WHEREAS, Predatory housing contracts in the 1950's and 1960's in Chicago's black communities on the south and west side were primarily through a practice known as home contract sales that extracted generational wealth from these communities; and,
WHEREAS, This common practice during the housing boom that followed World War II, and grew out of redlining policies that denied most black homebuyers access to conventional mortgage loans; and,
WHEREAS, These contracts sales offered black homebuyers the illusion of a mortgage and combined the responsibilities of homeownership with all the disadvantages of renting while offering the benefits of neither; and,
WHEREAS, Buyers had excessive down payments and made monthly instalments toward inflated purchase prices at high interest rates, but never gained ownership; and,
WHEREAS, Contract sellers were able to evict the buyers for even minor missed payments and were free to burden the title with liens unrelated to the buyer's possession; and,
WHEREAS, The contract buyer's accumulated no equity in their homes with no laws or regulations to protect them against eviction and the loss of every dollar invested in their home; and,
WHEREAS, Contract sellers had the backing of the banks that turned down black homeowners, and legally allowed the contracts sellers to exploit a separate and unequal housing market; and,
WHEREAS, It was common practice for sellers to evict buyers for any missed payment, keep the down payments and all payments towards the contract, and then resell the property on contract to another buyer; and,
WHEREAS, In 1962, the Chicago Human Rights Commission conducted a study in the Englewood neighborhood that found 88 percent of black homeowners were on contract installments, and that on average those buyers paid the sellers a 73 percent markup for their properties; and,
WHEREAS, Predatory housing contract policy researchers have studied the effect of contract selling going back decades on the Chicago's south and wes...
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