Music flowed through the hallway at Indiana University Northwest’s Savannah Center as residents walked in with folders in hand and questions on their minds.
As the Thea Bowman Leadership Academy Drumline played classic hits to introduce the evening’s speakers, Gary welcomed a program with a clear objective: to bridge the housing gap in the Black community.
The Affordable Homeownership Bus Tour rolled into Gary this week, part of a national effort to close the Black homeownership gap by connecting residents with lenders, housing counselors, and real-time guidance on how to buy and keep a home.
Shaunice Green arrived with her family, hoping to leave with answers. At 36, she said homeownership has long felt out of reach.
She is not alone. Nationally, only about one-third of Black millennials own homes, compared with roughly two-thirds of white millennials, according to the 2025 Housing Report for Black America.
“I think the organization helped, but it needs to be more consistent,” she said.
With a family of seven, Green said she hopes to one day find a home with enough space for everyone, a sentiment felt throughout many cities like Gary.
“What we are doing here tonight does not happen by the national [effort], it happens with the local effort and movement,” stated Ashley Thomas III, president of the National Association of Real Estate Brokers, as he looked among the crowd.
The Affordable Homeownership Bus Tour, a passion project of the organization, is an eight-city tour that officials say will help “close the gap” in homeownership for Black and first-time buyers.
According to NAREB’s 2025 State of Housing in Black America report, in the U.S., the Black homeownership rate is almost 46%, compared to almost 74% for white homeowners. Specifically in Gary, while Black residents made up 79% of the population in 2024, they were only 64% of mortgage originations.
“There’s something special about the city of Gary,” Thomas said. As the fourth stop on the tour, Gary is a perfect middle ground for their initiative. He hopes to have both population and mortgage organizations align at some point.
“Gary has a special history of resilience and community spirit that [it] was built on,” Thomas said.
Kicking off in Philadelphia on April 25, the Affordability Bus rolled into action, completing months of work in one day in each city. In addition to Gary, the tour will visit Baltimore; Detroit; Kansas City, Missouri; Memphis, Tennessee; Little Rock, Arkansas; and Tulsa, Oklahoma. Through a partnership with the African American Mayors Association, the organization identified cities with Black mayors who focused on this topic.
Each stop will offer one-on-one counseling with lawyers, agents, and housing counselors, as well as sessions covering topics like renting versus owning a home, how Section 8 housing certificates can serve as a pathway to homeownership, turning rent into wealth and credit, and protecting the next generation of homeowners.
According to Thomas, the selection of Gary and many other cities was based on data NAREB pulled showing significant gaps between Black residents and those seeking to become homeowners. In many of these cities, the Black community makes up a larger portion of the population than other races.
“We believe that Gary has the potential and will be the poster city for many other cities around the country on how to do homeownership the right way,” Thomas said.
That same sentiment was felt throughout the organizations that participated in the event.
“Visibility matters,” stated Joy Sinegar Munoz, a producing branch manager with Rate Companies, a mortgage lender. “When you’re in spaces like this, and people see that you exist, they realize that homeownership is possible.”
A homeowner for over two decades, she remembered the butterflies that came with signing on the dotted line for a home and the stress that came with it. Through her work at Rate, she said, she hopes to show that there’s nothing to fear in the homeownership process.
“At the time, I didn’t have the advocate, so I wanted to be that person that I didn’t have,” Munoz said.
Another organzation, the National Council of Negro Women, attended the event to provide inspiration to residents. Known to support the community, specifically African American women and their families, they understood the importance of the event.
“Black ownership is significant everywhere, because we need something to call our own so we can provide for our families,” state president Chanel Woods said. A Gary native, she said she’s owned her home for over 30 years and is excited about the opportunity to pass on generational wealth to her family, and hopes the event inspires others to do the same.
“If you can rent, you can pay house notes,” Woods said.
For Nicholas Smith, board president of the Realtist Association of Indiana Northwest, a branch of NAREB, he hopes to help others achieve their goal of homeownership.
“Our goal at RAIN is by the end of 2027 to create 500 first-time Black property owners throughout Northwest Indiana,” he said.
