Black seniors in Chicago face 50/50 odds of getting home loans to make improvements
Thomas and Beverly J. Walker enjoying the front porch at their Austin home. Credit: Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago
This story is written by the Investigative Project on Race and Equity, which focuses on exposing systematic racism, while training reporters on data-driven journalism. It is being published through a partnership with Block Club Chicago, a nonprofit newsroom focused on Chicago’s neighborhoods.
CHICAGO — Cynthia Harris can’t walk up the stairs to her Far South Side home without help.
The concrete stairs to her Rosemoor home, where she’s lived since the 1960s, urgently need repairs. Harris, 64, has limited mobility after suffering a stroke, and she has to use a stool to get up and down.
Harris contacted the city for help, but they told her there was a three-year-long waiting list. She worried about the wait.
“Anything can happen in three years,” Harris said.
Then, the city’s Home Repair program, which provides low-income homeowners with roof and porch repair grants, sent Harris an email this month confirming she was invited to send preliminary paperwork. She hopes it’s a sign work will start soon. Once that’s finished, she’d like to replace the tub in a full bathroom with a shower that will allow her to easily get in and out.
But Harris, a retired hospital operator, is not sure how she’ll get that work done.
The Chicago Department of Housing has stopped taking new applications, and the alternative solution is a loan. However, it’s hard to get them, particularly in predominantly Black neighborhoods like Harris’.
Between 2018 and 2022, Black neighbors 62 and older were twice as likely to be denied home loans as their white counterparts in Chicago, an analysis of Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data by the Investigative Project on Race and Equity shows. Over that time, 48% of Black seniors across the city were denied a mortgage loan compared to 23% of white applicants, the data show.
For every $1 approved to older people to free up equity through a refinance or home improvement loan in the South Deering community area where Harris lives, $20 was approved for senior mortgage applicants in Norwood Park, according to an analysis of the federal data.
For every $1 in approved lending for older people in Englewood, $24 was approved in West Town.
Chicago’s legacy of racial segregation and redlining by banks continues to influence home values and access to mortgage lending, and for older people, particularly in the city’s predominantly Black communities, tapping into their home equity or refinancing can be a challenge. Public programs don’t have the resources to meet the demand, and without funding from private lenders, many of the repairs will go unaddressed, experts say.
As a result, homes will deteriorate, adding blight to the city and potentially preventing older people, like Harris, from aging safely in their own homes.
Older homeowners often need tuckpointing to extend the life of brick buildings, roof repairs and electrical and heating maintenance, said Rev. Robin Hood, the executive director of the Illinois Anti-Foreclosure Coalition. He is known for helping older people targeted in reverse mortgage scams. Elderly Black women often reach out to him, and he’s seen extreme examples of homeowners struggling with repairs. Once, he helped a woman on the South Side get a heating unit by appealing to the local news.
“It was five below zero out there," said Hood, a longtime West Side activist. "I said, ‘[The city] let the old people die.’”
Homeowners often couldn’t afford preventative improvements when they were younger and working, said Amber Hendley, director of research at the Woodstock Institute. Many homes are in such bad condition because of “deferred maintenance,” they now need repairs when owners can least afford it, she said.
Harris, who has four siblings, moved to the neighborhood when she was in the third grade. Her father built their house from the ground up. After her stroke, her youngest sister and her friends became her support system.
“We take care of each other,” she said.
Beyond having a place to stay today, having the property represents a chance to pass something down to Harris’ niece and nephew, she said.
“It means generational wealth,” she said.
These modest single family homes along the Major Trail in Morgan Park are similar to ones owned by seniors seeking home repair loans. Credit: Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago
The need for home repairs
Housing Opportunities and Maintenance for the Elderly, better known as H.O.M.E., is one of the nonprofits that contracts with the city to provide minor home repairs, like plumbing and electrical work, for older people. Executive Director Gail Schechter said the nonprofit primarily receives inquiries from older Black women on the city’s South and West sides.
The organization tells the countless people who call that there’s a months-long waiting list. Still, people are willing to wait, even with issues like standing water in the basement.
“That's what's insane,” she said. “The need is really just that great.”
Last year, the city’s Department of Housing allocated nearly $2.3 million in funds to the Small Accessible Repairs for Seniors program, which provides homeowners 60 and older with services such as flooring, window and door repairs. Another $3 million has been allotted for this year, housing department records show. The department also offers help with heating issues, ramps and lifts.
However, each of those programs is closed to new applicants.
Older people are often waiting in potential peril, records show.
“Mother needs to get down the stairs and she is unable to bend her knees,” one waitlisted applicant wrote. “Has acute rheumatoid arthritis in her knees, shoulder, and back.”
“The demand for these programs always outweighs funding limitations and vendor capacity,” said Rima Alsammarae, director of public affairs at the Department of Housing. She pointed out that the problem is not unique to Chicago, and the agency is “actively working to increase funding opportunities for these programs.”
National data on mortgage lending shows applicants living on the under-banked side of the color line are more likely to be denied than approved for refinance or home improvement loans.
The divide is so stark that over five years, older neighbors in the Near North Side community area alone were approved for $713 million in refinancing or home improvement loans — an amount on par with total lending in all 28 of the city’s majority Black communities combined, $785 million.
There are a number of factors — predatory loans, employment discrimination and poor quality housing stock sold to Black Americans — that have contributed to the deterioration of homes in Black communities, said Robin Bartram, assistant professor at the University of Chicago’s Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice.
“It's not just that naturally homeowners in fancy white neighborhoods are better at taking care of buildings or know what to do,” Bartram said. “They're able to tap into certain things that enable them to repair homes.”
A new bill aims to provide more assistance to older homeowners. On Feb. 9, State Rep. Kevin John Olickal co-sponsored the Senior Home Preservation Program Act, which aims to provide grants of up to $40,000 to low-income older residents for home repairs and rehabilitation.
“If there's any reason that a senior might be forced to sell their home or leave their home, that makes that community more vulnerable,” he said.
Olickal said the bill’s biggest barrier could be the state’s budget for the repair grants.
A failure to invest in repairs now could lead to bigger problems in years to come, said Geoff Smith, executive director of the Institute for Housing Studies at DePaul University.
Repairing older homes creates “a stronger future for the neighborhood by investing in the housing stock and making that property more available for future homebuyers,” he said. “What happens more, unfortunately too often, is that the property will deteriorate.”
Their homes should be worthy of improvement
Thomas and Beverly J. Walker at their home in the 5800 block of West Race Avenue in Austin. Credit: Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago
Thomas and Beverly J. Walker bought their 14-room, four-bathroom house in Austin in 1994 for $250,000. It sits on four city lots and has nearly 6,000 square feet. Their realtor had shown them another house a block away, but they fell in love with the Shingle-style home built in the late 1800s. Designated as a Chicago landmark in 1999, the home was built for Catherine Schlect, the aunt of the architect Frederick Schock.
The couple hoped to find a property that would be a good investment, but they fell in love with the house. In 2008, as the housing market melted down, they began a two-year exterior renovation. They removed the shingles and siding and rebuilt the home’s spindles, balconies and porches. They began interior improvements in 2014, including the addition of a primary bathroom on the second floor, and finished two and a half years later. Renovating the inside of their home cost more than $200,000.
Seven years ago, amid semi-retirement, the couple sought to refinance their home to switch from a variable-rate to a fixed-rate mortgage of about 3% to avoid fluctuating payments. First, they went to the bank that gave them their mortgage loan. Despite years of paying on time, their application was denied because the house wasn’t worth enough.
“You're talking about two people with substantial amounts of retirement money,” said 74-year-old Beverly Walker, who held positions at the city, state and Deloitte and now does some consulting work. Her husband is retired. “We just don't get the benefit of the system.”
In the Austin community area, one of the largest in the city, older people applied for $544 million worth of home improvement and refinance loans between 2018 and 2022, the federal mortgage data shows. Only $133 million was approved, according to loan application data.
If you are upwardly mobile, there are no incentives to invest in Austin, said Thomas Walker, 75.
“You end up with vacant lots all over the place until it's an area that becomes in demand,” he said.
The Walkers were able to get a refinancing loan at another bank where they both held retirement assets, but even that wasn’t easy.
The first appraiser listened to what they said about the history of the home and their renovations. He valued the house at roughly $500,000, far less than if it were only a few blocks away in suburban Oak Park, the Walkers said.
The bank rejected that number and said the appraiser it had sent was incompetent, Beverly Walker said. When the bank sent another appraiser, the second review resulted in a $380,000 appraisal.
The bank told the Walkers they had “over improved” their home and said it would not count the improvements toward the appraisal, Beverly Walker said.
“You want to tell me I've over-improved it?” she said. “It's an insult to the community that I live in, that it shouldn't have an asset like the one we're living in.”
Sarah Brune, director of public policy at Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago, has heard from home buyers and sellers that appraisers are often white and unfamiliar with communities of color and may not be equipped to reflect the value of a home fairly.
It’s “really up to their discretion,” Brune said. “They don't understand the various different areas within a neighborhood.”
Though the Walkers were able to fund their home improvements on their own, Beverly Walker acknowledged that they were unusually lucky to do so and many Black homeowners lack the funds to do the same.
“Their houses should be worthy of improvement,” she said. “They should be worthy of getting the opportunity to upgrade.”
Angela Caputo, Khadija Ahmed and Maia McDonald contributed to this story.
*** Methodology
We analyzed Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data to report this story. We calculated denial rates by dividing the number of denied applications by the number of denied and approved applications. We did not count applications that were withdrawn, closed as incomplete or those for mortgage pre-approvals.
This article is part of the Segregation Reporting Project, made possible by a grant from Healing Illinois, an initiative of the Illinois Department of Human Services and the Field Foundation of Illinois that seeks to advance racial healing through storytelling and community collaborations.
The project is inspired by “Shame of Chicago, Shame of a Nation,” a new documentary that addresses the untold legacy of Chicago’s systemic segregation.
Managed by Public Narrative, this endeavor enlisted five local media outlets to produce impactful news coverage on segregation in Chicago while maintaining editorial independence.