by Rod Williams, Jan. 7, 2026- A top housing official in New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration has called homeownership a "weapon of white supremacy" and argued that property should be treated as a "collective good."
If homeownership is a "weapon of White supremacy," then I guess if you are a homeowner, that makes you a White supremacist? Have I got that right? Wow, I had no idea I helped turn so many Black people into White supremacists.
I spent most of my working years as Director of Housing Services for a non-profit organization. I pretty much developed our agency's housing counseling program. Although there were many organizations providing housing education to low-income people, we were unique in serving the hard-to-serve.
There is a big difference between types of poor people. Some people are low-income because they are young and just out of college, and just starting their careers, and then there are poor people from generations of poverty. Some poverty is situational; some is endemic. We served the latter.
Our signature program was Homebuyers Club. A Homebuyers Club would be a group of typically about a dozen people striving to achieve homeownership. These clubs would be facilitated by me or another housing counselor and co-facilitated by a volunteer housing professional, such as a realtor or loan officer. A club met once a month for a year and included topics on saving, credit, money management, real estate agents, mortgages, home inspections, home insurance, closing, and maintenance. For those who had not achieved homeownership within a year, they were encouraged to begin again. In addition to the group sessions, there would be an initial one-on-one session where we created an Action Plan for the client, and then usually a couple of other one-on-one counseling sessions throughout the year. The program was a cross between homebuyer education and a self-help AA-type program. We had about a dozen of these clubs.
Most of my clients were African-American. They had challenges that would not occur to most of us. Each of our meetings began with a discussion period where we discussed achievements, challenges, and setbacks of the prior month. At one such meeting, several people complained about their high phone bills. This, as I seem to recall, was when one still had to pay for long-distance calls, but long-distance calls were free after certain hours and the price of a long-distance phone call had been coming down. I knew my phone bill was nowhere near as high as theirs. I probed as to why their bills were so high. Those with high phone bill, and as I recall it was most of this group, all had a loved one in prison. Prisoners could not make free calls; the recipient had to pay for the call. That was a challenge. I could not suggest they refuse the phone call of a husband or father or son who was in prison. This is but one of the kinds of challenges they faced.
To succeed and achieve their goal of homeownership, people in our Homebuyers Club often had to change their way of thinking. They had to learn about making choices and delayed gratification. Something they had to wait until next month to buy something they wanted and sometimes they just had to forego the purchase. They had to had to make sacrifices and save money. This often meant telling their young teenage son, he could not have a sports starter jacket or the popular tennis shoes. Before getting into this role, I had no idea that those things were so important. Most of my co-facilitators and, as the program grew, some of our facilitators were Black, and they could be more blunt in addressing these type issues than I.
Some of the education involved teaching an understanding of some basic economics. Many had no idea of how much the use of payday lenders was costing them. Another issue was the view many had on having a car repossessed. I saw many with repossessed cars on their credit report. The view of many was that if they bought a car and three months later the transmission started slipping, they just stopped making payments and let it get repossessed. I have had clients proudly tell me, "I just told them, they can come and get it." They did not seem to realize that they were paying for that decision.
One of the hardest challenges was overcoming the fear of the benefit cliff. Many were on some sort of public assistance, such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children, or food stamps, or living in public housing, or housing assistance or Medicaid. There was a fear that if they started earning more money, they would lose their benefits. In some cases it took courage to stop being poor.
Another challenge was overcoming peer pressure. Before working in this program, I thought one's family would be pleased if another family member pulled themself out of poverty and improved their lives. Often, that was not the case. In fact, often other family members tried to sabotage the success of the participant in the program. If a club participant was saving money a friend or family member would pressure them to loan them money. As an example, if the club participant was saving a hundred dollars a month and a friend's electricity was going to be cut off, they would make the club participant feel guilty for not helping them. Worse than that, I had clients tell me that their family and friends told them they were "acting White" since joining the club.
I am proud of the work I did. I know it changed lives for generations. I am proud for everly Black, White supremacist I helped create.
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