Wall Street SFR firms accused of stripping equity from neighborhoods 

Institutional players in the single-family rental (SFR) market have been expanding their reach into select American neighborhoods since the global financial crisis of 2008, but they now find themselves in an uncomfortable limelight. They are under scrutiny in Congress and accused of gentrifying minority neighborhoods and allegedly displacing large numbers of people of color — Black residents in particular. That is a major takeaway in a Congressional subcommittee report on a recent survey of the nation’s five largest institutional owners and operators of SFR homes. The survey, sponsored by the Democrat-controlled U.S. House Financial Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations (the subcommittee), was sent to the following companies: Invitation Homes; American Homes 4 Rent; FirstKey Homes (owned by Cerberus Capital Management); Progress Residential (owned by Pretium Partners); and Amherst Residential.