Historically, members of some racial and ethnic groups have suffered discrimination in buying homes and accessing home mortgages. A home is a vital financial asset for a family and an investment in both the local neighborhood and surrounding community.

In 2018-22, 71% of White and 62% Asian residents in Worcester County owned their homes compared to 33% of both African American and Latino residents. The City of Worcester, the only locality with statistically reliable data, had similar disparities with 49% of White residents and 41% of Asian residents owning their homes compared to 26% of African American and 22% of Latino residents.

Worcester County had greater racial and ethnic disparities in homeownership rates than the nation. Nationwide, homeownership was substantially higher among African American and Latino residents, at 43% and 49%, respectively. The County's rates were similar to Massachusetts as a whole, except that a smaller share of Asian residents owned homes at the state level (56%).

Since 2008-12, the County's homeownership rate among Latino residents increased the most, by eight percentage points, while the rate for African Americans decreased by three points.

A variety of research has shown how disparities in homeownership are connected to racial inequities within systems beyond housing, including financial services, labor market and intergenerational wealth. Historic practices including redlining, exclusionary mortgage practices and restrictive covenants barring property from being owned by members of specific groups directly locked people out of homeownership. These had intergenerational effects when people of color were unable to benefit from wealth transfers of home equity as White homebuyers can. Since Black and Latino households generally have lower wages and wealth accumulation, they have less resources for down payments and higher debt to income ratios. Many in the Black and Latino community may lack information about the home buying process and choose to stay renters.

The multi-year figures are from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey. The bureau combined five years of responses to the survey to provide estimates for smaller geographic areas and increase the precision of its estimates. However, because the information came from a survey, the samples responding to the survey were not always large enough to produce reliable results, especially in small geographic areas. CGR has noted on data tables the estimates with relatively large margins of error. Estimates with three asterisks have the largest margins, plus or minus 50% or more of the estimate. Two asterisks mean plus or minus 35%-50%, and one asterisk means plus or minus 20%-35%. For all estimates, the confidence level is 90%, meaning there is 90% probability the true value (if the whole population were surveyed) would be within the margin of error (or confidence interval). The survey provides data on characteristics of the population that used to be collected only during the decennial census. Data for this indicator are released annually in December.