Presidential candidate Kamala Harris is promising to provide “first-time homebuyers with $25,000 to cover the downpayment.”  Her promise is proving popular. Eighty percent of Democrats and even 20 percent of Republicans favor it, the Wall Street Journal reports Friday.

The devil, though, is in the details, and the press is not asking any questions. The biggest question is whether Ms. Harris, as president, would help all first time home buyers, regardless of their race, or target the help to achieve racial equity, as her past actions suggest.

Ms. Harris has a long track record promising $25,000 in down payment help, but her goal was never to help all first time home buyers. In 2019, as a United States senator, Ms. Harris insisted the goal was to close the home ownership gap between black and white families.

She said then, “we must right the wrong and — after generations of discrimination — and give black families a real shot at home ownership.” Her $25,000 down payment promise was limited to” first generation home buyers.”

Why limit the help to buyers whose parents never owned a home? To ensure that most of the help goes to minority home buyers. Only 44 percent of Black families own their homes, compared with 73 percent of white families. Black buyers are nearly twice as likely to qualify for help as white buyers if the help is limited to first generation home buyers.

Ms. Harris insists, “her values have not changed.” When it comes to housing, that is true. For the last three and a half years, Vice President Harris has pushed racial equity as a government-wide goal.

President Biden’s State of the Union message this year boasted support for legislation to provide “$25,000 down-payment assistance to buyers from families where no one has ever before owned a home.”

Even the  Democratic National Committee platform, approved August 19, limits the $25,000 down payment help to buyers “from families where no one has ever before owned a home.”

Now Ms. Harris, the presidential candidate, appears to be having an expedient change of heart — known as a flip flop — to broaden her housing policy’s appeal. But she’s not abandoning her racial equity goal entirely.

On Monday. Ms. Harris’s campaign website posted policy statements. On providing the $25,000 down payment help, the website adds this: “First-generation home owners” will get “more generous support.”

Of course, no president can offer $25,000 to homebuyers. It takes Congress, which controls the nation’s purse strings. The Downpayment Toward Equity Act, the legislation backed by Biden-Harris and sponsored in the House by Representative Maxine Waters and in the Senate by Raphael Warnock spells out who is actually eligible.

The bill provides $20,000 to first generation home buyers with incomes below 120% of the mean in their area. The help is increased to $25,000 if the buyer is from a “socially and economically disadvantaged group,” defined as being Black, Hispanic, Asian American, or Native American. White home buyers whose parents owned homes can take a hike.

The bill says its purpose is “to narrow and ultimately close the racial homeownership gap in the United States.” Ms. Waters says it’s to correct “grave injustices against people of color” produced by past American policies. These are reparations.

When Senator Wyden proposed helping all low income first time home buyers, he got push back from racial justice and housing advocates insisting too many whites would be eligible.   “A tax credit for all first time homebuyers is going to expand the racial homeownership gap,” objected the president and chief executive of the National Housing Conference, David Dworkin.

Mr. Dworkin explained that “We are simply providing first-generation homebuyers, largely people of color, what white first-time home  buyers have been receiving for years in the form of the “Daddy Down Payment” loan – family assistance that is almost never repaid.” 

Ms. Harris has used the same argument repeatedly. On June 14, 2024, she told 100 Black Men of America that she supports  helping first-generation home buyers.  Now, Ms. Harris is flip flopping, as she has on fracking and illegal immigration. What would she actually do as president?

Economists have pointed out the dangers of offering down payment assistance to families who may lack the income to keep up with mortgage payments. Those are valid concerns.

Above all, though, voters need to know whether Harris’s downpayment program is a racial equity measure in disguise. Does Ms. Harris intend to treat all Americans fairly, or will she be a divider-in chief?