(Image: Black Legacy Homeowners)

A movement to celebrate the history and present day of Black home ownership in the Central District is taking shape with gatherings and signs proudly displayed in yards across the area’s neighborhoods.

Black Legacy Homeowners is a newly forming network of neighbors organizing to protect and grow their place in the CD and across the Seattle-Tacoma region.

“The Black Legacy Homeowner network is a collection of Black homeowners who are coming together, to provide resources to each other, so we can stay in our homes and stabilize ourselves,” Chukundi Salisbury, executive director for the organization, tells CHS. “We are trying to turn back the tide of gentrification and predatory development that seem to displace us from our homes.”

Part of the group’s mission is to push back on the misconception that Black homeowners are disappearing, a point that Salisbury says is not true.

“You have people that just did not know that there are a lot of Black people left who own property,” Salisbury said.

(Image: Black Legacy Homeowners)

Salisbury, who was a candidate for office in the 37th district in 2020, created the network after lobbying the Office of Housing in 2021 to try to get concessions for Black homeowners around the Mandatory Housing Affordability program and its focus on increased development mostly in its already densest neighborhoods.

The primary center of the group is the Central District which has been a hub for Seattle’s Black community. It is a history shaped in part by neighborhood segregation around Capitol Hill and the Central District. In 2006, a group of University of Washington students discovered 126 covenants covering thousands of properties all over Seattle. The trove of documents reveals a shameful truth of Capitol Hill’s not-too-distant past: it was once neighborhood policy to keep the Central District black in order to keep Capitol Hill white.

Black Legacy Homeowners is about recognizing this history but also growing and protecting the communities that have been shaped and lived beyond it.

Earlier this year in the spring, Joy Hollingsworth, as she began her run for the District 3 seat on the Seattle City Council, joined Black Legacy Homeowners in hopes of protecting her grandmother’s old house Hollingsworth calls home. She had known about the group through her knowledge of Salisbury and his family.

“We’re thinking about displacement,” Hollingsworth says. “Being able to create generational wealth opportunities for people to pass their house down to their kids and their grandkids. I’m all for it because I’m a beneficiary of my grandmother, keeping her home and passing it down.”

Residents of the Central District have experienced predatory lenders approaching their homes.

“I get offers all the time — predatory lenders’ cash offers,” Hollingsworth said. “I’ve had people come to my house and drop off contract signs saying ‘just sign here,’ and ‘we’ll pay you this.’ There are emails, handwritten letters, even phone calls, especially in COVID,  where you thought you were siloed.”

Details of a recent BLH meetup

The Black Legacy Homeowners group says it exists to connect communities and to help  homeowners fend off predatory offers. The group connects twice a month at the Royal Esquire Club in Columbia City. The first event of the month is an educational event where a guest speaker is invited to speak on topics relevant to Black homeowners. Salisbury said the King County Assessor recently came to a meeting to talk about how to interpret property tax.

The second event is a happy hour where members can network in a safe space and share information about what they’ve learned recently, or discuss a problem they may be encountering.

“When you talk to other folks and everyone’s got the same email or letter you realize it’s happening all the time,” Hollingsworth said. “There’s some people that unfortunately lost their house, so a lot of the predatory lending and buying of homes.”

Newly elected to the Seattle City Council, Hollingsworth is limited in what she can say right now about her plans for the office and legislation in the coming years but the experience around BLH will be a key component of how she thinks about many housing and development policies. She knows she will have more power to help enact change for the Black Legacy Homeowner community.

For now, Salisbury has grown an organic network based on personal communication. He has focused on meeting the communities he is trying to reach instead of using the media to send his message.

“One of the reasons why it’s been so successful is because it is neighbors calling neighbors and we go door to door knocking,” Salisbury said. “Once we get one person that lives in that block, they’re going to the rest of the block and knocking on those doors and so our strategy has not been one of media coverage, it’s been this organic thing that is by Black people for Black people.”

Salisbury says the effort is working.

“People wanting to network and we’ve even had white neighbors who are super excited to tell their Black neighbor ‘hey, they’ve got this Black homeowner network, you should be a part of it,’” Salisbury said.

He also feels the signs surrounding the Central District are a positive mark of change in the city. As the network of Black Legacy Homeowners grows so too will awareness of redling and predatory lenders.

“Every time you see a great deal on a remodeled or flipped house, remember they’re selling it for more than it was purchased for,” Salisbury said. “Remember that there is often someone on the other side and it’s somebody’s broken dream.”

Black Legacy Homeowners meet twice a month at the Royal Esquire Club in Columbia City. Learn more at blacklegacyhomeowners.org.

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