidence and to prosecute when these situations are occurring so i want to talk about that because uh i think the final point here is um you know this is taking money away from people and this is harming consumers it's harming communities it's harming society we're leaving money on the table we could be a more prosperous country if we could address these issues and that affects all of us and so in the real estate profession because this is what we're talking about we need to be leaders we need to address this and i want to underscore that we need to deal with discrimination just the day-to-day discrimination that may occur in housing transactions we need to deal with the gaps that are limiting opportunity for certain racial groups and finally i want to say that we really also need to redress the historical harm that continues to frustrate us because even if we address discrimination today and you know stop it in its tracks now we still have an intergenerational wealth differential which will forever or or a long time disadvantage groups that have not had the opportunity to gain equity and it will continue to have a rippling effect in our society um so we should be looking for solutions to also redress that past harm so just on the on on the first topic of uh non-discrimination so certainly this underscores that we have a problem in appraisals um that we need to address uh andre perry when he spoke to nar said that his research suggests that even when you factor out any legitimate criteria for appraisals african americans find that their home values are discounted at 28 percent so 28 lower than they ought to be so a systemic issue that we need to address and this one we should be able to address it's really one dimensional you've got folks in homes you've got appraisers going in and uh there aren't too many um pieces to this one so at the very least we need to make sure that the people who are getting in the homes are getting the full benefit of equity and homeownership but then we have just the old question of discrimination in the transaction i joined nar last november and that was an eventful month uh within a couple of weeks had gone out to our annual convention came back just put my bags down and newsday up in new york put out a story about uh discrimination on long island and in addition to this big investigation that they wrote up they put a video online showing how agents were treating consumers differently how african-americans were facing some form of discrimination uh 49 percent of the time nearly half of the time in these transactions hispanic americans 39 of the time asian americans 19 of the time and they had it on video and it was really hard to explain in any other way uh you you had the same agent dealing with people of different backgrounds and telling them different things telling uh white applicants that certain neighborhoods were bad and they don't want to live there the schools are bad and telling african-american applicants oh this is you know this is a great place uh i love everyone i meet here from this place um consistently talking to whites about uh schools crime resale value uh and having a completely different conversation with minority applicants uh and all too often the agents captured on this video would cite fair housing laws and how they're not supposed to engage in steering how they're not supposed to engage in certain practices but then they would tell the white clients so i'll do it this way and actually mock uh the training the code of ethics and the fair housing laws that have been on the books for 50 years and so coming out of that you know my third week on the job i said look you know people are often saying oh well we just need to do better training this is not about training or training alone this is about accountability that there needs to be some consequence this is also about culture where if 52 years after the passage of the fair housing act people haven't embraced what it's about uh and are still acting in this way or they think that there is some reason they need to do this um and then finally sure we we should do better training um to shore up that end on you know in terms of people who are trying to do the right thing or who might have unconscious biases um it didn't appear unconscious what you saw in those videos um so that said i said we need to come up with some key things on accountability culture change and training and that happened to spell a nice handy acronym act and i just tagged an exclamation point on the end to stress the urgency of it and uh our leadership team announced in january that we were committing serious funds behind each of these efforts i'll just very briefly describe a couple of things we're doing it's not an exhaustive list of the things but on training insofar as you know agents have been getting classroom training maybe for 50 plus years on fair housing that may not be the only or the most effective training needed um so we are doing implicit bias training insofar as uh some agents may not recognize what they're doing we want to show people how bias enters into the transactions and we've worked with the perception institute one to produce a video that introduces this topic and how bias enters into the real estate transaction sometimes unconsciously that video is online at nar dot realtor slash fair dash housing you can find that actually we have a i think a new vanity url nar dot realtor slash bias override as one word and that um is just an introduction to the subject but a a great video 50 minutes long some people said oh it's too long i'm like well you're not going to overcome bias in 50 minutes this is just the beginning um so we are developing a three-hour curriculum with perception institute right now and that's going to provide a curriculum that companies can provide to their agents and we're going to look at how we can require or or offer ce credits for this as well do everything that we can to make sure that the agents who need this get it in addition to that many of you may be familiar with microsoft's new version of flight simulator the game we've got something that's a fair housing simulation an online game if you want to call it that but basically online technology where you go through different scenarios of housing transactions and and this will evaluate how you meet these housing situations um from a fair housing standpoint um and where you will actually get get points or lose points based on how you rise to the challenge in terms of reputation risk legal risk and income loss depending on your actions so rather than just having folks in a classroom learn about this confront them with actual situations and evaluate them and the game will play with your perspective where you might be in the transaction and think that you're the agent and then you discover you're actually uh the consumer and so it does a 360 on this and deals with all these different issues and even right now as we're developing it some pretty challenging questions that really hone your thinking on the fair housing principles so that's one thing we're doing um on culture change i recognize that with the new york news day study um or investigation that not every agent that they tested engaged in discrimination in fact of the of the 12 companies that they tested two had no findings at all they tested multiple agents at those companies and i said well this is very interesting so you have these companies together responsible for 50 percent of the sales out in long island and two prosperous companies no findings we need to sort of uh better understand what some of those companies are doing so that they're being cited in this way and it led to an idea that we need to highlight some leaders in fair housing because folks do learn from their peers and we're working on a film about some of the leaders in fair housing some of the more most successful agents in the country uh who are living by fair housing principles so that's another big thing we're doing and then in terms of accountability we're making sure that state laws are effective in providing consequences when people engage in discrimination that we're actually addressing discrimination as it occurs um at the state level and that the people lose their license if they engage in this kind of behavior so all of these things just to do no harm and this is actually the bare minimum i see looking to get in here i've only talked about just what we're doing to make sure the situation doesn't get worse um but i hope i'll have an opportunity to talk about the definitive things we need to do oh yeah just to pivot a little bit brian and thank you for giving us the update on all the work that the national association of realtors are doing and i hope that our audience has had a chance to look at the unconscious bias video is is worth it and we appreciate us moving forward um with this movement and i want to pivot a minute and and anton could you comment on that new york times um um um article that brian brought up i thought it was very interesting it's very current um as well as the news day if you had a chance to see that um documentary um out of long island and then i know you have a lot of information that you want to dive right into with your presentation but if you can comment on that a little bit and let's get some discussion going thank you brian yeah i want to um first thank you for uh having me and it's uh it's good to see brian's doing a phenomenal job and i want to thank uh chuck and bill for all the hard work they're doing in the state of maryland uh that uh article uh yesterday was extremely uh disappointing um great we know that there is a tremendous need for more diversity in the appraisal industry that was one of the first affiliates that came out of the national association of real estate brokers and it's a it's a never-ending struggle because as brian indicated when we un undervalue properties that takes wealth out of the out of the um home out of the pockets of families so we've got to continue to change that we've got to increase penalties when people do things wrong and we've got to make the public more aware of their rights and responsibilities because believe it or not a lot of people just don't know how to handle those situations lastly on the issue of fair housing in long island um unfortunately what happened in long island last year is not unique it's just that folks got caught doing it uh the hud needs to provide more funding for testing state governments need to provide more uh funding for testing and as brian indicated there needs to be more consequences of when people um get get caught and the more people get caught and the more people are exposed there's nothing like a good old thing called transparency in sunlight so i think those things will will improve uh the situation i like to go right into my presentation uh if that's good um fine give me one second here trying to get going here y'all bear with me oh um excuse me all right i'm trying to click it here uh just give me one second can you all see my presentation yes okay good all right so um they asked me to talk today um in light of what happened with george floyd and the never uh ending struggle for racial economic equity and equality in the country just wanted to provide a few quick snapshots of some of the things that the national association of real estate brokers uh believes is important to close the racial wealth gap in the country every year uh the association puts out a state of housing and black america report we examine a lot of the uh challenges and opportunities as it relates to closing that wealth gap in the country last month uh the census uh put out every quarter for those of you who don't know they put out different estimates on on black home ownership rates and their recent number was 47 for white 76 for blacks some in the industry have said that that number might be a little skewed because of uh how they sample people based on covet but we know prior to that it was it had risen a little bit up to 44 uh but it's still uh a 30 point gap between black homeownership and white homeownership in the country you know one of the things that we often talk about um is that black homeownership is important it strengthens families it stabilizes neighborhoods creates jobs and it's important to the local state economy over 40 percent of small businesses start in the home in education and economic outcomes are impacted by this one of the things that i did do is look at some of the trends uh in maryland as you can see uh the white ownership rate in maryland has had 50 is at 76 compared to 51 percent according to uh prosperity now i also took a look at um some of the key uh cities and counties with you know higher populations of african americans i just want to get a quick snapshot for the for everyone watching as you can see um baltimore city while it has a large african-american population the white homeownership rate is actually uh almost 20 points higher than the black homeownership rate which says and in fact since 2008 uh the black commercial rate in in baltimore has been on a steady decline despite having large tracts of vacant housing i also looked at um lending trends in baltimore city as you will see this is uh from last year uh the african americans are are denied um almost at twice the rate of whites in the state when they apply for a mortgage in the in the city of baltimore we look also looked at montgomery county as well um let's make sure i monitor my time we also looked at baltimore county as well and as you can see based on based on this sheet um african-americans um decent-sized population in the county but there in the county of montgomery it's it's over point difference in homeownership between blacks and whites in montgomery county some of these numbers are just uh unbelievable we also looked at some of the lending patterns as you can see um african americans are approved at 50 they they got about 54 of the mortgages in that county um but they were tonight uh almost one and a half times uh whites in the county we also looked at the so-called big black county of prince george's county where i live um you can see the population there a largely african american population um you look at the homeownership rate definitely higher than the national average for african americans but as you can see the white homeowners should rate even in the most affluent black county in in the country the white house rate is still 70 uh 16 points higher that's a very that's a number that really needs to be talked about more that we've got to do more increase homeownership and this is another slide that i thought was really interesting uh in this county um even the so-called black county of the state flew in black county african americans are still denied at a major uh difference uh compared to whites as you can see that so those are some real star stark numbers uh i do go really quickly about how do we communicate as we begin talk about how do we change the situation we use the words accessible sustainable and affordable home ownership that we got to protect the american dream and it's most important and this is the number one way hat we create and transfer wealth in the country i wanted to share some quick stats for you there are 1.7 million black millennials in the country that make over a hundred thousand dollars a year they're over one hundred thousand between baltimore and um dc uh metro dc so there's a tremendous business opportunity to grow black home ownership right in maryland some of the things that we are doing is really trying to engage uh our members uh pushing aggressive policy agenda and trying to do more public awareness some of the things that we're doing at the national level to promote homeownership include making sure that home ownership is seen as a public public policy priority if you all remember in 2017 there was an assault on on the 30-year mortgage we're still trying to protect that and we're trying to incr really next year the fight is going to be about protecting the mortgage interest deduction which was weakened uh preserving eq impacts expanding hud section 184 which provides mortgage assistance to native americans and hawaiians we want to make sure that we create the feds create a african-american home homeownership program uh we're pushing the american dream down payment program and there's a number of other things that we have been fighting for and against at the state level these are some quick things that we think that you all can do at the state level one is increasing funding for down payment assistance programs uh reforming the credit score criteria for mortgage down payment assistance programs believe it or not they are not really friendly to fha bowers many of the programs uh and and actually just for this this group understands that less than five percent of mortgages from f uh from freddie mac and fannie mae are uh go to uh african americans african-americans are disproportionately in fha bowers so if maryland has programs that are not fha friendly for dpas you're basically shutting out a large segment of your population we must engage corporate and foundation uh leaders around down payment assistance we should set a goal to help increase the uh statewide goal and increase the rate of black homeownership uh in the state of maryland and we must get more lenders increase lender participation in maryland programs believe it or not there are not there are not enough uh lenders especially national lenders in many of the maryland state programs lastly this is something that i think we really need to do in 2021 there's a shortage of inventory in many parts of the state they are the fees to building a new home are off the charts in maryland we've really got to change that at the county and state level it's costing anywhere from 20 to 30 000 additional dollars for a buyer to buy a house in in the state of maryland and that builder just passes that cost right onto the box onto the buyer we need to really look at that and hopefully we have some discussion on those thank you all right i know that bill has been waiting patiently bill and i know you have some um some policy that's being flushed out right now but if you can get into some of the some of the things that the maryland realtors um advocacy team is working on to address some of these issues thanks jessica and uh i'll i'll talk a little bit about and follow what antoine was saying about housing supply housing supply is a big issue it's a big component of this you know with lower supply higher demand prices go up that makes all the barriers that we see that are most problematic for first-time buyers that's closing costs that's down payments even higher with higher prices so it just increases the barrier significantly so we know supply is a big part of this the legislature's actually been looking at a number of issues that are related to land use policies uh one of the things that they've taken action on the last couple of years which was a bill we supported was adding a housing element to all of the comprehensive plans that the local counties are doing and there were aspects of all of their plans that already addressed some housing issues but this specifically asked them to address that workforce housing that low-income uh housing that is uh more likely to be affordable uh to first-time buyers people trying to get into the market and honestly you know that is so important for the real estate markets health is making sure that we have new buyers so that's a big issue that's going to continue to be an issue i know last year they were going to tweak there was a bill that was going to tweak that housing element plan a little bit more be a little more directive in the types of uh housing that we would want for workforce housing that bill because the session was cut short ended up not passing the senate but it did pass the house pretty significantly but they're also taking a look at other issues as well including um you know some very controversial uh ideas like buy right zoning which gives an individual property owner the right to increase density as long as it's as it's for residential units that bill uh kind of morphed into a into the um into the bill that would have created a little more specificity in the housing element but there are all of these discussions about supply and what its impacts are and how it it impacts first-time buyers and and just the housing gap that we see with uh black homeowners and white homeowners so there's a lot of focus on issues like that and and because of the kind of discussions that happened last year we know some legislators are discussing maybe taking that buy right idea and narrowing it a little bit maybe we narrow it to some institutions that have significant tracts of land and would be able to provide a significant portion of residential units and giving them the right to proceed more less costs in a less costly way in a more efficient way too so there's going to be some some focus on that as well um you know the baltimore cities had a transportable um homestead tax credit which allows a homeowner to essentially keep their homestead tax credit which keeps the cost of taxes on their property lower and and carry it on to their next property thus opening up properties that might be more affordable to first-time buyers sometimes we do get homeowners who are not landlocked but reluctant to move to another property if they're going to lose a tax advantage like that so you know that's another idea that baltimore's kind of explored and certainly i know there have been over time legislators talking about whether that should be expanded or not in other counties um and and then right now the state of maryland is actually conducting a housing needs assessment and that housing needs assessment is taking a look at a bunch of different jurisdictions in maryland from the western maryland to eastern maryland eastern shore of maryland southern maryland the dc suburbs as well as the baltimore region and coming up with very specific plans and a lot of what they're identifying as potential solutions really track a lot of what antoine was talking about uh expanded funding for some of the mmm mmp programs but also expand you know um trying to increase those down payment assistance programs that the state runs as well making sure that that assistance is there and trying to grow um the the first time home buyer base because we've seen a 30-year and this crosses all racial demographics but a 30-year low in terms of our first-time buyers so we we know supply is an issue we know that there are programs out there that are working and i think these are some of the ideas that you'll hear not only uh discussed in the 2021 session but also uh yeah we're it's you know these discussions are going on outside of the legislature as well lots of groups focusing on on what they can do and how they can improve this situation awesome awesome thank you bill um anton we had a really good question to come in in the chat on some of your statistics that you showed in your presentation um this audience uh participant said in terms of these homeownership statistics does this capture owner-occupied stats only or does it look more broadly at ownership of investment and rental properties as well great question most of them are four units or less of the lending trends so they would include um owner occupy four units or less that can be you know uh two family three family uh or four unit uh owner occupied primarily those and i also wanted to mention i did not get a chance to uh normally for an issue like this i should have and i apologize for not giving a historical context of why um we fight for these issues i think it's imperative for this audience to understand that when narada was founded in 1947 not only could we not be members of the realtor organization uh but also at that time african americans were coming home from world war ii and they had this program called the gi bill that excluded african americans for for for for many many years prior to that um fdr the so-called great democrat helped create a program um for protecting the more provided liquidity in the mortgage market but african americans cannot get access to those programs so we had to suffer go through contract loans as opposed to for over 30 years fannie mae hud uh as precursor uh the hud uh they all these programs were basically exclude excluded african americans for over 25 to 30 years and they actually had red line maps uh that were down on the capitol hill that prevented african americans from having access to these mortgages so so some of these policies that we're talking about are to correct historical wrongs and it's really important the white ownership gap that uh that exists today between blacks and whites did not happen by its own it was intentional it was deliberate and that was coupled with racially restrictive covenants where whites could not even sell to african americans in certain neighborhoods so i just wanted to share that for this group it was a lot in the chat i strongly encourage this this group of individuals to do some quick google searches go on our website go on nar website go to narab.com we have a whole fair housing page watch some of those videos you will learn a lot and give me a call if you ever want to talk i love it song thank you thank you for the historical doubt that that is really important um and brian i know we we we're on time but i want it to pivot back to you because there were a few things that you wanted to come back to to some of the solutions that the national association of realtors are that are they're working on yeah well you know first i i just want to underscore what antoine said that it's important that people face these facts squarely uh and you know beyond the examples that antoine even provided of course we had whole subdivisions uh which were you know built with federal dollars uh that excluded um african-americans and you know the example you always hear about is levittown and how uh now you know those homes uh have greatly appreciated um but african americans coming back um as gi's were not allowed to live in levittown and uh those homes have uh greatly appreciated and have provided intergenerational wealth for several generations and levittown you know modest homes uh those homes are worth quite a lot and it's still only one percent african-american so the landscape that we know today was very much shaped uh by actions that occurred um following world war ii um and we can't forget that and if people need uh more recent examples of the loss of african-american wealth you don't need to look much farther than the subprime mortgage crisis and uh the many communities middle-class african-american communities that were targeted for predatory loans i can tell you uh you know personal experiences of communities that i knew where people owned their homes straight out or were in the process of paying off their mortgages who are targeted for subprime refinance schemes and home improvement loans and the like uh and so that zapped a lot of wealth just in the last 20 years and and that's affected the home ownership gap and another generation who could not then pass on wealth to their children um so um i i guess the one quick thing i'll say is that um all of the programs that antoine and bill talked about are very important and are key and they sort of meet people where they are to try to make sure that people who can qualify for homes get those opportunities and provide additional assistance but i do think that there are opportunities at the state level to target assistance and to look at how to address historical wrongs that maybe have affected specific communities or specific families and there are opportunities for some of the lenders and other companies who are looking for ways to address systemic racism to actually look at their own practices and their own historical practices and uh try to write them you know private companies can do that so i just from a conceptual framework i think that should be on the table that uh states cities like say cities that underwent urban renewal and actually destroyed communities look at some of these factors this is part of what the government even requires for cities who are getting community development block grant funds and so there's opportunities for cities and states to get involved politically with those issues um to try to create a more restorative um social policy uh an economic policy that um you know could potentially um level the playing field i could just add just a one quick thing in there um i just wanted to share with you folks and maybe i'll put it in a chat for them but there are three really uh good books that for folks who want to grow your knowledge on the subject matter one is a book that i read in college and that's when i really learned about this is called crab grass frontier by ken jackson it's called crab grass frontier beautiful amazing book about the suburbanization of america and what america did to do that the second is the book called color of law uh by richard rothstein he examined lending trends going back and policies that were made and created by the federal government to help whites dating back well over 150 years or so and the last thing is a hot book that's out right now called race for profit by dr taylor and a really great book yamata taylor great book that looks at how african americans have been consistently exploited in the real estate industry so those are three really good books that give you a great snapshot on the the these these these in equities that exist in the real estate industry awesome before we close out um i had another great question that came from the chat and feel free to chime in one of our participants wanted to know can any of the panelists provide recommendations of nonprofits or organizations that a company could donate to um in relation to this topic so they're looking for um organizations to support that are doing the work to address these issues well i can always say nay wrap is a 501c great plug we live and breathe it every single day and uh we always take contributions you can uh google me or go to narab.com or antoine.com.com so we we deal with it every day i'm also i also chair the board of housing options planning enterprises in prince george's county uh i would be remiss as the board chair to not say that is a great organization that's helping with housing counseling fair housing and keeping people from getting evicted and all those good things as well awesome h-o-p-e in maryland prince jordan you can you can actually drop that in the chat that will be i'm trying to figure that out here [Laughter] awesome nice to see you chuck let's close this thing out this was amazing yeah thank you very much jessica brian antoine bill dwayne didn't get to speak a whole lot but thanks for coming unless you had something else you wanted to add at the last minute we're happy to hear from you okay i'm unmuted no i would just say hey this was a fabulous discussion um and i look i i would love to follow up on the discussion uh i will drop you know contact information in the chat because delegate barnes obviously wants to get involved with some of the policy prescriptions that were mentioned and so um obviously a follow-up would be would be great so i'm sure yeah great thank you and and and that really help me to to wrap this up and really kind of incorporating what brian said because it's one of the things that we talk about here all the time we're focusing now on you know federal action state actions the rubber is going to hit the road at the local level that's where all of the land use decisions are made and one of the constraints we're going to witness and we do all the time you know is what are the proper roles of the different levels of government and making these land use decisions that's going to be the to me to really get to the heart of the matter that's where a lot of this is going to play out and so we have already kind of penciled in for the fall a follow-up to this with getting and getting some local people involved maryland association of counties local county executives county council baltimore city people because that's where a lot of these really though the actions are going to have meaningful impact that's where they're going to happen ultimately unless there's a state takeover of land use which nobody's really you know intending on uh proposing the other thing is some of this stuff really the only limit is our imagination in terms of how we approach these and you look at some very imaginative things going on i think when antoine and i talked about this we could much do much better leveraging 203k rehab loans for example um there are so many things i just saw a video about a law that that just passed in los angeles county whereby right you can convert a garage into housing and there are companies whose the business model is they undertake all of the construction and they get back some of it it's 15-year lease basically the homeowner gets five or six hundred dollars a month once they rent the place this company does all of it soup to nuts permitting construction property management and that after 15 years the homeowner gets the the the unit uh free and clear after getting several thousand dollars of income in addition to that so really there's just so many you know we're a nation of ideas and and we need to just keep putting these ideas out there and then of course we're advocates right antoine brian right bill right that's what we absolutely do so for us to say that we don't have a role in this or that we can't help you know it's what we do and and i was one of anybody who's listening we're pledging maryland realtors the national association of realtors narep our advocacy this is what we're going to be focusing on for the next few years there's no ques and forever really because it's going to take that long ultimately and we don't want to tell people oh be patient you know we talked about this yesterday there are short medium and long term things obviously it's 400 years in the making so we're not going to fix it in the 21 general assembly session but at the same time i don't want people to say oh here they are telling us to be patient again and people you know a lot of these unrest is because the black community especially they've been patient and and and i don't think anybody can blame them for running out of patience so i think we need there is a there is a need to show real meaningful reforms and so you know that's our pledge we are advocates it's what we do and we're pretty darn good at it so hold us accountable as we are going to hold state federal and local government officials accountable and that's our pledge thank you all thank you for having me thank you thank you all and we're recording this so if you missed any of it uh or want to share it it'll be up on the website in a few days hey jessica i didn't know how to put something in the chat um okay and you type those books in there because i don't not know how to do it i'm having technical problems here antoine uh this is dan petrell patrell if you send me uh the booklets and the names i will put a nice post on facebook for everybody to follow along thank you dan i will ask for your slides if you can give us that we'll share well thank you everybody um fantastic uh group and we appreciate everybody's uh insight and we look forward to where we take this issue going forward uh our next webinar is going to be september 10th uh featuring our friend again bill castelli talking about brokers and we'll get more meat on that topic when we uh uh very soon till then have a great day and thank you again for joining us on this topic thanks everybody