Housing

While the overall U.S. homeownership rate has risen in recent years, the rate among Black households remains low. Black families have a much lower median net worth compared to white families, and homeownership is one of the reasons why. Some companies are offering AI-assisted property valuations instead of in-person appraisals. But these valuations have the same biases that appraisers and lenders and real-estate agents have, too, since the algorithms tend to be written by people with unconscious bias. "The way you get past what really amounts to a distrust of Black people is to invest in Black people," says Andre M. Perry, a fellow at the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program.