Buy Back the Block: Examining Commercial Real Estate’s Potential to Boost Black Wealth

Most Americans don’t own commercial real estate — properties that include retail shops, warehouses, auto repair shops, hotels, and owner-occupied doctors’ and dentists’ offices — but there’s a new research project that’s promoting commercial real estate (CRE) ownership as one possible strategy for helping close the country’s racial wealth gap. Granted, just increasing CRE ownership in Black neighborhoods would be far from enough to close large racial wealth gaps. But neither would any other single strategy, so it’s worth investigating any opportunity to make a difference, even if it’s on the margin.