Homeownership Is The Key To Wealth Creation
By Tia Carol Jones
Steven Hunter has made it his mission to help more people on the South and West sides of Chicago to become homeowners. Hunter, the Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion for the McDonald’s Corporation, has seen the power of homeownership and wealth creation.
While in college, Hunter interned for Congressman Bobby Rush and learned about wealth creation and intergenerational wealth and how it could be built through homeownership. As part of the Congressman’s 10 Weeks to Homeownership Program, Hunter learned that homeownership came down to education, access to opportunities and availability of resources to put a person in a position to become a homeowner and begin to build intergenerational wealth.
That idea was reinforced when Hunter interned in the City of Chicago’s Department of Housing during the former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s administration.
“You could see how homeownership was really a key to wealth creation and power and having a voice in your community,” he said. “When there’s ownership, there’s possession. And when you feel like you’re vested in your community, you’re willing to take more of a leadership role.”
That leadership role can include speaking up more about injustices, being more protective of the community where a person owns a home and gathering more resources for the neighborhood. People want to create safe havens for their families and there’s a sense of belonging that comes with homeownership, with thoughts of investing in family and community.
Hunter has built a business, with his father, called SLH Managed Companies, LLC. The company has five properties with 10 units. Hunter decided to purchase his own home while he was doing work with 10 Weeks to Homeownership. A participant approached him after one of the courses and asked him where he lived. She admonished him for teaching a course about homeownership when he didn’t own a home. It was a pivotal moment for him. He used resources from the Homeownership Program and was connected to a realtor who advised him to look at multiunit properties in Englewood. The realtor informed him that he could own a multiunit property and the tenants could subsidize the mortgage payment.
Within weeks, with the support of Bank of America, he was able to purchase a multiunit property in Englewood. That was 15 years ago. It was the start of Hunter’s homeownership journey and served as the property that helped him launch SLH Managed Companies.
What attracted Hunter to Bank of America was its Community Commitment program, which was an intentional investment from the financial institution to communities on the South side like Englewood. The program required no money down, a modest credit score and provided people who walked individuals through the homebuying process.
“For somebody like me, a first time homebuyer, recently out of college, didn’t have a lot of savings or financial means, to have somebody like Bank of America at the time, who was willing to invest, not just in me, but the broader community, and help create homeowners, that was important,” he said. “If it weren’t for Bank of America, I don’t know that I would be a homeowner, I might not be a property owner and I wouldn’t be a business owner.”
