Rep. Mel Watt has lived the American dream. Now he wants other African Americans to do the same.

When the North Carolina Democrat returned to Charlotte in 1971, he purchased his first house for $21,000. A decade later, he sold that place for $75,000 and used the proceeds to buy a new home for $90,000.

Rep. Watt, a member of the House Financial Services Committee, still lives in that house, which is now worth perhaps half a million dollars. And he estimates his initial house is valued at $350,000-$450,000.

"Even for a poor boy like me, home ownership can create wealth," the lawmaker said at the North Carolina Bankers Association's annual Eastern Secondary Mortgage Market Conference earlier this month.

That's why, as a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, he supports With Ownership, Wealth, an initiative to add 1 million minority households to the ranks of America's home owners over the next five years.

The effort, which was announced this spring, is designed to address the fact that although minority home ownership increased four times faster than ownership among Whites during the 1990s, it "still lags way behind" -- 46.7 percent vs. 73 percent, according to the latest tally.

"We still have a lot of mileage to make up," Rep. Watt told the conference.

The seeds for the WOW initiative were sown in Charlotte four years ago during the first Black Caucus Housing Summit, when lawmakers like Rep. Watt met with representatives from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bank of America and other financial institutions.

Now, Citibank, Chase Manhattan, Countrywide, Wells Fargo, United Guaranty, GE Mortgage Insurance, the Mortgage Bankers Association, National Association of Realtors and numerous others are on board.

Despite that kind of support, and the fact that the accumulation of wealth for most people is related by-and-large to home ownership, backers "weren't prepared" for the response they received when WOW was first announced, according to Rep. Watt. The phone rang so fast and furiously, he said, that operators couldn't handle the volume.

Now, though, the effort "is beginning to take shape in local communities" across the land, and "when we get a call, we can connect that person to a credit counselor to get them ready to apply for a loan, to a financial advisor, a lender or a real estate agent, whomever they need," he reported.

"We're trying to put the whole package together," the North Carolina lawmaker said.

But while WOW is starting to work, another effort to improve housing opportunities among the nation's poor -- Section 8 -- is starting to breakdown and needs to be fixed, Rep. Watt added.

Though Sec. 8, which gives low-income families vouchers they can use to rent homes or apartments anywhere they like, is "a good idea," he said it is not working as intended in communities where demand out paces supply.

In places where the price of rentals is bid up, landlords can get more money in the private market, the Congressman explained. And that usually forces Sec. 8 recipients back into the fragile, lower-income neighborhoods which vouchers were intended to help them leave, heightening rather than relieving the problem of racial segregation in housing.

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