Chauncey Jones believes in cultivating an asset mindset and closing the racial wealth divide. He has a close relationship with the city of Spokane, particularly the East Central community. He is a beloved community developer, a wealth esteem builder, a business owner, and he started a nonprofit to address homelessness in Spokane.
In September, he helped lead and facilitate the Black Home Ownership Summit and in October, under his leadership, the first Black Homeownership Spokane Cohort graduated. In this cohort, homebuyer activities were stimulated under the guidance of community leaders with the goal to increase access and advance Black homeownership in Spokane County.
Jones takes us through his journey to becoming the change he wants to see in the world in the interview below.
What is Take Up the Cause?
A BIPOC by-and-for nonprofit organization that focuses on housing and services.
How Take Up the Cause come to be?
The long story of this is, Sandy Williams invited me to lunch one day and said, “Chauncey, we need someone who looks like us in the affordable housing realm.” And I said, “I’m already in the affordable housing realm.” And she said, “No, we need it in the nonprofit sector because there are a lot of resources, and the stewarding of those resources don’t usually go to our people.” And so, after three or four lunch meetings she finally convinced me to look into it a little more seriously. And then I also had a brother-in-law of mine who wanted to give back to the community. He said, “Hey, I have some things that I want to put some resources towards to help in this same area.” And so, between the two of them, we started talking and formulated Take Up the Cause.
Tell us more about your affordable housing venture.
I have a for-profit organization called A Better Way, and that’s with myself and my cousin. We have affordable housing rentals. In that space, we’ve partnered with Habitat for Humanity, where we’re rehabbing homes and then selling them to Habitat so they can get their families in there. The rentals that we have, for the most part, are smaller scale, up to four-plexes.
What is the most common reason that you see when people are without housing?
Well, everybody’s story is different. I think there is not one common reason. It could be job loss. It could be something from a traumatic experience before. And yes, we have instances where there are issues with either mental health or possibly substance abuse There are all kinds of reasons why someone can be unhoused. But I do know that Black and indigenous people are at the highest rate of homelessness in Spokane, Washington.
How hard is it to become a homeowner and how does financial literacy play into this?
It’s all going to be relative. It’s called financial literacy for a reason. It’s educating yourself and being surrounded by people who are in the business, really doing the research yourself. If your mindset has been third, fourth generational renters, and we know that that’s been the case, then you have to surround yourself with people who can help you get out of that mindset. I don’t care how much you make per hour, until you find a way to make money while you’re sleeping, you’re not going to be able to build wealth. That’s why you see a lot of people living paycheck to paycheck. I think they said 75% of all people in the in America couldn’t afford a thousand-dollar emergency right now. So that’s telling you a lot of times the relationship with money. Let’s start looking at building our wealth esteem to be able to say, “Hey, I deserve to be able to reimagine generational wealth.” I don’t think anything life changing should be easy. When you look at it, we know the historical context of what got us here; we’re talking about redlining, the Fair Housing Act, racist covenants, a lot of those different things.
What was the Black Home Ownership Spokane Summit that happened in September?
So, the summit was on the heels of an event called Housing Washington. Housing Washington was in Spokane (this year). A lot of organizations that were local and/or from the west side who participated in Housing Washington stayed back to see the work that Black Homeownership Spokane is doing, to see what some of the planning is for the future, to keep this sustainable and ongoing. We looked at the data in Spokane when it comes to home ownership; who’s being rejected, and why are they being rejected. Debt to income is an issue when it comes to being turned away in our community. Altogether, 70% of Black people who were going to get a home loan were getting rejected. The number in Spokane of Black people who own their homes is 30%. So, 70% are getting rejected, right? Or their loan is, it’s not making it to the finish line. And it’s debt. What is the relationship with money? Where does the trauma come from? The scarcity mindset is, you know, “the system is not designed for me, so there’s nothing I can do.” But you can say “the system is not designed for me. I’m going to figure out a cheat code.” When we’re talking about the wealth transfer, too many of us are passing away without leaving any true assets.
What is the impact of credit scores?
We know that just like with a lot of things that are systemic, it wasn’t designed for us. So, if it wasn’t designed for us, typically it’s designed to keep us out; (for example) when you realize that credit scores are tied a lot of times to life expectancy. If we just take 99202, East Central, near and dear to my heart, the life expectancy in East Central is, I think, between 64 and 68, right? If you head south of Comstock and 55th Street and above, the life expectancy is 81 years old, right? Same city, literally a couple miles away, but the life expectancy is 13 years more in those areas. And so that goes back to things being systemic. What, what are you doing with the dollar?
Where do you see Black home ownership in the next five years?
That’s a great question. So, in the next five years, our goal is to continue to get the education out there, get more people involved in these cohorts. Imagine if 50 people were able to get across the finish line, what that would do. So that’s probably going to take the 30% up to 35%, right. Let’s build your wealth esteem in the meantime. So the goal is to … start normalizing this conversation of wealth building and asset building in our community.
When is the next cohort?
The next longer cohort is going to be in January, but we are also doing some mini five-week cohorts where people can go there and get some education.