Some people know that Prince George’s County is the richest predominantly black county in the United States, but many do not know that places like this were hit the hardest when the housing market crashed. According to the Atlantic Blackstar, five out of ten of the richest black neighborhoods in America are located in Prince George’s County. The median income in PG County $73,447 which is $1,000 higher than the median income in Maryland and $23,000 over the median income in the US; these figures look very different when you look into the actual neighborhoods in PG though, because there are segregated clusters by class throughout. It makes you wonder how a county that seemed to be doing so well on the outside could crumble so easily and have no signs of bouncing back any time soon. A little after the Great Migration of African-Americans from the South to the Northern cities, suburbanization was big in the 1990s. Even though suburbanization was a mostly white movement, affluent African-Americans that could afford to move to the suburbs from the District found themselves moving in massive numbers to Prince George’s County; at this time the housing market was up. Fast forward to present day PG County and there are an overwhelming amount if abandoned houses and an even more overwhelming amount of people who can barely afford to pay off their mortgages anymore. The housing-market crash, as a direct result of the Bush administration, crushingly impacted middle-class blacks in PG county. Studies prove that income has barely anything to do with the fact that PG house prices have taken much longer to bounce back in comparison to the other neighborhoods surrounding them, including Montgomery County and Howard County. One of the main reasons PG county was affected so badly by this housing crash is so obviously because of its demographics: it is an over 85% minority and specifically 64.7% black county that lenders took advantage of in the years following the crash; the mostly minority make up of this county made it hard for the prices of houses to bounce back.

Banks were (and still are) one of the catalysts in the financial downturn of families in PG County. Predatory loans, defined as lending practice that imposes unfair or abusive loan terms on a borrower, are one of the huge factors in why PG county is not bouncing back as quickly as other surrounding counties that faced similar situations. It is also any practice that convinces a borrower to accept unfair terms through deceptive, coercive, exploitative or unscrupulous actions for a loan that a borrower doesn't need, doesn't want or can't afford, which is considered fraud. In Prince George’s it was not only irresponsible lending but outright fraud. Michael Cerrito, president of Prince George’s County Association of Realtors, said “Certainly there were irresponsible lenders in the market that were qualifying lenders for way above what they should have. They were doing that because they were able to sell that to somebody. Anyone who was able to buy would take the chance because for a long time, real estate had been a safe investment”. For example, American Brokers Conduit, a subsection of the now bankrupt American Home Mortgage Servicing (ARM), played a huge role in this subprime loan scandal. Interest rates for these loans continued to shoot up in the midst of the housing crises. Now the people of PG County were worried about paying for their loans, and the skyrocketed value of interest; then, you have to take into account job losses, late fees and wage cuts. These loans made a mess out of the PG county housing market. In many cases in PG, black families were allowed, even encouraged, to take on more than they could handle by banks.

Wealth in the United States of America is directly correlated to to homeownership; that is the only way for the middle-class to accumulate wealth. The history of black homeownership in America has been a rocky one. The government played a direct role in excluding African-Americans from suburbanization, actually enforcing race related policies by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) so that black people could not integrate into white-only neighborhoods. The FHA’s Underwriting Manual stated “if a neighborhood is to retain stability it is necessary that properties shall continue to be occupied by the same social and racial classes” because this could cause instability and reduction in values of housing, helping to segregate neighborhood by both race and class early on. Black people were not even allowed to participate in homeownership really until quite recently; without this, how could they accumulate wealth and move up in society? Through different policies during the “New Deal Era” working with the FHA, the government facilitated the purchase of millions of houses. Through this agency, it is obvious that the government is responsible for the creation of these suburban neighborhoods and purposely manipulated the compositions of these neighborhoods. Massey addresses in Suburbanization and Segregation in US Metropolitan Areas that segregation is consistent even when education and income are controlled. These policies directly resulted in the black enclaves in Maryland like PG County, and entitled Prince George’s County.

Alongside all these restrictions the system set up to keep neighborhoods from integrating, “white flight” also needs to be discussed. White people would actually move out in massive numbers when black people began to move into their neighborhoods. As affluent blacks began moving into PG County, whites began moving out. Presently, white people make up only 14.2% of the population of the county, but if you live in PG even that percentage would surprise you. A combination of factors created the present composition of PG, but the entity most responsible for it was the FHA. They forced blacks to move into segregated enclaves. When the housing market crashed, banks preyed on these neighborhoods to sign onto fraudulent loans and abused the people of PG County. The housing market does not seem to be looking up anytime soon, because the only people the market is open to is really black people. Whites would not want to move into an area that is not only majority blacks, but where all the political and social power lies in the hands of black people. As a result, the families in Prince George’s County are amidst a disaster that they did not create, but will surely be paying for for a long time.