Vivian Cox Fraser, President & CEO of Urban League of Essex County, talks with Steve Adubato about the affordable housing crisis and the ways homeownership can set up the next generation for success.

Steve asks Cox Fraser about the impact homeownership has on a family. Cox Fraser responds, “My parents were like many of the families that we work with here in Newark. I tell everybody my father had a third-grade education, he learned to trade, he started a business, he worked like a dog, and his daughter got an Ivy League education, but my mother was a nursing assistant. When I graduated from college, my mother graduated from college with her Nursing degree, but she had been a nursing assistant. I understand how to help families move and advance economically, and homeownership is key to that. In most families, it doesn’t matter your race or where you live. They have their wealth in their homes right, so home ownership is key to actually addressing the racial wealth gap and also intergenerational poverty.”