Lori Weisberg
"There are rather sizable differences across racial groups in the levels of income and wealth and educational attainment, and those factors are the driving forces behind those gaps," said Stuart Gabriel, director of the USC Lusk Center for Real Estatecolor>.
"Innovations in mortgage finance may in fact be what we're looking for in the sense that some of the financial institutions have been more flexible in their underwriting, but the point is that even when that's said and done, we still have to go to the core of the issue, and that is to assure the upward economic mobility of minority populations."
By the second half of last year, the homeownership rate for whites was 76 percent, compared to 50 percent for blacks and 47 percent for Hispanics, according to the report.