FORTY-EIGHT YEARS ago, Lennard Powell carved out a piece of the American Dream when he bought a South Berkeley fixer-upper in a largely African American neighborhood and settled in to raise a family.

That dream is now on the verge of dissolving in a long-running quagmire of code violations and court proceedings, leaving Powell among a growing number of African Americans for whom homeownership is out of reach.

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Kiley Russell writes primarily for Local News Matters on issues related to equity and the environment. A Bay Area native, he has lived most of his life in Oakland. He studied journalism at San Francisco State University, worked for the Associated Press and the former Contra Costa Times, among other outlets. He has covered everything from state legislatures, local governments, federal and state courts, crime, growth and development, political campaigns of various stripes, wildfires and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.