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Everett Benyard thought he was finally in a strong enough financial position to purchase his first home earlier this year. He'd saved money by living with his parents for a time and secured a higher-paying job in 2020.

But the 30-year-old San Diego corrections officer has struggled to compete in one of the country's hottest real estate markets, where the median home price on single-family houses reached $860,000 in July, according to the California Association of Realtors.

"I was just getting outbid, outbid big," Benyard told CNN Business during a recent phone interview. "I went and saw many different places. ... I would go see something and the day after, it would be off the market."

Benyard is one of many Black Americans who are being disproportionately priced out of pandemic-fueled housing boom.

Before the pandemic, the Black homeownership rate in America was slowly but steadily rising — a small but significant economic bright spot against a backdrop of racial inequality. Then the pandemic slammed the brakes on that upward trend, even as homeownership among White Americans continued to climb.

"It's just so competitive in this market right now," Benyard said. "The prices are extremely high."

San Diego's 'significant disparity'

A recent analysis by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, showed that the nation's Black homeownership rate stood at just over 44% at the end of last year, virtually unchanged from the same point in 2019. The homeownership rate for White Americans increased to 74.5% from 73.7% over the same period.

"Homeownership among African Americans grew more slowly than it did for White households during the pandemic, despite historically low mortgage interest rates," the study authors wrote. "Simply put, Black households faced more obstacles to becoming and staying homeowners because they had less money to fall back on."

That disparity is on display in Benyard's home city of San Diego. Like many communities known for their desirable weather and relative affordability compared with their bigger metropolitan neighbors, San Diego has been inundated in the past year with wealthy tech-industry homebuyers, according to officials from the nonprofit San Diego Foundation.

Although San Diego County real estate is far more expensive than the national average, it's a bargain compared with typical homes in San Francisco, where Zillow data show the typical home price rose to more than $1.5 million in July.

The trend is hurting all aspiring first-time homebuyers from the area, nonprofit officials said, but the group fears it's exacerbating racial wealth inequality in the city. According to a Redfin study, 61% of White households in San Diego owned their own homes in 2018, compared with just 30% of Black households.

"There is clearly a significant disparity there," San Diego Foundation vice president of community impact Pamela Gray Payton told CNN Business. "It's hard to get into the market if you're not already in the market."

The pandemic's skewed impact

Black Americans are overrepresented in low-wage service sector jobs that have been disproportionately hit by pandemic layoffs. Black Americans also tend to carry a higher burden of student loan debt, earn less money and have less savings on average when compared to their White counterparts.

In its study, the think tank notes the nation's history of redlining and mortgage lending discrimination has contributed to Black households having less wealth on average than the general population, making it less likely that Black millennials and Gen Zers can rely on their parents to help them purchase their first home.

"It's just emblematic of the confluence, the coming together of many different economic pressure points for people of color," said Christian Weller, one of the study's authors and a senior fellow of economic policy at the Center for American Progress.

"They're losing their jobs sooner than White people. They're out of a job longer," Weller added. "They have fewer savings, which means they have less money for a down payment. Things can spiral out of control very quickly, especially for African American homeowners."

Nearly a quarter of all homebuyers today are all-cash purchasers who aren't utilizing mortgage loans, according to Jessica Lautz, vice president of demographics and behavioral insights at the National Association of Realtors, who says the current market favors wealthier Americans who tend to be White.

Between April and July of last year, 82% of Americans who purchased homes were White, according to a study by the National Association of Realtors. Just 9% were Hispanic, 8% were Asian and 5% were Black, according to the group's researchers.

"It's a small section of the economy who is able to pay all cash for property and wave appraisals," Lautz told CNN Business. "We do see a very large share of them are White individuals."

Help for prospective homebuyers

Benyard, the corrections officer, recently received a major helping hand in his homebuying search.

In July, the Urban League of San Diego County, a local division of the national civil rights group, informed Benyard that he was chosen to receive one of several down payment assistance grants through the group's new Black Homebuyer Program.

Qualifying Black residents of San Diego County who meet the program's income, employment and credit requirements and complete the Urban League's homebuying training course can receive more than $70,000 in grant assistance toward the purchase of a home.

Urban League of San Diego County COO Al Abdallah says the "first-of-its kind" program is designed to address the city's racial wealth gap by helping Black residents who are qualified to own a home, but need help competing with wealthier buyers.

"This is going to help them get across the finish line," Abdallah told CNN Business. "You can work as hard as you want, but it is very difficult if not impossible to save $70,000 to put down on a home."

Video above: 1960s civil rights activist now vaccine activist

Like others in her family, Mattie Pringle had doubts about taking the coronavirus vaccine.

The 57-year-old Black woman from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, feared that her high blood pressure and diabetes might heighten her chances of a severe reaction to the shot. The speedy development and approval of the vaccines also fed her skepticism.

Then a member of Pringle's church, a local NAACP leader who has led a vaccination campaign targeting Black residents, urged her to reconsider. He shared a news story about Kizzmekia Corbett, a Black government scientist who played a key role in developing the Moderna vaccine.

"That's what made me change my mind," said Pringle, who finally agreed to an appointment to get her first coronavirus shot Thursday. "I had to pray about it. And I felt better after that."

Campaigns aimed at Black communities across the U.S. are making headway in the effort to persuade people that the COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective. With millions of dollars in assistance from President Joe Biden's administration, local groups have urged Black Americans to roll up their sleeves for shots and set aside what for some is a shared historical distrust of science and government.

A poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research in late March found that about 24% of Black American adults said they will probably or definitely not get vaccinated. That's down from 41% in January. The latest number shows Black Americans leaning against getting shots in almost the same proportion as white Americans at 26% and Hispanic Americans at 22%.

Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said attitudes toward the vaccine among Black Americans have taken "almost a 180-degree turnaround" as outreach campaigns have worked to combat misinformation.

He credited Black physicians, faith leaders and other community organizers for being trusted messengers during the pandemic, which has killed more than 550,000 Americans.

"It's the messenger and the message," but the messenger "is probably the most important part of it, and people doing it in a way that wasn't preachy," Benjamin said. "They didn't tell people, 'You need to get vaccinated because it's your duty.' They basically said, 'Listen, you need to get vaccinated to protect yourself and your family.'"

Some of the most effective outreach has relied on existing community relationships, such as local physicians talking about their own decisions to get vaccinated, to reassure the public, said Dr. Lisa Cooper, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity.

Community members in the Baltimore area who knew Cooper from her research on food deserts and nutrition trusted her as a source of information on COVID-19, she said.

Based on that relationship, "people felt comfortable hearing from me," she said.

Some state health departments have rolled out ads targeting communities of color. NAACP chapters in some cities have booked appointments for people to get shots. Pastors of Black churches have urged their parishioners to take the vaccines.

In Brunswick, Georgia, the Rev. John Perry and another Black pastor put their faces on a billboard promoting the vaccines, and postcards with a similar image were mailed to residents. Both efforts were produced by the Georgia Department of Public Health.

"I think we still have enough people on the fence that are going to budge and get their shots," said Perry, who initially wanted to wait a year before getting his shots but changed his mind after reading up on how the vaccines were developed. He got his second dose Wednesday.

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Jason Pettibone, a Black barber in Perry's coastal Georgia community, remains hesitant. His parents and sister have all been vaccinated with no ill effects. Yet Pettibone said the stories he hears from customers — including one who swore his father lost all feeling in the right side of his body after getting a shot — have made it hard to overcome his uncertainty.

"I'm thinking in my head not only would it be good for me to get it, because I don't want to get sick myself, but also to protect other people who come into the shop," Pettibone said. "But it's the unknown. Everybody's really scared of the unknown."

In Savannah, Georgia, community activist Natavia Sanders said outreach efforts can backfire with some in the Black community who suspect the government is targeting them as test subjects rather than seeking to protect their health. Some of that skepticism can be traced to an infamous study in Tuskegee, Alabama, where the government let hundreds of Black men suffer with untreated syphilis for 40 years for research purposes.

Sanders declined to say whether she was getting vaccinated. She said she's spoken with several people who had to be hospitalized with COVID-19 but still have doubts about the vaccines.

"That's how skeptical people are," Sanders said. "They're like, 'No, I'll fight it myself. I fought it already.'"

P.M. Browner got her vaccine Wednesday in Clarksdale, Mississippi. The 88-year-old Black woman said she doesn't understand why she needs to get vaccinated if she's not sick or around sick people.

Still, she agreed to get her shot. She said she thinks vaccinations will eventually be required, and she wants to be able to continue to socialize at a local senior center.

"If you ain't got nothing, why do we need to take it?" Browner said. "But we'll take it because later on, they'll say, 'You've got to take it.' If you don't, later on, I think we'll have to."

___

Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia. Ma reported from Charlotte, North Carolina. Associated Press Writer Leah Willingham in Clarksdale, Mississippi, also contributed to this report.

Several studies show that Black people are disproportionately killed by police in the U.S. And leaders, including President Biden, are calling for change.

But Sen. Lindsey Graham says the U.S. doesn't have an issue of systemic racism.

"We just elected a two-term African American president," Graham said. "The vice president is of African American Indian descent. So our systems are not racist. America's not a racist country. Within every society, you have bad actors."

The police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Daunte Wright, and several others have renewed the calls for a change in policing.

The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which aims to ban certain methods of deadly force by police, end qualified immunity, and improve training, has passed the House with support from President Biden and is now at the Senate's hands.