This flash briefing is all about West Seattle in Washington (WA) State.
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Good Day WS! Thanks for joining us for West Seattle Daily Ep 029 on this Thursday, brought to you by Sea-Town Real Estate. I'm your host, Christian Harris.
Happy Throwback Thursday!
On our TBT during this Black History Month, we are talking the rather dark history of legalized segregation and institutionalized racism in Real Estate... Last week I talked about a ground shaking undercover investigation that Newsday did in Long Island that revealed un-equal treatment of minority prospective home buyers.
While "Racial Restrictive Covenants" in deeds were deemed unenforceable in 1948, this practice of not allowing minorities or even Jewish people into specific communities was still practice for many more decades. One thing that helped put an end to this overtly racist practice in real estate, was the passing of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which among other things, made "steering" illegal.
Steering is The process whereby builders, brokers, and rental property managers use words or actions that are intended to influence the choice of location a prospective buyer or tenant based on the racial makeup of a neighborhood or area... even if the potential buyer or tenant wants it
• Examples/Cases in Seattle:
• https://depts.washington.edu/civilr/covenants_report.htm
• Richard Ornstein, a Jewish refugee from Austria, contracted to purchase a home for his family in the Sand Point Country Club area of Seattle in late 1952.
• Unknown to both Ornstein and the seller, the property’s deed contained a neighborhood-wide restrictive covenant barring the sale or rental of the home to non-Whites and people of Jewish descent.
• In spite of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that deemed racial restrictive covenants unenforceable in 1948, Ornstein’s case reveals that this ruling yielded little power over the application of these restrictions on the individual level.
• Daniel Boone Allison, Head of the Sand Point Country Club Commission, approached the realtor negotiating the sale and announced: “the community will not have Jews as residents.”1
• Over the next several weeks Allison campaigned to stop the sale by both citing the covenant barring the sale of homes to Jews and by threatening Ornstein with a list of ways intolerant area residents “could” respond to the presence of the Ornstein family in the neighborhood.
• Despite the willingness on the part of the home seller, despite the support of civil rights activists, and despite the 1948 court ruling, Ornstein eventually became a victim of Allison’s threats and “made it clear that he [had] no intention of moving” into an area that did not accept his presence.
• Consequences
• https://tcf.org/content/report/attacking-black-white-opportunity-gap-comes-residential-segregation/?agreed=1
• Black–white residential segregation is a major source of unequal opportunity for African Americans: among other things, it perpetuates an enormous wealth gap and excludes black students from many high-performing schools. While some see residential segregation as “natural”—an outgrowth of the belief that birds of a feather flock together—black–white segregation in America is mostly a result of deliberate public policies that were designed to subjugate black people and promote white supremacy.
• two entrenched inequalities that are especially glaring:
• the enormous wealth gap between these races
• grossly unequal access to public education opportunities.
• Because homes are typically the largest financial asset for most Americans, segregated markets significantly reduce the accumulated wealth
• This phenomenon—on top of the penalties endured during the historical legacy of slavery and Jim Crow—helps explain why the black–white wealth gap is so much larger than the black–white income gap.
• Having or lacking wealth influences many of life’s big decisions—from financing a child’s education to saving for retirement.
• This inability of most students to attend schools beyond their neighborhood is troubling, because low-income students who are given the chance to attend socioeconomically integrated schools are shown to achieve at much higher levels than do low-income students in high-poverty schools... which is also an enditment on the federal education system in this country... but that's a conversation for another time...
• devastating consequences for the consumer
• it limits their housing choice to certain areas
• it locks people out of communities
• it can deny people of all races the opportunity to enjoy the social professional and personal benefits of living in an integrated community
• it sends a disgraceful message to people that the real estate industry or at least some within the real estate industry still view them as less worthy
• Call to Action
• Government is the laboratory in which many of the schemes for black–white segregation were (and still are) concocted; it is also, therefore, where much of the effort must be placed in order for racial segregation to be undone. Members of government who want to reverse segregation must work to remove policies that promote and protect white supremacy, and replace them instead with ones that actively fight segregation.
• Scholars have found that African Americans in moderately segregated metropolitan areas have much better employment levels, earnings, and mortality rates than do African Americans in metropolitan areas with very high segregation levels.
• Stay tuned next week we will talk about The Fair Housing laws and government involved in the call to action, so that we can better understand all of the things at play in this issue of inequality. We hope that this continues to spark conversations with you & your loved ones. This is something I find extremely important & I hope you do too. Until next week - talk soon!
I hope that over the next few weeks we can continue to educate and share our experiences to open a dialogue to make sure this behavior/biases ends here. My goal is to do my part to ensure my sub-conscious bias are made conscious so I can fight against them and do my part to ensure the American dream of home ownership is an opportunity for all people.... not just those that look like me.
I hope that this opens other conversations with friends & family. Please reach out and share your thoughts. We will be back next Thursday to share more details from the study.
Thanks for listening.
Link to full investigation video - https://projects.newsday.com/long-island/real-estate-agents-investigation/
