Presidential candidate Kamala Harris is promising to provide "first-time homebuyers with $25,000 to cover the down payment." Her promise is proving popular. Eighty percent of Democrats and even 20% of Republicans favor it, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday. But the devil is in the details, and the media are not asking any questions. The biggest question is whether Harris, as president, would help all first-time homebuyers, regardless of their race, or target the help to achieve racial equity, as her past actions suggest.
Harris has a long track record promising $25,000 in down payment help, but her goal was never to help all first-time homebuyers. In 2019, as a U.S. senator, Harris insisted the goal was to close the homeownership gap between Black and white families. She said then, "We must right the wrong and -- after generations of discrimination -- and give Black families a real shot at home ownership."
Her $25,000 down payment promise was limited to" first-generation homebuyers."
Why limit the help to buyers whose parents never owned a home? To ensure that most of the help goes to minority homebuyers. Only 44% of Black families own their homes, compared with 73% of white families. Black buyers are nearly twice as likely to qualify for help as white buyers if the help is limited to first-generation homebuyers.
Harris insists her "values have not changed." When it comes to housing, that is true.
For the last three and a half years, Harris has pushed racial equity as a governmentwide goal. In March, President Joe Biden boasted support for legislation to provide "$25,000 in down payment assistance to first-generation homebuyers whose families haven't benefited from the generational wealth building associated with homeownership."
Even the Democratic National Committee platform, approved Aug. 19, limits the $25,000 down payment help to buyers "from families where no one has ever before owned a home."
Now Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, appears to be having an expedient change of heart -- known as a flip-flop -- to broaden her housing policy's appeal. But she's not abandoning her racial equity goal entirely.
On Monday, Harris's campaign website posted policy statements. On providing the $25,000 down payment help, the website added this: "first-generation homeowners" will get "more generous support."
Of course, no president can offer $25,000 to homebuyers. It takes Congress, which controls the nation's purse strings. The Downpayment Toward Equity Act, the legislation backed by Biden-Harris and sponsored in the House by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and in the Senate by Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) spells out who is actually eligible.
The bill provides $20,000 to first-generation homebuyers with incomes below 120% of the mean in their area.
The help is increased to $25,000 if the buyer is from a "socially and economically disadvantaged group," defined as being Black, Hispanic, Asian American or Native American. White homebuyers whose parents owned homes can take a hike.
The bill says its purpose is "to narrow and ultimately close the racial homeownership gap in the United States." Waters says it's to correct "grave injustices against people of color" produced by past U.S. policies. These are reparations.
When Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) proposed helping all low-income first-time homebuyers, he got pushback from racial justice and housing advocates insisting too many whites would be eligible. "A tax credit for all first-time homebuyers is going to expand the racial homeownership gap," objected David Dworkin, president and CEO of the National Housing Conference.
Dworkin explained that "We are simply providing first-generation homebuyers, largely people of color, what white, first-time homebuyers have been receiving for years in the form of the 'Daddy Down Payment' loan -- family assistance that is almost never repaid."
Harris has used the same argument repeatedly.
On June 14, she told 100 Black Men of America that she supports helping first-generation homebuyers.
Now Harris is flip-flopping, as she has on fracking and illegal immigration. But what would she actually do as president?
Economists have pointed out the dangers of offering down payment assistance to families who may lack the income to keep up with mortgage payments. Those are valid concerns.
But above all, voters need to know whether Harris' down payment program is a racial equity measure in disguise.
Does Harris intend to treat all Americans fairly, or will her programs be stacked against whites?