Nostalgia isn’t enough to keep Thomas Holley, 74, in the Crown Heights brownstone he

has lived in for more than 58 years.

He got married in that home and raised his children there. His basement man cave,
complete with a bar and mood lighting, was an oasis where he escaped for alone time.

But now fully retired from his transit job as a bus operator and having suffered health
setbacks — a heart attack and spinal surgery — he wants to trade in the brownstone for
more quiet and all-year sunshine at the condo he purchased in 2017 in a Florida suburb
north of Orlando.

He loves Brooklyn, but the gentrification of Crown Heights has been hard for him to
watch and experience. As a Black homeowner, he would like, more than anything else, to
see another Black homeowner take over the house. But it’s precisely because
gentrification has driven property values up that Mr. Holley may not be able to do that.
Like other Black homeowners selling family homes in competitive ZIP codes, Mr. Holley
feels like the sale is freighted with the burden of his race. He had hoped to leave the
house to his only living child, a son in New Jersey, but his son isn’t interested in the
brownstone. Mr. Holley fears that when he lists the house on the open market, he may
unintentionally play a part in the continued displacement of the Black community in
Crown Heights. “I can’t turn down a market offer because it’s for my six grandkids,” he
said. “I want to leave something behind for them.”

Image
Despite a long history of Black homeownership in New York City, ever-rising real estate
prices have made homes in the city inaccessible to many Black New Yorkers. Only 26
percent of Black households in the city owned their homes, compared to 42 percent for
white households, 39 percent for Asian households, and 15 percent for Hispanic
households.Credit...Douglas Segars for The New York Times

The history of racial exclusion, segregation and inequality in real estate has made
homeownership for Black people signify much more than basic shelter and financial
stability. “There are absolutely unique ways that the Black homeownership experience is
different from other experiences,” said Jacob William Faber, a professor of sociology
and public service at New York University.

“Black people and Black communities have been excluded from the opportunity to build
wealth, and that’s why passing their homes along to a family feels so important,” he
added. “There’s so much history that it’s not just a financial transaction. It’s a cultural
transaction. And it’s a familial transaction.”

Mr. Holley estimates that the 12-room, two-family house he inherited from his mother
may be worth close to $2 million, well beyond what most of his friends or family
members could afford. He offered to sell it to a friend at a below-market price, but his
friend could not qualify for a mortgage. He knows when he lists the house, he will have
to abide by fair housing rules and not discriminate based on race.
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Mr. Holley remembers when Crown Heights felt like it was “100 percent Black.” The
area is now less than 50 percent Black. “That doesn’t bother me. It’s some of the people
moving in that are problematic,” Mr. Holley said.

Not too long ago, he said, “I noticed a neighbor putting up something out front and I
was curious. I went over to strike conversation and before I could finish a sentence, he
told me that he didn’t have any money.” Being mistaken for a panhandler by one of his
new white neighbors sent a clear message about how the neighborhood was evolving.
“I’ve lived here all my life. Only three other people on the block who’ve been here longer
than I have,” he said.

Mr. Holley has made peace with the fact that his home likely won’t sell to a Black
person, but he feels sad and a little guilty. “Once Black people move out, it’s hard for
them to get back into the neighborhood because the gentrification completely prices
them out.”
To allay the sense of guilt a Black homeowner might feel when selling their home in a
gentrifying community, Dr. Faber noted first and foremost that “these longtime
homeowners should be congratulated and appropriately compensated for these
investments they made in these neighborhoods when white households were fleeing
decades ago.”

He added that the problems associated with gentrification, “such as rising costs of living,
increased police harassment, political and social displacement, aren’t caused by Black
homeowners.” They are caused, he said, “by forces that move property, like speculative
real estate purchasing, the consolidation of rental properties, zoning laws, mortgage
markets. All of these things are far more influential than the individual homeowner.”
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Despite a long history of Black homeownership in New York City, ever-rising real estate
prices have made homes in the city inaccessible to many Black New Yorkers. According
to a report on homeownership by the New York University Furman Center, New York
City’s homeownership rate in 2014 was just 31 percent, less than half that of the national
homeownership rate of 63 percent. Only 26 percent of Black households in the city
owned their homes, compared to 42 percent for white households, 39 percent for Asian
households, and 15 percent for Hispanic households.
Jeremie Greer, the co-founder and co-executive director of Liberation in a Generation, a
nonprofit focused on racial justice, believes that fair housing rules could be used to
benefit Black homeowners and buyers. The Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Act,
which requires localities to identify and address patterns of racial segregation outlawed
under the Fair Housing Act of 1968, “was degraded during the Trump administration
but has recently been restored, and can be used to buttress some of the challenges that
Black and brown home buyers are facing,” he said. For example, the act could be used to
require communities to examine the legacy of redlining, he said, and “force local
jurisdictions to provide remedies like down payment assistance and low interest loans to
Black and brown home buyers.”
Image
When Evelyn Polhill and her husband bought their three-family Bedford-Stuyvesant
house in 1958, 10 years before the Fair Housing Act was enacted, white families were
fleeing the city and heading to the suburbs as Black families moved in next
door.Credit...Douglas Segars for The New York Times

When it comes to selling her three-family home in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Evelyn Polhill,

89, strikes a pragmatic tone. “America is a capitalistic country. It’s all about what the
market can bear,” she said. “If you’re selling your house, how are you being displaced? If
you’re selling, you must be moving somewhere else. If you’re not factoring that in, then
you’re telling yourself a lie. You’re not being honest.”

When Ms. Polhill and her husband bought their three-family Bedford-Stuyvesant house
in 1958, 10 years before the Fair Housing Act was enacted, white families were fleeing
the city and heading to the suburbs as Black families moved in next door. The German
couple who sold them the house left in a hurry. Now their home is highly desirable and
out of reach for many Black people in her network. Like Mr. Holley’s son, Ms. Polhill’s
children, a son who lives in Maryland and a daughter who has traveled the world
through her airline job and who lives elsewhere in New York, have no interest in the
brownstone.