Pursue end to housing discrimination on Long Island

Housing discrimination is deeply embedded on Long Island, and across the country. Rooting it out will be difficult. One bill won’t do it. One level of government acting won’t be enough. Ending decades of discrimination will require years of effort from governments, organizations and individuals to ensure that behaviors are changed for good.

So we are heartened — cautiously — by the swell of intentions expressed and actions taken to attack the discriminatory housing practices that have made Long Island one of the most segregated communities in the nation.

The latest local activity: A raft of findings and recommendations from three State Senate committees that investigated unfair housing practices in the wake of Newsday’s "Long Island Divided" investigation. The project found that 49% of Black homebuyers, and 40% of all minority homebuyers, were subjected to disparate treatment compared with white homebuyers. That striking but sadly not surprising result was uncovered by paired testing, which compares the experiences of would-be homebuyers with different racial or other characteristics but similar financial backgrounds; it is the gold standard to prove housing discrimination.

The State Senate rightly recommended that kind of vigorous testing program, funded by increased fees for real estate broker and agent licenses, although additional money likely will be needed. Other smart steps include better training of agents in fair housing practices, increased penalties for fair housing law violations, standard ethics policies for how brokers and agents work with all homebuyers, and a requirement that state and local governments work to create diverse, inclusive communities.

Now the senators must produce legislation, and get it passed, an urgency made clear in the committees’ two hearings. Realtors and agents largely ducked the first, and when subpoenaed to attend the second largely denied their behavior in steering homebuyers toward or away from certain neighborhoods was unlawful or unethical. It showed a remarkable lack of remorse. The industry cannot fix the problem on its own.

Federally, one of President Joe Biden’s first executive orders this week directed the Department of Housing and Urban Development to rigorously enforce the Fair Housing Act, using a standard that best gets at changing the ground game in local communities. That would evaluate a municipality’s housing policies based on the impact they have, not on the intent of individuals making the decisions.

The State Senate’s actions build on several new state laws and vows by Nassau and Suffolk counties to more strongly pursue charges of housing discrimination. Long Island lawmakers have led this push, and we expect them to continue. Getting this right is critical. Lofty talk is good, but nearly everyone who is or should be involved in this fight can do better, including the state agencies charged with rooting out discrimination.

Housing is a basic human right. It is the basis for family wealth, and the strongest indicator of the quality of education our children receive. Long Island is more diverse than ever, but by some measures it is as segregated as ever. The region will never reach its full potential if housing discrimination continues to flourish.

— The editorial board