Homeownership Is How Families Build Wealth. So Why Is Westchester County Making It Harder?
- Dan D'Amico
- Jun 13
- 2 min read
There is a statistic I come back to every time I talk about housing in Westchester County. The average homeowner has a net worth roughly 40 times higher than the average renter. Not because homeowners are smarter or work harder. Because owning property builds equity over time, and that equity compounds into generational wealth. Realtor.com cites homeowners as being worth 43x that of a renter.
When a family buys a home, they are not just buying a place to live. They are buying a financial foundation for themselves and for their children. And in Westchester County, we are systematically making it harder for working families to access it.
I spent over a decade as a real estate broker helping families buy homes in Yonkers and Westchester. I have sat at closing tables with first-time buyers who saved for years to get to that moment. I have also had conversations with buyers who were ready, who had the income and the credit, but could not scrape together the down payment because the cost of living here left them nothing to save.
This is a solvable problem. Down payment assistance programs work. They have been proven in cities and counties across the country. A relatively modest county investment in a down payment grant fund can unlock homeownership for families who are just barely out of reach.
Instead, Westchester County has spent $45 million on electric vehicle charging infrastructure. I am not against EV chargers as a concept. But when the choice is between a program that could help 1,800 families buy their first home and a program that serves a fraction of the population that can already afford an electric vehicle, the answer should be clear.
The county also approves development incentives and planning decisions that shape what kind of housing gets built. Too often those decisions have favored luxury rental development over mixed-income projects that create genuine pathways to ownership. This is a policy choice. It can be changed. And I am running to change it.
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