Home ownership rates for families of color have improved in recent decades. While rougly 70% of white households have consistently owned their homes, Asian Americans have recently caught up, and Black homeownership rates have improved from 41% in 1980 to 58% in 2021-2022. This is one of the best rates for Black families in western Washington, although it is important to note that less than 13,000 African Americans live in the county. Among the much larger Latino population (33,000), slightly fewer than 50% own homes. That is also the rate among Indigenous households.
The most recent years shown here is an average of 2021 and 2022 from annual American Community Surveys (ACS). The 2-year average improves the reliability of these calculations, all of which are based on samples of the full population (2% for 2021-22; 5% in other years).
Homes in these calculations include condos as well as houses and ownership can mean buying with a mortgage or owning outright (which is most likely for White homeowners). Households as defined by the Census Bureau can include single individuals or a group of roommates as well as actual families. The race of the household follows the self-identified race of the person designated "head of household."
Race categories in these calculations treat Latino as an exclusive category. Thus the labels Black, White, Indigenous, and Asian do not include anyone who indicated Hispanic/Latino heritage. The category Asian, always complicated, includes Pacific Islanders, South Asians, and East Asians. These charts do not include persons who answered with two or more race categories. Only in recent census surveys was this an option and in this six decade report and charts, we were not able to include them.
Sources: These statistics are calculated from weighted samples of U.S. Census data produced by the Minnesota Population Center's IPUMS USA: Steven Ruggles, Sarah Flood, Ronald Goeken, Megan Schouweiler and Matthew Sobek. IPUMS USA: Version 12.0 [dataset]. Minneapolis, MN: IPUMS, 2022. https://doi.org/10.18128/D010.V12.0. The following samples: 1960 5%, 1970 1% Metro FM1 and F2, 1980 5% State, 1990 5% State, 2000 5%, 2010 10%, 2021-2022 ACS 2yr.