11-30-12: The Lines Between Us: A Tale of Two Houses

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Lines2-1130.mp3

Today we’re talking about how the wealth gap exacerbates race and class lines over time. Earlier we heard the story of Isaac Joseph Bacon, an African-American World War II veteran in Baltimore. In 1950, he bought a house in a nice neighborhood by Druid Hill Park. But home values did not appreciate in that neighborhood, near Mondawmin Mall, and now he and his family are scrambling to pay for assisted living, now that his health is declining.

That’s the story of the wealth gap in a nutshell. Middle-class Americans have traditionally built their wealth through home equity. As the suburbs were built up, partly to satisfy demand from the GI Bill, whites moved out there from the cities and watched their home values appreciate over the course of decades. African-American homebuyers were largely excluded from that suburban boom.

Anne Kubisch, director of the Aspen Institute’s Roundtable on Community Change, joins Tom Hall with a tale of two houses. It’s 1964. A black family buys a house in Baltimore, and a white family buys in a New Jersey suburb…for the same price. We’ll hear how differently their stories turned out.