Albuquerque to Increase Black Homeownership with Support of National Initiative

The City of Albuquerque’s Office of Black Community Engagement (OBCE) has been selected for the Opportunity Accelerator (OA), a cohort of national organizations promoting economic mobility, reducing racial disparities, and improving the lives of residents.

Specifically, the OA will support OBCE’s efforts to increase homeownership opportunities for Black residents by 5%, adding 41 new Black homeowners in 2023.

“Being selected for the OA is a game changer for the Black community” said Nichole Rogers, City of Albuquerque OBCE Liaison. “We will be given technical assistance by some big-name partners who will help bring our ideas into fruition and help us implement strategies that are for the community and by the community to close the racial wealth gap.”

The City’s recently released Housing Equity Needs Assessment revealed that Black communities suffer from housing instability at higher rates, and that only about 16 percent of those residents are financially prepared to purchase a home. With support from the OA, Albuquerque will partner with the State of New Mexico, community organizations and lenders to offer financial literacy education, credit repair, down payment/closing costs assistance, and connections to realtors from the Black community.

“The African American Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce (AAGACC) is elated to work in partnership with the City to help close the racial wealth gap with homeownership opportunities” said Karla Causey, President/CEO of AAGACC. “We will provide the training and resources required for homeownership success for Black residents.”

Albuquerque is now part of OA’s network of local and state governments that are collaborating with place-based partnerships and community members to directly identify barriers to economic mobility.

“We are thrilled to have Albuquerque join our growing movement of communities that are creating a new model for government that collaborates with residents to dismantle the structural racism that has left too many neighborhoods behind,” said Jennifer Park, the Executive Director of the OA.

The OA was first announced by the organization Results for America, a collaboration with the Bloomberg Center for Government Excellence at Johns Hopkins University, Code for America, the Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab and the W. Haywood Burns Institute. The collaboration is supported by Blue Meridian Partners, a national philanthropic organization that finds and funds scalable solutions to the problems that limit economic mobility and trap America’s young people and families in poverty.