Home ownership new 'rite of passage' for Valley immigrants
Home ownership new 'rite of passage' for Valley immigrants
By Kurtis Alexander - The Fresno Bee
Sunday, Apr. 22, 2012 | 01:21 AM
Many immigrant groups in the Valley are realizing their dreams of homeownership despite the economic and housing turmoil of the past decade.
Between 2000 and 2010, increasing numbers of Hmong, Indians, Salvadorans and other ethnic minorities bought homes in the region, continuing a longtime tradition of diversity in the central San Joaquin Valley, according to U.S. Census data released last week.
Asians, taken as a broad group, saw the biggest climb in homeownership. In Fresno County, for example, 54.6% of Asian households owned their home in 2010, up 7.5 percentage points over 2000. In Tulare County, Asian homeownership jumped 6 points to 64.4% last decade.
"We've always wanted to live the American Dream, and owning a piece of property was part of that," said Matthew Vu, 32, who is Hmong and among the growing number of Asians recently buying a home.
Vu, a supervisor at a manufacturing plant, saved for five years before he could afford his southeast Fresno house, close to where several family members live.
The increase in homebuying in many ethnic communities comes despite an overall decline in homeownership both in the Valley and across California. The housing crash and economic recession of the past decade have made owning a home more difficult for most.
Demographers credit the success of certain ethnic groups to their rapid assimilation into American culture.
"Immigrants are 10 years more settled than they were," said Dowell Myers, a demographer at the University of Southern California. "The upward mobility of immigration is so strong that it can overcome the downturn of the rest of the economy."
Myers said that cultural mores, such as giving financial support to friends and family and taking pride in owning property, also drove home purchases.
Many, Myers added, bought homes in the latter part of the decade when the real estate market crash opened the door for the less affluent to get into the market.
Thien Huynh, 29, who is Vietnamese, said lower housing prices made it possible for him to buy. Huynh is a teacher at Fresno City College. He, his girlfriend and their 7-month-old daughter expect to close this month on the purchase of a house in northwest Fresno.
"After crunching the numbers, I realized it was more economically efficient to buy," said Huynh, who has been renting in the Sunnyside area.
Huynh's parents emigrated from Laos after the Vietnam War under the threat of Communism. Huynh said it was his parents' vision to see their children succeed in America.
"Because it was such an ordeal for them to get over here and raise us in a foreign place, it was a really good feeling to buy" a home, Huynh said. "It's kind of like a rite of passage for me."
The Vietnamese community in Fresno County saw among the greatest increases in homeownership over the past decade, up 16.5 percentage points to 59.2% of households, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Fresno County's Hmong community, the most populous Asian group in the county, saw homeownership jump 18 percentage points to 34.5%, the census shows. Indians, Filipinos, Laotians, Japanese and Chinese -- the county's largest Asian groups after Hmong, in order -- also logged more home purchases last decade.
Despite gains for many minority groups, whites continued to have the Valley's highest rates of homeownership among the broad racial categories defined by the census. In Fresno County, for example, 67.6% of white households owned their home in 2010.
White homeownership rates, however, were down slightly from 2000. This was the case in Fresno, Tulare, Kings and Madera counties, as well as most parts of California.
HOME OWNERSHIP - Business - fresnobee.com
