ABSTRACT
Analysts have long stressed the importance of existing housing stocks, as opposed to new construction, as a source of housing opportunities for blacks and other minorities. The transfer of housing units from white to black occupancy is thus a necessary concomitant of suburban black population growth. This chapter examines the extent of suburban housing unit transition from white to black or from black to white occupancy as a mediator of homeownership opportunities for blacks in the suburbs. It addresses the magnitude of racial transition of individual suburban housing units, the characteristics of those housing units, and the conditions of equity recapture in black-owned housing in the suburbs. New black occupancy in the suburbs involves a unit already within the black inventory as frequently as it involves a unit shifted from white to black occupancy. Such transition as does occur is predominantly a one-way transfer: white-to-black transition far outweighs transfers from black to white.
