Freedom, Equity, and a Place to Call Home

Written By Amanda Finck

Because a front door has never been only a front door in America.

“Home” is probably the word I use most in my work.

It’s in my business name. It’s the thing people are really talking about when they tell me they want a larger kitchen, a quieter street, a first-floor bedroom for a parent, room for a baby, or simply the relief of not having a landlord decide what happens next.

I am the person who will happily go down a rabbit hole about an old house’s original millwork, whether a floor plan actually lives well, or why one block can feel completely different from the next. I looooooveeeee the tangible parts of real estate. The architecture. The neighborhoods.

The moment a client walks in somewhere and their entire face changes because they can suddenly picture their life there (one of my favorite things to bear witness to).

But home is not a simple word in our country. A home can be shelter, duh. It can also be leverage.

  • A house can become the down payment a parent gives their child.

  • It can become the money that allows someone to:

    • Leave a bad job,

    • Start a business,

    • Pay for college,

    • Survive a medical emergency,

    • Retire with a little less fear,

    • Make an offer without having to ask permission from anyone.

That’s why I refuse to talk about Juneteenth without talking about housing.

Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, when Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, and delivered General Order No. 3, informing enslaved people in Texas that they were free.

More than two years had passed since the Emancipation Proclamation.

That delay is not a small detail in the story. It is the story.

Freedom had been declared qt pies. Yet, it still had not reached the people whose lives depended on it. And when you read the order itself, there is language that should stop anyone cold. It announces freedom, then tells formerly enslaved people to “remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages.”

Freedom was named, then immediately narrowed. No land. No repair for stolen labor. No meaningful protection from the people who had held power over their bodies, families, movement, and futures. The country was willing to declare emancipation, but much less willing to build a world where Black Americans could actually live freely within it.

And so, what happened next? That tension didn’t disappear after 1865. It just moved.

It moved into laws, lending, zoning, school boundaries, home appraisals; into which neighborhoods were considered “desirable,” (literally), which communities were starved of investment, and whose ability to buy a home was treated as a risk instead of a right.

The barrier kept changing its outfit, if you will.

I grew up in Naperville and live in Glen Ellyn now, and so I have always understood myself as a Chicagoland person. I work across this huge, complicated region, and I love it deeply! I love the architecture, the neighborhood identities, the lake, the old downtowns, the block-by-block differences that make this place feel alive.

That doesn’t mean I get to work in this housing ecosystem, benefit from its beauty and opportunity, and look away from the systems that shaped who was allowed to feel secure here.

Chicago isn’t a place where housing discrimination happened “back then.” It’s one of the clearest case studies in what happens when discrimination is made structural.

The Chicago History Museum’s work on redlining is worth spending time with.

  • These were literal Government-backed maps that deliberately categorized neighborhoods by lending risk, with Black neighborhoods routinely marked as “undesirable.”

  • Private restrictive covenants reinforced segregation.

  • Banks withheld conventional mortgages.

  • Real estate professionals participated in steering, blockbusting, and the larger machinery of exclusion.

Then came one of the most devastating parts of Chicago’s housing history: contract buying.

When Black families were shut out of ordinary mortgages, many still did what families everywhere do. They worked, saved, found a home, put money down, made monthly payments, paid for repairs, and tried to build a future.

But ‘contract buyers’ did all of that without the protections of actual ownership.

  1. The seller held the deed.

  2. Buyers built no equity until every condition was met.

  3. Missing a single payment could mean eviction and the loss of every dollar already invested.

The Plunder of Black Wealth in Chicago report found that this was not some fringe scam involving “a few bad actors.” Banks, lawyers, business leaders, and city officials profited from a separate and unequal market.

Researchers estimate Black Chicago families lost between $3.2 billon - $4 billion in wealth through predatory contract sales during the 1950s and 1960s.

And that’s what I think about when someone says, “Well, that was so long ago.” Because, no. Not really qt pie.

That money would have become equity. Equity would have become the next down payment, the college fund, the retirement cushion, the inheritance, the ability to survive a bad year without losing everything.

The past is still sitting inside present-day offers, too.

  • It’s sitting in who can put 20% down.

  • Who has family money available when inspection issues come up.

  • Who can buy before selling.

  • Who can afford a fixer-upper.

  • Who has room to make a mistake.

  • Who has to get every decision exactly right because there is no safety net behind them.

I want to be clear: I am in no way shape or form trying to reduce Black families to a statistic or tell one flattened story about hardship whatsoever. Black homeownership is growing. Black buyers are buying homes, building businesses, creating wealth, raising families, and making communities more vibrant every day.

That truth deserves to be celebrated without turning the larger picture into something tidier than it is.

According to the National Association of REALTORS®’ 2025 Snapshot of Race and Home Buying in America:

  • Black homeownership reached 44.7% in 2023, its largest year-over-year increase among racial groups. That is encouraging.

  • At the same time, White homeownership stood at 72.4%, and the Black-White homeownership gap widened from 27 percentage-points in 2013, to 28 points in 2023.

  • The same report found that Black applicants for home-purchase mortgages were denied at nearly TWICE the rate of White applicants, 21% compared with 11%.

  • It also found that Black homeowners had the highest median homeowners-insurance costs nationally in 2023.

So, think about it for a moment. These are not abstract “barriers.” This involves real people being asked to climb a steeper hill, often with less inherited margin for error. That’s where we need to be more honest than the usual real estate language allows.

“I don’t see race” is not a generous statement that some people think it is. For some (certainly not all), I understand the ‘instinct’ behind it. Some people want to believe they are fair. Most people wouldn’t want to imagine themselves as participating in bias.

But Chicago’s housing history was literally written in color-coded maps, and a person declining to notice race now does not undo the fact that race was intentionally used to decide where people could live, borrow, build wealth, or safely belong.

Chicago’s Promise

This month, the Obama Presidential Center opens to the public in Chicago’s Jackson Park on Juneteenth. I think there is something really meaningful about that. A place meant to inspire civic life, built in the city that shaped Barack and Michelle Obama, opening on a day rooted in delayed freedom and Black endurance. (actually shed a tear writing that sentence).

I think Chicago has earned the right to be skeptical of anyone who acts like a ribbon-cutting alone equals justice. Investment is only progress when the people who carried a community through its hardest years are able to remain, benefit, and shape what comes next. Which is why I deeply respect the way in which The Obama Presidental Center was constructed.

I think Juneteenth should hold a whole heck of a lot of joy, Black brilliance, family traditions, art, food, rest, style, faith, music, imagination, and the beauty of Black communities celebrating themselves on their own terms.

But I argue it should also make those of us who work in housing sit with a difficult question: What does freedom look like when it is real enough to reach someone’s front door?

I want my business to be part of a more honest version of this industry. One that treats housing as more than inventory and people as more than buying power. One that gives clients the clearest information possible, refuses ‘coded language,’ keeps learning local history, and understands that equal treatment is not the same thing as pretending the starting line has always (or ever) been equal. That feels like the only version of “home” worth putting my name on.

A resource list I wanted to share with all of you qts:

Let’s start with history:

For the Chicago housing rabbit hole

Places doing the work that deserve our support and attention

For Chicagoans trying to buy, keep, or repair a home

  • Take Root Chicago
    Free or low-cost homeownership, foreclosure-prevention, and home-repair support through HUD-certified local organizations.

  • HomeGrown Purchase Assistance Program
    A current City of Chicago program offering eligible buyers down-payment and closing-cost assistance, administered through community organizations.

Amanda Finck
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The Chicagoland Market Isn’t One Market. That’s the Point.