DAVID J. HARRIS
‘Dynamic’ picture
Despite evidence that Asian Americans are better off financially than many other ethnic groups in the United States, a new study identifies shortfalls in homeownership among that population.
The number of Asian Americans who rent their homes is more than 10 percent higher than the overall U.S. population, according to the preliminary findings of the study, which was commissioned by the Asian Real Estate Association of America in partnership with the UCLA Asian American Studies Center.
According to the study, 47 percent of Asian households rent homes, compared to 34 percent of the general population. Asian American homeownership nationwide trails that of non-Hispanic whites by approximately 20 percent.
The study is part of an initiative to dispel the so-called “model minority myth” and show more accurately some of the housing-related issues that Asian Americans face, explained Oscar Gonzales, executive director of Asian Real Estate Association of America, a Houston-based group of real estate agents, lenders and title insurance companies from throughout the country.
Gonzales said there is a common notion that because Asian Americans have high median incomes and higher homeownership rates than other people of color there isn’t a huge need for programs designed to assist the population.
Indeed, the U.S. Census indicates that more than half of all Asian American households nationwide are owner-occupied and that Asians have the highest median home values of any group in the country. Asian households are also the mostly likely of all groups – even white households – to be in the $75,000 or above income range.
But according to Gonzales and other researchers, the Asian population is diverse, with a number of less affluent immigrants coming to the United States from countries like Malaysia and Cambodia. Those immigrants tend to be low-skill workers lacking the education of other Asians who have established themselves in this country.
Gonzales also pointed out that the U.S. Census numbers on homeownership rates do not reflect a significant number of Asian families who share homes yet count themselves as homeowners. “That really skews the numbers,” said Gonzales.
The study findings are particularly significant in the Bay State. The Boston/Worcester region has one of the largest Asian American populations in the country, according to information that Gonzales provided to Banker & Tradesman. With more than 283,800 Asians, the region ranks 12th after the Seattle/Bellevue/Everett region in Washington and before the Houston region.
‘Not Monolithic’
The Institute for Asian American Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Boston recently reported that the Asian-American population in metropolitan Boston grew more than 10 times faster than the rate of the total population growth across the region in the 1990s.
In terms of homeownership, Asians in Massachusetts have the highest homeownership rate compared to other people of color. Of all Asians in the Bay State, 41.6 percent are homeowners, according to Nancy McArdle, a researcher with The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University. That’s significantly higher than the homeownership rate of Hispanics in Massachusetts, which was 21.4 percent, and non-Hispanic blacks, which stood at 32.3 percent.
Of the Asian subgroups in Massachusetts, the Hmong – a small but growing group heavily concentrated in the Fitchburg area – had the highest homeownership rate at 55 percent, said McArdle. The homeownership rate for the Chinese, who mostly reside in Boston, Quincy and Malden, was 50.9 percent. Meanwhile, the homeownership rate for Indians, who live in towns like Waltham, Framingham and Burlington, was 36.6 percent, and for the Vietnamese it was 36.3 percent.
The number of Asian American homeowners in the Bay State more than doubled to 31,000 from the 1990s to 2000, according to a paper that McArdle helped write entitled “More than Money: The Spatial Mismatch Between Where Homeowners of Color in Metro Boston Can Afford to Live and Where They Actually Live.”
Still, actual Asian homeownership rates rose only slightly over the 1990s as more Asian immigrants moved to the state and the overall population grew. “It’s impressive that the homeownership rate has risen at the same time that there was such an influx of new immigrants, who tend to be renters,” said McArdle, noting that nationally it takes on average 12 years for new arrivals to become homeowners.
Asian ownership rates actually fell in the suburbs, but mostly because renter growth there outpaced even the increases in the number of Asian homeowners, according to “More than Money.”
Asian American homeowners, who have much higher income levels overall compared to other people of color, have made “significant inroads into certain suburbs,” the paper notes. Even though cities like Boston, Quincy, Lowell and Malden saw some of the biggest gains in Asian American homeowners, Asians are also represented in higher-income housing markets in Greater Boston – more so than other people of color, explained David J. Harris, executive director of the Fair Housing Center of Greater Boston, who wrote “More than Money” with McArdle.
Harris emphasized that Asians have made gains in areas with widely disparate socioeconomic characteristics, suggesting that there are really two populations of Asians in the state – those who are new immigrants and residing mostly in urban areas and those who are professional and upwardly mobile and living in more affluent communities.
For example, while Asian homeownership grew in urban areas like Lowell, Worcester and Lynn, it also was on the rise in higher-income communities like Brookline, Lexington and Newton. The diversity, according to the paper, reflects the diversity of the Asian population in the Boston metro region.
“The Asian population is not monolithic,” Harris said.
When looking at these statistics it’s critical “to be mindful that the picture is dynamic,” said Harris.
“Massachusetts in a way is a magnet for immigrants and it does create opportunities, but we have to understand the dynamics,” he said.
Aglaia Pikounis can be reached at apikounis@thewarrengroup.com.
