Because of the business we were in, we spent many years closely aligned with the real estate community. During that time our discoveries were shocking and as we try to sell our house all the lessons we learned and tried to address are incorporated in that attempt.
The racism in the real estate industry is well known. We should say – the bigotry – since these actions include more than African Americans. The fact that it has been impossible to eradicate or even mitigate is also well known. Attempts to end/change the structure and how realtors, developers, contractors and all those others aligned with the real estate community, have been notoriously unsuccessful.
Decades ago, there was one big attempt – which everyone thought was brilliant and would make major changes in the apartheid engaged in by the real estate community – it did not.
For a time, if you wanted to rent an apartment, condo, house, etc. and you were turned down or games were played with you so you would not be able to gain the home you wanted, there was recourse. Once you made a complaint to your local or federal Human Rights office they would start the investigation by sending a white family behind the minority family that felt discriminated against in the rejection of their offer to rent or buy the house of their dreams (or the house which fit their pocketbook). Many such cases, after that kind of test, were won and damages paid. However, that did not even put a dent into changing the way racism is institutionalized in the real estate industry.
Neighborhoods and so therefore schools, remain segregated; churches were the most segregated of all and all the trappings that went with the kind of racism maintained by this real estate community remained in place for all to experience.
Today, that bigotry is still practiced. It is more sophisticated, but still in existence and tightly controlled.
Working with realtors in maintaining this system are banks and other lending institutions. After banks fail to maintain residential bigotry it is the turn of the employers of the people trying to rent or buy in what today are still redlined houses and/or neighborhoods.
How does this happen so consistently:
- We live in a very racist, sexist, etc. society. From birth we are trained in how to be a bigot. Some of us take to that training like a duck takes to water. Others have some brakes applied and are never quite comfortable, but the everyday things one has to do to maintain a sense of being “better than” infects us all – white, black, latinx, LGBTQ+, muslim, etc. Some fight against the need to be superior to and others just accept their unearned status and do what is necessary to keep it going.
2. What does that include? Well, the first line of defense against ‘diverse neighborhoods” is with the home-owner and/or the real estate agent showing the property. The wrong person shows up and that person experiences foot dragging, obfuscation, excuses, everything that can be thrown up to keep them from wanting to move ahead with the sale or rental of that particular property. Real Estate Agents have been known to bring up another property – supposedly a better buy and one more suited for the client – and in a more acceptable neighborhood for that particular person. When all else fails, the property is taken off the market until a better time to list it for sale. After that particular minority has moved on? Before others get the same idea and start to look at that house? Whatever the reason given the house comes back on the market after a time and we start all over again.
3. f the person looking for housing perseveres and somehow gets past that first obstacle, It is then up to the financial institutions. Banks are better at this than others, but they all come together for the same result. Keep people in neighborhoods with their own kind and especially keep them out of the most prestigious white northern european neighborhoods. Even in those neighborhoods an occasional minority can buy as long as it is not one of the houses really off-limits to non-whites.
Banks have myriad ways they block the sale of houses which were “redlined”, but today not called such. The understanding is there anyway. Not a relevant word need be spoken – which allows for denial. Always make sure there is the ability to deny what you are actually doing.
4. If a minority through some miracle makes it past the financial institutions, the employer is next up to keep the societal segregation. We have seen this happen over and over again. It is a perfect set-up for denial. The person who has been so successful is making it past society’s barriers to ‘diversity’ in housing hits his/her employer and gets fired. The quicker the firing to the date of purchasing the new house the better.
Once fired, it is all downhill from there and the new employee or older employee who moved into the ‘wrong’ house very seldom connects his/her firing to the home purchase. A few have made that connection immediately because they are conscious of the barriers they have crossed and have an understanding of institutional racism. Those who have ‘smoked the pipe’ even when told what has happened and why are too dazed to pick it up.
The person so fired just picks up, gathers up, does whatever is necessary to survive financially and moves on.
Employers have far more ways to accomplish getting a non-white person out of a house they should not have been allowed to buy in the first place and they use them all when necessary.
5. After this comes the time for a minority who has managed to stay in a house so “redlined” to sell and move on. Then the fun starts because the end result changes. It is not to keep other minorities out of the neighborhood and out of that house. They have probably lived there many years. Uncomfortably with lots of racist happenings, but this is a new game.
The goal of this game is to make sure that minority leaves the neighborhood he/she should not have been allowed to inhabit in the first place with as little wealth as possible.
That is a game which would make an intensely interesting game of chess pale by comparison and that is for another article.
