Delores Bailey remembers her childhood in rural North Carolina fondly. She and her family lived with an aunt and uncle in a small, largely self-sufficient community. They grew corn, sweet potatoes and tomatoes, and raised hogs.

When butchering time came in the fall, she says, “Neighbors would come, and it was a wonderful community event.” It was a thriving Black neighborhood, one Bailey believes had been there since the end of slavery.

But around 1975, when Bailey was a high school senior, the Army Corps of Engineers told her family they had to leave. The Corps was damming a nearby river to create a new lake—what we know today as Jordan Lake—and said the community, located on low-lying land near a creek, was at risk of flooding.

Families were separated. Some people remained within 10 miles of the original community; others disappeared.

Today, Bailey wonders what might’ve happened to them. In nearby towns, everything was more expensive. She believes most probably became renters, perhaps moving from place to place; some may have wound up in public housing. Even years later, as older adults, they may have struggled with housing insecurity that could be traced to that original loss of land and stability. 

“It’s a domino effect,” she says. “When your housing is unstable, your life is unstable.”

Bailey and her mother were lucky: they moved into a house her uncle owned in Chapel Hill, a college town four miles west. That house was a lifeline, and Bailey, who still lives there, thrived. She went to college and has served as executive director of the Chapel Hill–based community development organization EMPOWERment Inc. for the past two decades. 

Alongside her staff, Bailey regularly sees older Black homeowners and renters struggling to cover mortgage payments, rent, or property taxes. She knows their challenges run far deeper than a lack of money this month or last. For them and many older Black Americans, the roots of their housing insecurity trace back decades to discriminatory policies like those that upended Bailey’s childhood community. Those practices have had far-reaching consequences that echo today, depriving Black seniors of the wealth that often provides stability in old age.

An incalculable loss of wealth

“It’s hard to calculate the profundity of past discrimination,” says Andre Perry, a senior fellow and director of the Center for Community Uplift at the Brookings Institution.

The list of discriminatory housing practices that older people of color may have encountered over their lifetimes is long. A Black 70-year-old has likely experienced housing discrimination over decades, at nearly every stage of homeownership.

By the time this person was born in 1956, the effects were already apparent. The neighborhood they were born into was likely largely or entirely Black, due to laws and racially restrictive covenants that limited where Black families could live. Redlining, the Federal Housing Administration’s practice of deeming Black neighborhoods too risky for government-backed mortgages, had begun a few decades earlier.

While white homeowners in the same city were protected by legal and regulatory processes, Black families had no such help. They had to buy their homes outright after years of saving or take on unregulated predatory loans.

With their higher interest rates and payments, the loans took a bigger bite out of the family’s monthly budget, leaving less money for home repair and maintenance or for savings. That is, if their owners remained in the homes. Urban renewal efforts in the 1950s and 1960s tended to target Black communities, razing entire neighborhoods to build highways, office buildings, or, as in Bailey’s case, lakes.

A raft of laws passed in the 1960s and 1970s aimed to counter discrimination and make access to housing and credit more equitable. The 1968 Fair Housing Act prohibits discrimination in all housing-related activities, including choosing a home and obtaining a mortgage, home appraisals, and tax assessments. The 1974 Equal Credit Opportunity Act bars discrimination in any aspect of a credit transaction. And the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act encourages banks to meet the credit needs of all communities in their area, not just the affluent ones.

But housing scholars and fair housing advocates argue that the legislation hasn’t functioned as well as intended.

As a young adult, this person probably didn’t get much help buying their own home; their parents likely wouldn’t have had the wealth or equity to assist with a downpayment, for example. And just as in their parents’ case, the home they eventually bought would have appreciated more slowly simply because of the owner’s race.

Their homes might also be near heavy industry or waste facilities: Black Americans are 75 percent more likely to live in communities located next to polluters such as chemical plants or oil refineries. That affects residents’ health—and their home’s value, too. 

By midlife, this person may finally be comfortably settled in their own home. That would have been in the 1990s and early 2000s, an era when subprime lenders were perfecting predatory loan products that would eventually crash the U.S. economy. Taking advantage of the long-standing banking void in Black communities, they disproportionately peddled high-rate, high-fee loans to Black homeowners—a disparity that grew at higher income levels.

“African Americans were something like 900 times more likely to get a subprime loan,” says Beryl Satter, a Rutgers University history professor whose book on the topic, Cash on the Block, was published earlier this year.

In a country where the main driver of family wealth is homeownership, specifically the profits that can accrue over generations from property appreciation, these discriminatory policies and practices have had enormous consequences. Today, the median white family has about 6.5 times more wealth than the median Black family, a gap that has remained largely unchanged over decades.

Black seniors may feel this keenly. An older homeowner living on a fixed income who has managed to keep their house all these years may not be able to afford the upkeep, repairs, or modifications that allow them to stay there.

If their home is in a neighborhood that has become popular, its value may have increased, enabling the owner to borrow against it to make improvements—but that higher value also brings higher property taxes, which can be difficult to afford on a fixed income. It’s more likely, however, that their home has not increased in value, leaving it worth too little to qualify for a home equity loan. One study found that between 1980 and 2015, the average home value in white communities grew by $225,000, while houses in neighborhoods of color grew by only $31,000. 

And if they choose to sell the house and downsize, they may not receive enough from the sale to support them for the rest of their lives. It’s a downward spiral that occurs far less often in comparable white neighborhoods, housing advocates say.

Fair appraisals are critical for seniors

The problem of professional appraisers valuing homes owned by Black households less than those owned by white households has persisted for decades, but it only entered the national conversation around 2021.

According to a Brookings Institution study, homes in Black neighborhoods are valued about 21 to 23 percent below what they would be in non-Black neighborhoods.

The issue is of particular significance to older people.

“Getting a fair appraisal is critical for seniors, arguably more [so] for people in any other age group,” says Gregory Squires, professor emeritus in George Washington University’s sociology department and a member of the Philadelphia Home Appraisal Bias Advisory Group.

Because most seniors are on fixed incomes, the price they receive for their current home will determine what they can afford if they plan to downsize. Others who hope to stay in the home may need to borrow against it to make improvements or modifications, and that, too, depends on their home being appraised at its true value.

The Biden administration established a home appraisal discrimination task force and eventually reached an agreement with The Appraisal Foundation to help diversify the ranks of appraisers nationwide. Both were ended by the Trump administration.

But work is underway at the local and state levels that can serve as examples for other communities.

In Philadelphia, for example, Mayor Cherelle Parker convened a task force on the topic when she was still a councilmember. Now, she and her staff are using the task force’s recommendations as a road map to address discrimination by the appraisal industry at the local level.

In Chicago, the city’s Urban League also established a task force, bringing together appraisers, public officials, realtors, lenders, and others to create a preliminary set of recommendations.

Los Angeles County has beefed up its consumer education and response, and New Jersey passed a law in 2024 formally banning discrimination by appraisers, providing property owners with more opportunity for recourse.

Addressing a vulnerability exploited by unscrupulous investors

Another major issue affecting the housing security of Black seniors is heirs’ property—land passed down through generations without a legally designated owner or clear title.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, heirs’ property problems are the leading cause of involuntary land loss among Black families. The first owner may have died without a will or clear title because they were locked out of conventional legal and financial systems and instead relied on informal ownership structures. As a result, many—sometimes even dozens—of heirs may jointly own the property without the legal protections of formal ownership. This can allow an unscrupulous investor to buy a share from just one owner, often for a very low price, and ultimately force a sale of the entire property.

Heirs’ property has largely been viewed as a rural problem, but in recent years, legal advocates have documented its significance in cities as well, especially in newly popular areas where property values have spiked. It can deeply affect older adults planning to live out their years in the family home. Their ancestors may have bought the house decades earlier, when the neighborhood was cheaper or even segregated, and the current residents most likely wouldn’t be able to afford another home in that neighborhood, or even elsewhere in the city.

“We scratched the surface and realized this is happening all the time,” says Scott Kohanowski, general counsel of the Center for NYC Neighborhoods. The organization recently released a report describing heirs’ property as “a substantial—and likely undercounted” problem that puts an estimated $400 million in property at risk each year and could affect thousands of residents. The organization’s research found that it is more common in neighborhoods predominantly populated by older homeowners of color.

In response, the center helped pass a 2019 New York law and 2024 amendments that strengthen heirs’ rights and restrict an investor’s ability to force the sale of a jointly owned property. The organization also provides charitable loans that can be used to pay mortgage or tax arrears for descendants or to consolidate title among several heirs.

Other lawyers and researchers are paying attention. In 2023, the Heirs’ Property Practitioner Network was formed, with members from all 50 states. The group meets regularly to share resources, research, and strategies.

Fighting an epidemic of too-high property assessments

Around the country, there are neighborhoods whose residents have lived through Jim Crow and legal racism, endured a lack of investment from banks and municipalities, and survived encroachment by highways. They made it—and now their ZIP codes are desirable.

That’s what’s happening to Mr. R, an 83-year-old who declined to provide his full name for privacy reasons. He says he and his wife have fallen behind on their mortgage payments and are at risk of losing their home.

It’s darkly ironic. For years, Mr. R’s Chapel Hill neighborhood, which is named after his grandfather’s family, was largely Black—mostly because no one else wanted to live there. In the 1970s, the landfill came in, accompanied by the municipality’s pledges to install water and sewer lines in exchange. Instead, town leaders delayed for years while runoff from the dump contaminated residents’ wells.

After a long battle, the pipes were finally connected in 2019. That, along with the bus service that had arrived in 2004, began to change the area. These days, it’s home to many new residences and small subdivisions.

The growth has had a significant effect: far higher property taxes for Mr. R and his wife and their neighbors. Last year, his home’s assessed value rose by more than 72 percent, from $265,000 to $457,700. For an elderly couple on a fixed income, that’s huge. They took out a second mortgage on their home 20 years ago, and their monthly payments, which combine their mortgage note, insurance, and property taxes, have suddenly spiked.

“I’m worried,” Mr. R says. But mixed with that worry is a sense of resignation. His wife has been sick, and keeping up the house and yard at his age has been hard. Maybe it would be easier to sell it and move into an apartment in town. “It’s just too much trying to keep this place going,” he says.

A homeownership counselor at Bailey’s organization has been helping him work through his options; if it comes to it, she’ll recommend a reputable realtor rather than let the house fall into the hands of a scammer—or worse, let it fall into foreclosure and cost Mr. R all his equity.

The tax assessment problem is a national one. For several years, researchers and advocates have highlighted the disproportionately high tax burden on neighborhoods of color, particularly in areas like Mr. R’s that are newly attracting higher-income residents. For elderly Black homeowners with very little financial margin for error, an increase in property taxes could force them out of their homes.

But there might be an alternative. Mr. R and his neighbors have been talking about appealing the too-high property assessments or pushing back in some other way. If they do, they won’t be alone. Across the town and the broader region, lower-income Black communities—many with disproportionate numbers of elderly homeowners—are successfully fighting what they see as unfairly high valuations.

When new property valuations came out in early 2025 for Orange County, which contains Chapel Hill, “You could find the Black community by where property taxes were rising the most. It was done that … poorly,” says Hudson Vaughan, director of the Community Justice Collaborative at the North Carolina Housing Coalition.

But a coalition that includes Mr. R’s neighborhood has been robustly advocating on the issue. The Orange County tax office initially refused to adjust the assessments, so the coalition took its stories to county commissioners and the media, compiled data, and formally appealed. It was successful: the tax office brought in outside consultants to evaluate assessment practices, adjusted the valuations, and created a new work group to review policies. 

In the end, the coalition won more than 200 formal appeals. Mr. R didn’t win his, but he may yet benefit from their efforts.

That work brought together organizations representing similar communities across several counties in the region. They initially gathered to strategize on best practices to address inequitable property assessments, and they continue to meet to share additional tools and tactics that can support their historically Black, often elderly, neighborhoods.

Today, says Vaughan, “We’re trying to develop the secret sauce for keeping people in their homes, and keeping our neighborhoods rooted and strong.”