Rising virus cases and cancellations clouded CES this year.

We'll look at how the important convention actually did.

And owning a home can be a path to building wealth, but there is a big gap between homeownership in white and black communities.

An effort is underway in Southern Nevada to change that.

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(Kipp Ortenburger) Welcome to Nevada Week.

CES, or the Consumer Electronics Show, is usually one of the biggest conventions in Las Vegas, drawing in thousands of people from around the world.

But for the second year in a row, the coronavirus pandemic has negatively impacted the show.

Joining us to talk about how CES went this year is Rick Velotta, assistant business editor at the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Rick, thank you so much for being here.

-Thanks for having me on.

-I hope it's all sunk in.

I mean, I know it wasn't as big of a show as it usually was, but it has been a couple of days since it ended, and we'll talk about that in a second.

I want to come back to something we haven't really talked about on this show is the importance of conventions obviously for our economy is really big, but for the industries that are here, can you give us some context on why these conventions are so important in this case to the electronics and the technology sector?

(Rick Velotta) Well, the Consumer Electronics Show is a classic example of why these conventions and shows are so important to Las Vegas because we have the infrastructure in place to accommodate all these shows.

We've got massive amounts of convention space and we have 150,000 hotel rooms, so it's just ideal for any kind of a meeting in which industry issues are debated or discussed.

So CES, as far as the electronics part of it is concerned, is important because we are so close to California where a lot of these electronics industry leaders are based, so it's just a very easy one-hour plane flight to Las Vegas from just about anyplace you'd want to come from in California to do this.

-Yes.

I was at CES in 2019, and I'm not the most technologically inclined person so a lot of the exhibits are completely lost on me.

So I guess, you know, the biggest tech industry companies are there though.

I mean, are deals being done?

You know, is this just really a way to showcase what you have for other consumers to see?

What's the point of that?

-That's one of the appeals I think of a CES show is it's such a supermarket of different opportunities to get what you need in terms of turning your tech company in the direction you want it to go.

I'm a firm believer that it's not tech for tech's sake out there, and it's one of those things that, you know, if you're telling me about a microchip and how important it is, I'm not going to care that much.

But when you can show me exactly what that microchip will do to change my life, then I get a little bit excited about it, and there's plenty of both of those things on the CES show floor.

-Well, let's talk about this year's show.

Obviously completely unprecedented, but a lot different than what we saw in the previous two years.

What are your general impressions first off?

-Well, in many respects I thought it was a good show because of the fact that they weren't shoulder to shoulder, elbow to elbow, you know, and all the aisles were not packed with people.

That allowed for people to be able to move around a lot more freely.

So it was important I think that some of the buyers that were on the floor site were able to get around and see all the different vendors they wanted to see.

In past shows sometimes that's been difficult.

You have to set up appointments, you have to actually do a lot of advanced planning in order to make some of the transactions work that you want to work so from that respect, I think the CES show is a big success.

And then I'm sure we're going to talk about some of the health issues that were involved in this year's show, but certainly when I was on the show floor, I felt safe and that's because the Consumer Technology Association did a lot of advanced planning in order to prepare people who were going to show up about what was going to happen when they got here.

-Yes, and let's transition to that and let's talk about maybe some of the big-name companies that did pull out and pulled out in some cases the week before: Microsoft, Google, Amazon-- I can go on and on here-- all pulled out.

I mean, some of our biggest tech companies.

Was the main reason the concern for the health of their employees?

-That was what they had said, and with the omicron variant kind of exploding around us in the weeks leading up to CES and during the week itself, it was prudent for a lot of these companies to make those decisions on behalf of their employees.

Even now we're wondering exactly how many people contracted the virus when they were here.

I'm hearing reports, as you know, recently as today about some of these companies that were here that are experiencing that now.

That was obviously something the companies that decided to pull out of their responsibilities and their roles in the show didn't have to face anymore, and that's probably a good thing for them.

Certainly they made the decision based on what was important to their employees.

-And some of those big companies though, their exhibits are-- I don't want to say half of some of the floor space, but some of them are huge.

They're like mini cities in themselves.

So you take those out of it, and you've already talked about some of the positives of having smaller venues and maybe smaller exhibits and less people, but what are those big exhibits-- what do they do that change really the dynamic of something like CES?

-Well, I think having the large exhibits, first of all it's a magnet.

It draws people in.

If you aren't familiar with a company and you want to see some of the products they have, it immediately draws your attention.

Some of these exhibit spaces are three stories tall.

It's incredible to see them.

But the fact is if you are a tech professional and you have an agenda in terms of what you want to do, it's pretty easy to find these.

Now, with this year's show there were a lot of gaps on the show floor.

There was some consolidation on one of the show floors so one of the halls was not even fully used at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

So these types of things kind of played a different dynamic in how the show played out.

-Can we talk about some of the exhibits?

-Sure.

-Maybe one that stands out to you that was just really fantastic.

-Like I said, I don't believe in tech for tech's sake, so I was really drawn to some of the car things that were out there.

The Chevy Silverado GMC was displayed.

They actually had a keynote speaker.

There wasn't any of these vehicles that were actually there which is kind of disappointing, but then the autonomous vehicles, those are always interesting I think just because one of these days, we're going to be out and about on I-15 and see vehicles that don't have anybody in the driver's seat which to me is incredible.

That's going to probably play a role in the movement of goods and services to Las Vegas at some point in time because trucks are going to become autonomous as well.

They're already experimenting with that.

-Yes.

Let's talk a little about the future; we've got about a minute left.

Everything we've talked about here, signs might point to a very dismal future for the convention industry simply evidenced by so many big companies pulling out of CES.

-Well, yeah.

When you have 170,000 people that were planning to come and it only turns out to be 40 or 45,000, that's a big red flag right there.

But just the indications that I have heard is that nobody is canceling some of these upcoming shows.

Right now we've got World of Concrete, which they were just here in June.

They're going to be here this week, and then some of the other major shows.

National Association of Broadcasters, they'll be coming here in April, and the indication that I've received is they are planning to come with as many people as they can bring.

They usually bring in about 100,000 people.

So if it's a little bit less than that, it's going to look-- you know, visually it's going to look bad, but I think for the most part, it's going to be just exactly what the industry needs is more of these shows.

-Well, that's wonderful and World of Concrete did have a good turnout six months ago so we'll hope for the same again.

Rick, thank you so much; we really appreciate it.

-Thank you.

-Thank you.

The hot housing market is making it more difficult for some people to buy a home, and homeownership is one of the best ways for a family to build wealth.

There is already a gap between homeownership in white communities and homeownership in black communities and brown communities, and experts say the rising home prices are likely to make it worse.

Well, an effort is underway in Southern Nevada to address that gap.

Joining us to talk about the effort is Elias Benjelloun, social impact manager for the tech-based real estate company Homie; Shanta Patton, cofounder of Make Homes Possible, and Nia Girma, affordable housing advocate for the State of Nevada.

Thank you all so much for being here.

This is really important.

Shanta, I know we had you on a show maybe about a year ago.

I think we were talking about the housing market in general, and we talked a lot about communities of color and some of the gaps there, so I'm happy we can do this show.

I want to come back and talk just about general wealth gaps.

This is something we talk about on the show a lot, ethnic and racial disparities in wealth I just want to give you one statistic I found.

The average white family has about $184,000 in assets, black families $23,000 in assets, a huge gap there.

Nia, I want to come to you first, and let's link homeownership to that.

How is homeownership linked to, for better or for worse, larger wealth inequity conversations?

(Nia Girma) Absolutely.

You know, homeownership begins a vicious cycle, and I say it's vicious if you're on the wrong side of it.

The more your home is valued, the longer you're able to stay in your home, make on-time mortgage payments, you build equity over time.

That equity gives you options and gives you choices.

You're able to use those pullout funds if you need to for repairs, for life emergencies, for sending your children to college, which is always-- you know, my number-one point is that the cycle begins because an average family as you mentioned that has $180,000 in equity or in wealth in their home, they're able to pull that money out to send their child to college and let that child get a degree debt free, no student loans.

African Americans, especially African American women, are the most educated demographic in our country.

So more African American women have bachelor's degrees than anyone else in the world; however, most of those degrees come with student loan debt, so that's a barrier.

As soon as you get out of school even if you have an education, you then have this debt on you which means the opportunity to have a job, have a car and a car note to get to that job and then pay your student loan payments now edges you out of the competition for being able to purchase a home, and then the cycle continues.

You're not able to purchase a home, and you're not able to build that wealth from that equity to send the next generation to college.

So that's sort of how the cycle begins and continues to create that wealth gap in our country.

-Shanta, I want to get your perspectives also.

(Shanta Patton) Yes.

One of the additional things with that, Nia, a lot of times we forget homeownership breeds entrepreneurs and business owners.

So when we think about generational wealth and what we leave our family, the majority of what we leave is family-owned companies, you know, it was since 1951 or whatever that is.

That's breeding generations of entrepreneurs that might have started a company with just what they pulled out of the equity from their home.

So you're talking about being an employee or an employer, and we understand this country was built on entrepreneurship.

And if you don't have the ability to have that part of the American dream in addition to homeownership or lack of education because you can't afford to take on $100,000 in student loan debt-- which a lot of black women have right now-- you know, then you're missing out on additional opportunities.

So I don't think that we take enough time to understand what comes with homeownership, especially when we look at lower teen pregnancy, you know, higher test ratings for children.

We don't take into consideration outside of assets what it does to a family when you have homeownership as well.

-Absolutely, and just for context too, homeowners' net worth average $255,000, renters' net worth, if you're not a homeowner, $6,000.

I mean, what an amazing gap per what you are talking about right here.

Elias, let's talk a little bit more about the homeownership gap here too, 30 points different, 30% different between white homeowners and black homeowners in the Las Vegas Valley; that is a huge gap.

Is there any evidence, pre-pandemic or maybe coming out of the pandemic now, that those gaps are changing at all?

(Elias Benjelloun) Yes.

Unfortunately, the gap is only getting worse.

The pandemic has only made it tougher.

The National Association of Real Estate Brokers put out the SHIBA report showing the black homeownership gap has actually increased versus white households, so unfortunately the pandemic has made it harder, and if you look at the macro, since 1964 when the Civil Rights Act was passed really to address this crisis, it has only gotten worse.

So that's pretty crazy over the last 50 years, the homeownership gap has stayed the same or has become worse all around the country.

-I'm wondering in our local region, Nia, let's talk about you.

In reading some of our national statistics, millennials, especially black millennials, seem to be increasing homeownership, and single women as well.

Are we seeing statistics like that here locally?

-We are seeing statistics like that as a whole but then also with our programs.

As you know, the Nevada Housing Division has a down payment assistance program, and we look at those numbers really closely because they usually echo what happens throughout the state whether or not people use down payment assistance or not.

We have single males purchasing homes at about 54% of our home purchases as single males.

Single females are actually 45%.

So more and more one-person households are beginning to realize that I don't need to wait for a mate or a partner.

I can start to grab this now and put myself in a good position whether or not I am starting a family right now at all.

Whereas in the past, we did look to two-to-three people or more households purchasing homes.

Now a lot of single people are buying homes.

One of the things here in Nevada though that I do want to mention, you mentioned millennials.

We do have a lot of millennials that are purchasing homes now; however, compared to how many millennials are actually ready to purchase homes, having the income, right, Shanta, and just having the opportunity that are not purchasing homes is staggering because we're not just looking at the wealth gap and knowing it's available.

We're also battling millennials who came to age in 2008 during our recession.

So they watched their parents work to purchase homes and then lose those homes in the crash of our economy, and they're scared.

It's really just more of a fear factor, and we are working to sort of combat that with our coalition.

-Well, we're already transitioning into it.

Shanta, I'll come to you.

I mean, let's talk about the perfect barrier right there, just looking at parents and their financial situations too.

But what are some of the big barriers we're seeing that are preventing now homeownership?

-When we look at millennials, right, our stats say that there's 1.7 million black millennials who are mortgage ready.

Some of their barriers is their love for cars, and their car payments are so high, right, that the debt-to-income ratio is not balanced.

Also, with prices going up, the opportunity to live in areas they think are cool and chic and have shopping, they have been priced out, and they would rather rent in that area than have to buy somewhere else.

And that comes to us teaching them how to be an investor then, right?

Maybe you don't want to live in that neighborhood, but you still have the opportunity to purchase somewhere in a neighborhood that will get you homeownership even if you choose not to actually live there.

So having to change the thought process for us, like we need to talk to millennials now, you know, and I'm an old millennial and I think of things differently.

But we do have millennials, and the majority of them grew up seeing their family broken apart because of financial strain from the market.

They don't look at homeownership as the American dream.

They look at it as a burden, so having to change their mindset is one of the biggest barriers we have, convincing them there's another way for you to still get it even if it looks different than how your parents did it at that time.

-Well, let's talk about the solutions, because we obviously need some systems in place, I would assume, to teach new skills and shift that paradigm.

How are we doing that, Elias?

-Yes.

So, you know, one of the things we're doing is we're hosting the master class series, which is available on our website at makehomespossible.org, and we talk about this.

We do the myth busting.

I mean, you know, folks believe that homeownership is expensive, renting is expensive.

You know, whether you know it or not, you are investing in homeownership.

It's just not your home you're investing in.

So we're doing these classes, and we're going into things like credit repair, into student loan debt, and really just trying our best to answer all of the questions that are out there.

So we do these regular sessions or we do live Q&A's, and then we also have a coalition of nonprofit counselors that are available for one-on-one coaching.

-You have mentioned there's really I guess two groups of clients that are approaching you.

There's those that are not ready for the mortgage.

They do have credit recovery issues or potentially other issues, financial issues there, and then there's those that are but maybe don't have the resources or don't know of the resources to access to be able to find maybe a home loan.

How are you tackling both of those in some of these master classes?

-Yes, that's a really great point.

I think, you know, the journey to homeownership is a personalized journey.

It looks different for everybody, and that's why it's important to surround yourself with actual experts and professionals, folks like real estate agents, lenders and counselors that will have your back and know what they're talking about.

You know, there's a lot of people who want to give you input on whether homeownership is the right move or not, and that's why we're talking about myth busting because there's such a big myth out there.

So I think talking to somebody one-on-one to figure out what's the right move for you is probably the first step, and again you could go to makehomespossible.org and you could book a counseling call with one of us so we can kind of help you assess that.

There are folks that are ready now, and if they're ready now, I say jump in now because if you look at the big picture, home prices continue to appreciate, right?

The generational wealth is there.

And then if you're not ready now, well, you can start working on it now.

You can start putting into motion the credit building, fixing your debt-income ratio, getting the better job, and that journey may not be three months.

It may be a couple of years.

But again in the big picture of it, you know, when you have kids-- if you have kids in 20 years-- or whatever the case may be, if you want to retire young in 20 years, you know, that house essentially becomes a savings account for you.

-It does.

I think the question here, Nia, I want to come to you.

Of course with the housing market where it is and our median new home price at $440,000, up 11.5% over the last year, might make somebody assume that's out of reach regardless.

So how do we overcome that piece of this?

-That is very discouraging news to hear from anyone: Anyone who has been planning or saving for a home, anyone who is looking and trying to find affordability.

That is where, for one, our success stories come in.

There are lots of people that we have worked with over at the coalition over the past year who didn't think there was an opportunity.

Maybe purchasing a three-bedroom, single-family residence isn't an opportunity for someone right now.

Maybe purchasing a condo and getting yourself into the real estate game is what the most important thing is.

I think Shanta touched on something very important, that we may not all be able to afford a 2,000 square-foot home in Summerlin right now, and even if that's your goal you can get there, but right now let's start on what you can afford.

We also want to encourage not only achieving homeownership but sustaining homeownership and making sure that people are in homes they can afford and they don't put themselves in a position that they are house poor or they are not able to pay their bills or sustain and make sure they are ready for any sort of emergency that does come up with homeownership.

So that's why we have the counseling available and standing by.

And also what's very important is our division as well as many of our nonprofits that we work with at the coalition throughout the state have lots of down payment assistance and resources available for you.

You don't need to have 20% of the median home price to purchase a home right now.

Many people get in with less than 3% down, and we have down payment assistance to help you with that.

-And let's talk about that just in general.

So that's great to hear down payment assistance.

Lending, Shanta, in general here, assistance is great, but equitable lending practices even better, I would assume.

We have a history unfortunately of discriminatory lending practices.

We've had a federal policy that's come through to limit that, and yet it seems there still is some level of discriminatory practices related to lending.

How do we overcome that?

-That is so very true, and I just want to say the point to Nia, even though the median price is over 400,000, that's not the starting price of the market, right?

So we know there are $200,000 houses out there, and we know people are buying $200,000 houses every single day.

You just need to be one of those people to get a $200,000 house.

It's there, but the competition is steep.

But you can still be one of those people.

So even as the median price goes up, that doesn't mean there aren't affordable houses out there.

There's just a lack of enough for everyone, right?

But that doesn't mean that you can't be one of those people to get it because we know the people we have put in houses in the coalition, through the coalition, they're not buying $400,000 houses.

We also know lending has made a difference a little bit because FHA has raised their rates, you know, so we know the limit for FHA has been raised, and that has helped fill that gap as well.

But as far as lending practices, you know, it was policy put in place that got us to this point, and policy can be the only thing that gets us out of it.

But policy has to be intentional, and it has to be bigger than what we are getting.

That is a band-aid.

But when your opponent has had 400 years to go around the Monopoly board before you ever got the opportunity to play, you might have the equal opportunity to now have a piece on the board, but the equity is not the same.

And for there to be maybe a policy that comes into place today, how can that policy address the 400 times your opponent was able to go around?

So it's like oh, now you have a better way to buy a home.

Okay, I could buy a home today, but if I was white and if my family bought a home anytime, you know, in the '40s, the '50s, the '60s, the '70s, they benefited off of the discrimination of black people.

That equity is not the same, and until we have policies in place to not only make up for what has been done and then to combat what's happening now, that truly is the only way to fix this.

So I say oh, great, you got a new policy.

How are you going to make me whole for the last 400 years?

How do you make me whole from there?

How do you even make me whole since the Civil Rights Act and fair housing came in place?

Maybe we don't even want 400 years.

We just want to see the policy you put in place in '64 that it actually made a difference, but we know it didn't.

Our homeownership rating is lower than then before they tried to help us.

-Yes.

I mean, it's interesting because it comes back to the generational wealth gap again that is just extended here.

I mean, we have about 20 seconds left.

In that time, I mean, is there a quick fix here?

Is it just having more persons of color on some of these boards that are influencing this policy?

-We need more people of color who are in real estate, who are on the board making the decisions.

We don't need just a seat at the table, we need our voice to be considered as well.

So we definitely have to have more diversity, and that will change the mindset of how we push policies.

-Well, I'd like to thank all of our guests here, Elias Benjelloun from Homie, Shanta Patton from Make Homes Possible and Nia Girma, affordable housing advocate for the State of Nevada.

And thank you as always for joining us this week on Nevada Week.

For any of the resources that we discussed on this show, please visit our website at vegaspbs.org/nevadaweek.

You can also find us on social media on Facebook and Twitter at @nevadaweek.

See you next week.