Everyone knows that minority ethnic groups will make up a majority of the population by 2043.

What most people don't know is the economic disaster happening to these minority groups.



A new report calculates that median wealth for black Americans will fall to $0 by 2053, if current trends continue. Latino-Americans, who are also experiencing a sustained downward wealth slide, will hit $0 about two decades later, according to the study by Prosperity Now and the Institute for Policy Studies.

“By 2020, median black and Latino households stand to lose nearly 18% and 12% of the wealth they held in 2013 respectively, while median white household wealth increases by 3%,” the report states. “At that point – just three years from now – white households are projected to own 86 times more wealth than black households, and 68 times more wealth than Latino households.”



Minority wealth was obliterated in the housing bust, even more than white wealth.



Between 1983 and 2013, median black household wealth decreased by 75% to $1,700 and Latino household wealth fell 50% to $2,000. At the same time, median white household wealth rose 14% to $116,800.

The home ownership rate for blacks was just 41.7 percent, a lower home ownership rate than during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

This problem has been compounded during the unbalanced housing recovery under Obama, and it was all about house prices.



According to analysis from Nationwide, the average price of a lowest-tier home nationally has increased by 56 percent over the last five years. By comparison, the value of a home in the highest tier has increased by 33 percent over the same period.

This has priced out many first-time homebuyers, while home prices are 'overpriced' in half of U.S. markets.

This has left the housing market, our economy in general, and our society, unhealthy.



At the same time, sales are falling, again, because there are too few homes on the low end, and the homes that are available are very expensive.

...Supply on the low end is tight because during the housing crash investors large and small bought hundreds of thousands of foreclosed properties and turned them into rentals. There are currently 8 million more renter-occupied homes than there were in 2007, the peak of the housing boom, according to the U.S. Census.

Investors could take the opportunity of high prices and high demand to sell these properties, but today's high rents offer them better returns.

...The homes are there, they're just not selling, and it's not hard to figure out why.

Just 2 percent of newly built homes sold in August were priced under $150,000, and just 14 percent priced under $200,000. Compare that with the existing home market, where more than half of homes sold in August were priced under $250,000.

The current housing market, with all its tax breaks for wealthy landowners, is the largest contributor to wealth inequality and the destruction of the middle class.