States that “community quality depends on residents' efforts to prevent crime and improve local governance… (Stiglitz 76)” and notes that the level of commitment that homeowners put into their neighborhoods significantly exceeds what renters see. Stiglitz says homeownership has a direct positive impact on neighborhoods, therefore increasing the quality of life for those in the immediate area. To explore how the relationship between homeownership and community quality relates to the black population, first consider that blacks tend to have lower earning potential than whites (due to wage discrimination and lower education levels). , so unfortunately buying a home is less feasible for African Americans than for whites. Over the past 30 years, there has been an average 25% gap in homeownership between blacks and whites (Segal), indicating that more blacks live in low-income, high-poverty neighborhoods dominated by rental properties . To make matters worse, during the years leading up to the Great Recession, many minority groups were targeted by predatory lenders. As a result, a substantial portion of African Americans who had been lured into bad loans by the dream of owning their own home ended up in foreclosure with extensive damage to their credit and personal savings (Stiglitz