All week we’ve been hearing about how Bill Clinton measured the success of his presidency by such things as black home ownership rates. Fair enough. But now that Bush is office we get stories like this one from Reuters bemoaning the high homeownership rates of blacks:

Rising U.S. Homeownership Brings Woes – Study
By Mark Felsenthal
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A rise in U.S. urban minority homeownership has been accompanied by an even greater surge in the number of people straining to pay for their homes, the Fannie Mae Foundation said on Wednesday.
“Hundreds of thousands of urban minorities are struggling to sustain homeownership,” the study said.
Homeowners stretching to pay for their homes are at greater risk of foreclosure and of spoiling their chances of borrowing in the future, according to the study, “A Tale of Two Cities: Growing Affordability Problems Amidst Rising Homeownership for Urban Minorities.”
The study, by Fannie Mae Foundation researcher Patrick Simmons, comes as Democrats criticize Bush administration housing policies, saying they have emphasized homeownership gains while letting rental subsidy programs wither. Administration officials cite minority homeownership gains over the past four years as a central accomplishment of recent housing policies.
But Democratic lawmakers say the increases are due to low mortgage interest rates, not administration efforts.
The number of black homeowners in the 25 largest U.S. cities rose by 16 percent between 1990 and 2000, the survey said, citing 2000 census data.
But, at the same time, black homeowners paying at least half of their incomes for housing climbed 39 percent, the report said….