The holiday season in New York City means invitations from colleagues and friends to parties at their newly renovated brownstones or apartments they’ve just bought in one of any number of rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods of Brooklyn. The invitations are great, and the parties are lovely – but their home ownership never fails to ignite a fresh new sense of angst for those of us in our fourth decade of life who still don’t own a home and probably never will.

My husband and I do fine – we can (for now) afford to rent an apartment in one of the more appealing Brooklyn neighborhoods, where the average rent rose by 77% between 2000 and 2012. But we fall into both of the criteria that tend to keep home ownership out of reach for middle-income New Yorkers: we come from families who are unable to help financially in any way, much less with a down payment on a New York City apartment. And also, my son and I are black, which makes us, at least partially, a black family.

Study after study indicates that home ownership for black families in America remains out of reach, because largely, black families don’t have legacies of wealth, but rather legacies of struggle – cultural integrity and vigor that is rarely reflected in bank accounts or respected in an economy that thrives on systemic racism.

Combine that with the fact that, while the income gap between blacks and whites has persisted without much change over the past 50 years (black women make 64 cents to each dollar white men are paid), the wealth gap is more egregious than ever. As long as wealth, almost always tied to race, is what buys a home where I live, what can I possibly hope to pass on to my son?

And if we are talking about wealth, I’ve never had or been part of any. My parents did not maintain a consistent or reliable income when my siblings and I were growing up – and even though as white, college-educated artists and intellectuals who live in an 18th-century Dutch Colonial farmhouse in rural New Hampshire, they don’t read as poor, we were poor. There was government cheese involved in my youth. We had robust vegetable gardens in the summers, but in the winters we had Steak-umms, mashed potatoes for days and Campbell’s tomato soup. And we were never taught how to manage or save money.

That meant that, when it came time to go to college, there was no money from my parents. The private college where I ultimately earned my undergraduate degree provided me with a full academic scholarship for tuition, which at the time was about $28,000 per year. This did not account for books or living expenses, and there was still an annual expected parental contribution of $5,000. I took out student loans for the latter, and worked several jobs for the former.

I graduated with approximately $15,000 in student loan debt, on which I was unable to to make consistent payments when I began my career as a journalist in New York. I had to apply for deferment or forbearance numerous times when I was starting out, and with the steady increase of interest rates, I still owe $17,000 over 20 years later.

This story is a familiar one – one often told about millennials who entered the job market during the recent downturn – but none of it was news to poorer people or to black people of any generation. I don’t want the same for my son, and it’s harder to accrue resources if none are passed on from prior generations and if your monthly housing funds go toward rent rather than paying off a mortgage (or making something closer to being your own).

My husband had some of that. Pragmatic and frugal, my husband has always been a hard worker, a smart spender and a good saver. His parents were not rich but did well enough to pay for all four years of his college education. He intended to send his own children to college one day. He also intended to buy a home.



But after a couple of different apartment moves, a wedding, the birth of a child, the cost of living in New York City and unconscionable circumstances surrounding the death of his father, his financial status shifted. And with it, we’ve become part of the approximately 70% of New York City renters who can’t afford to buy a home there, far higher than numbers nationally.

Much of this is due to ongoing, systemic racism. But much is also thanks to the one-percenters, whose real-estate spending power have changed the game entirely. But what does it mean for the last vestiges of New York’s middle class, of whom I am a part, and black New York, of which I am also a part? If the city turns into the next Dubai, I will never forgive money.