What people are saying about Black Home Initiative
Victoria Woodards, mayor of Tacoma:
“Due to historical structural and persistent institutional racism and exclusion, homeownership is less attainable for Black households. Black Home Initiative will help to align resources and remove barriers to ensure we are making the dream of homeownership possible for our Black communities.”
Andrea Caupain Sanderson, CEO of Byrd Barr Place:
“We live in a region that has created prosperity for many residents but left Black communities behind on every pillar of well-being, economic prosperity, health equity, legal justice, education and civic engagement. It is time to activate the right levers that will change outcomes for the better in our Black communities. We also know that when we all do better, we all do better.”
Robin Hacke, executive director and co-founder of the Center for Community Investment (CCI):
"We are committed to advancing racial equity and affordable housing to create wealth and opportunity for communities of color with low-incomes. At the Center for Community Investment, supporting collaborative community development efforts is at the heart of what we do. We’re excited to help the six cities participating in this initiative apply our capital absorption framework.”
Michelle Merriweather, president and CEO of Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle:
“As a community, we unfortunately don’t have a lot of things that we can pass on generationally because a lot of them were stolen from us. But the legacy that I have in my family of an education, of homeownership and of family togetherness and resiliency, is what I want to pass on to the future. And homeownership is part of that.”
Mary Grace Roske, senior VP at Seattle Bank:
Civic Commons is gathering the collective local muscle to take action and raise the homeownership rate for people of color, addressing one of the key contributors to the racial wealth gap. By taking a 360-degree look at the local housing market and the homebuyer experience, this effort can help develop a pipeline of prospective qualified buyers and channels to change policies and practices. There will be the full spectrum of stakeholders at the table — including homebuyers, community organizations, banks, government and philanthropy — and Seattle Bank looks forward to being a part of this substantive partnership.
Darryl Smith, executive director of HomeSight:
“The existing system is working exactly as it was designed. We must be intentional about this because the system performed intentionally. The harm that was done was not by accident, so we have to go with equal fervor to correct history, to create those opportunities for our families up and down the I-5 corridor.”