Recent fair housing settlements are just a step on a long road

New York State's latest housing-discrimination settlements — with Greenvale brokerage Laffey Real Estate and two Keller Williams offices in Garden City and Massapequa — represent another small step in a long march toward undoing decades of unfair treatment in Long Island's real estate industry.

These agreements, reached with the state Attorney General's office, came three years after Newsday's "Long Island Divided" investigation shined a spotlight on long-standing, ugly and illegal practices of real estate agents treating minority homebuyers differently than those who are white. The settlements require the real estate offices to pay a total of $115,000 toward training and testing efforts. The Keller Williams offices "explicitly denied" allegations of wrongdoing, while Laffey neither denied nor admitted to them.

But across Long Island, housing discrimination and the steering of homebuyers to certain neighborhoods or properties based on race undoubtedly still exist.

While the settlements are important, testing and training alone won't solve this intractable problem. Training in fair housing rules means little without follow-up. And testing is particularly tricky in today's hot real estate market, when so many other factors are at play with each home sale.

So, enforcement remains essential. That requires significant oversight from the state and continual reporting to hold licensed real estate agents accountable for their actions. The state must take the lead, and even do its own testing and analysis, rather than solely rely on Newsday's reporting. The more data and detail real estate brokerages are asked to provide, the better.

Beyond these settlements, the industry needs to recognize its shortcomings and train a brighter spotlight on fair housing while working to diversify the population of agents across the region. Also important: new housing construction, with a variety of types and price points in various communities. If state and local officials really hope to make renting and buying a home fair across the Island, they should publicly recognize there's far more work to do.

It could mean incentivizing the development of different housing types in more neighborhoods. It could also mean embracing programs like the federal effort that requires projects receiving federal funds to establish an Affirmative Fair Housing Marketing Plan that would compel developers to advertise for, and attract, a wider diversity of applicants.

It's unsurprising that the private offices involved in the attorney general's settlements didn't admit wrongdoing. But the industry — from brokerages to builders — must take a larger role by improving recruitment practices, creating a welcoming culture, and looking to attract buyers and renters of all races and ethnicities.

None of that is simple and nothing will happen overnight. The settlements mark a key moment, but no one can stop there.