Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mel Watt said both old and new obstacles have negatively affected African-American homeownership, which has steadily retrogressed. Before the housing crisis, the homeownership rate for African-Americans was close to 50 percent in 2004. However, by 2017 it declined closer to levels last seen in 1994. “We are worse off today than we were 20 years ago,” said Watt, while speaking at the National Association of Real Estate Brokers’ annual convention in New Orleans last week. He pointed out that because home equity has played a major role in African-American assets, the impact of the economic downturn and foreclosure crisis on wealth in