Five Questions With: Anna Cano Morales

"The key here is that housing choice for Latinos, based on our data, is limited."

Anna Cano Morales is director of the Latino Policy Institute at Roger Williams University. In February, the institute and HousingWorks RI issued a report on Latino home ownership in Rhode Island that found 26 percent of Latino families own a house, compared to 64 percent of non-Latino families. Providence Business News asked Cano Morales to elaborate on some of the findings.

PBN: What are some of the reasons for the significant gap between ownership for Latinos and non-Latinos?
CANO MORALES
: We’ve been asking ourselves this question as well. It is stark, considering 75 percent of Latino households in Rhode Island are renters, not homeowners. That’s an area that Housing Works Rhode Island and the Latino Policy Institute intend to investigate further. We can hypothesize around why homeownership rates may be so low here. For example, the median household income is much lower than what is needed to afford average rents, never mind save the money that is needed to purchase a home.

PBN: Is the gap attributable entirely to the wage gap? The report found that household incomes for Latinos in 2013 was $55,113, compared to $79,596 for non-Latino households. Is it purely a financial issue for families to qualify for mortgages?
CANO MORALES
: We can certainly point to that. And also, the unemployment rate for Latinos is higher than the statewide rate. The statewide unemployment rate is 6.3 and for Latinos is approximately 16 percent. When you’re looking at resources, you’re looking at just the cost burden just to live in Rhode Island. The math doesn’t add up. There is not enough money to purchase a home and to really save money for a down payment. There are definite economic factors that could be contributing to what we’re seeing. But perhaps there are also social or cultural factors that may be contributing to this. That is what we intend to research and dive deeper into. The economic signs are definitely there, but we need to be able to dive into that more concretely.

PBN: Is the homeownership gap problematic for all Rhode Islanders, not just Latino families?
CANO MORALES
: It’s bad for the state of Rhode Island in its entirety. Latinos are the fastest growing ethnic group in Rhode Island. We need them to become more engaged in the housing market, to be able to purchase a home, or to build equity and pass it on to the next generation. If Latinos are not fully engaged in the home buying market, that poses a problem for the home seller down the road.

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PBN: Some might argue that renting makes more sense financially for many families, so is this in fact a problem?
CANO MORALES
: The key here is that housing choice for Latinos, based on our data, is limited. It’s the cost. It’s the affordability of living in a particular neighborhood, it’s also the ability to be able to go out for a mortgage. It’s no surprise to see the decline in the number of mortgage applications by Latinos. Latinos aren’t even putting it in their mindset. It’s not even on their radar screen.

PBN: What are the demographics of Latino households in Rhode Island, and is this a large enough proportion of the state population that Latino home buying patterns have an economic impact?
CANO MORALES
: To put things in perspective, there was a 232 percent increase in Latinos in Rhode Island since 1990. Latinos in Rhode Island skew younger compared to the rest of Rhode Island. The Latino median age in Rhode Island is just 26. For non-Latinos, it’s 40. Latinos are 13.2 percent of the population of the state. Where there is youth, there is the opportunity for more Latino households to be formed. If baby boomers in North Kingstown want to downsize, or sell their home and move to Florida, but you have a young, emerging population that is growing at a fast pace, but is not prepared to purchase homes, that affects all in Rhode Island. That’s problematic. We know the real estate and housing market is part of economic development.

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