UK’s Sinking Home Ownership Levels Are Hitting Ethnic Minorities Hardest

Buy-to-let landlords have benefited from rising housing prices while ethnic minorities continue to remain priced out of the market.

Rows of terraced houses in Liverpool, UK.

Photographer: Mary Turner/Bloomberg
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The UK’s burgeoning housing crisis has hit ethnic minority groups hardest, new analysis of census data shows.

The proportion of homeowners dropped among Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Black African and Black Caribbean households in England and Wales between 2011 and 2021, according to fresh analysis of census data. In all other households, homeownership has stayed around the same or risen slightly, a report published by not-for-profit Positive Money on Friday found.

“The situation for ethnic minorities starkly illustrates that the transformation of our homes into vehicles for accumulating wealth over the last decades has created a two-tier housing system,” said Positive Money’s housing policy lead, Martha Dillon.