Opinion

An acknowledgment: Newsday missed a critical chance to lead

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Segregation is deeply entrenched on Long Island. Sometimes subtle, sometimes hiding in plain sight, it has stained the region for decades. 
But Long Island didn’t become one of the nation’s most segregated suburbs by accident. It was purposeful. 
Zoning codes, mortgage redlining, blockbusting, school district boundaries, major roadways and outright racism, both structural and individual, work in concert to cement the Island’s divisions. 
An equally essential part of the formula is racial steering&nbsp;practiced by some real estate agents who help funnel home buyers into some neighborhoods and keep them out of others, based on the color of the buyers’ skin or their ethnicity. 
<a href="https://projects.newsday.com/long-island/real-estate-agents-investigation/">Newsday’s investigation revealing evidence&nbsp;of steering&nbsp;pulls the scab from the region’s long-festering wound.</a> In 40 percent&nbsp;of the dozens of tests of real estate agents conducted by Newsday, members of minority groups posing as potential home buyers were treated unequally and unfairly, despite providing similar financial backgrounds and similar housing goals as their white would-be home-buyer counterparts. For black testers, nearly 50 percent&nbsp;received disparate treatment. Frequently, white buyers were pushed toward mostly white areas, minority buyers were directed to more integrated neighborhoods, and agents recommended largely minority areas to virtually no one. 
There is a silver lining of sorts in the probe’s results. In more than half of the cases, real estate agents treated minority home buyers fairly. That’s progress when measured against such dismal aspects of Long Island history as the origins of Levittown, where the black and white of contract language in rental covenants explicitly barred blacks from living there. 
But it is not progress enough when one remembers that federal civil rights legislation is more than 50 years old, and that federal fair housing laws passed in the 1960s banned racial steering. Newsday’s investigation supports what anecdotal evidence has long suggested: The legislation moved the discrimination underground. Once blatant and overt, steering&nbsp;now is cloaked in shadows, disguised in coded language and sometimes the product of unconscious bias on the part of agents. 
Some of Newsday’s minority testers did not realize they had been subjected to unequal treatment until they saw on video the way they were treated compared with their white counterparts. Some were brought to tears.&nbsp; Because white testers posing as would-be home buyers were similarly unaware, it’s easy to understand how newer Long Islanders might not understand this aspect of the region’s poisonous history. 
* * * * * 
The treatment experienced by Newsday's testers was sadly familiar. Among the sins committed by agents who the evidence suggested engaged in steering: 
<ul> 
 <li>Telling a black tester that houses in a white neighborhood were out of his price range while showing them to a white tester of similar supposed means.</li> 
 <li>Warning a white tester about gang violence in Brentwood while directing a black tester to houses in that community.</li> 
 <li>Telling a white tester that four overwhelmingly minority neighborhoods are never recommended while directing a black tester away from overwhelmingly white communities.</li> 
 <li>Requesting that minority testers get mortgage preapproval and prove their financial qualifications before showing them houses or listings, and not demanding the same of similar white testers.</li> 
</ul> 
One begins to understand how Long Island’s unwritten boundaries hold firm when agents recommend Elmont for a Hispanic home buyer but not a white one, Freeport for a black tester but not a white one, Plainview for an Asian buyer, and Wantagh, Seaford and Massapequa for white house seekers. One senses the insidiousness buried in the code used by agents who suggest to white testers to check out who’s patronizing convenience stores in a particular area at night. Translation: You won’t want to live there. 
Researchers say some agents might think they’re only following the preferences of neighborhoods and homeowners who, for example, do not want to sell to black buyers, and that if they do bring minority buyers to a white neighborhood, they won’t get more listings. But that defense — that your own prejudicial actions should be excused because they’re based on the prejudices of others — is indefensible. 
* * * * * 
It’s easy to say that steering is wrong philosophically. And that it is against the law. But what’s worse, it also does actual damage to real people. 
Steering robs buyers of the choice of neighborhood they would like to live in. It robs neighborhoods of diversity, and children of the opportunity to experience the richness of growing up with kids from other races and other cultures. It breeds insularity, suspicion and hostility. 
Most home buyers, regardless of race, want to buy the best house they can afford in the best school district they can afford. Here, the implications of steering are enormous. For real estate agents, school districts often are barometers for neighborhoods. And some agents act as gatekeepers. 
So they prevent minority buyers from moving into mostly white, higher-performing school districts with greater resources, and instead channel them and their children into poorer, lower-performing districts with fewer resources. That perpetuates race-based inequities in education and ensures that the demographics of success and failure never change. 
Newsday’s editorial board once referred to the region’s educational segregation, where superb school districts sit side by side with those that struggle, as “the shame of the suburbs.” Thanks partly to steering, it still is. 
* * * * * 
Poor enforcement of fair housing laws and a lack of good training compound the behavior of real estate agents. Both must change. That requires more money and more time. 
Paired testing is&nbsp;the gold standard of housing discrimination investigations. The tests are expensive — $2,400 to test a landlord for rental discrimination, as much as $6,000 to test a real estate agent for discrimination in selling homes. It takes time to do an investigation, and the process is cumbersome.&nbsp;But without enforcement, there is no accountability. And the tests work as a deterrent. One real estate agent told a Hispanic tester in Newsday’s probe that she was not allowed to discuss school districts but added, “I can — if you promise not to be working for the state.” 
That’s where training in fair housing laws comes into play. It’s required by the state for real estate agents, but as Newsday's investigation reveals, instructors from the residential brokerage industry often provide less than the required three hours. And the information they provide is often wrong or irrelevant. 
The problems can be as basic as failing to explain which groups of people are protected by fair housing laws. Experts criticized&nbsp;remarks made by one instructor whose class was attended by Newsday reporters as possibly reinforcing&nbsp;racial and religious stereotypes.&nbsp;Training clearly is needed — agents need to know about discriminatory practices past and present to be able to avoid them — but it must be improved and monitored for accuracy and relevance. 
* * * * * 
<a href="https://newsday.com/LIdividedpodcast" target="_blank">Long Island’s sad history of segregation</a> endures. We can debate whether it’s right that some people choose to live only with those they perceive as being similar to them. But there is no debate that Newsday's tests showed that people are being denied the right to choose to live among those who are different from them racially. 
That’s wrong, and the real estate practices that enables it must end. Long Island’s real estate agents should become agents of change, not agents of division. Only then can they help redraw the portrait of Long Island they helped paint as a place where the treatment of minorities has been unequal and unfair. 
Read the Newsday editorial board's <a href="https://www.newsday.com/opinion/levittown-newsday-alicia-patterson-racial-covenant-discrimination-1.38610861" target="_blank">acknowledgement</a> of the way the paper handled Levittown's origins and growth.

Editorials

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Segregation's stain on Long Island can be overcome

Segregation's stain can be overcome

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The story of Long Island is in many ways the story of&nbsp;its housing. The&nbsp;creation, location and cost&nbsp;of shelter,&nbsp;&nbsp;and the search for it, have defined the region for decades.&nbsp; Housing — inextricably intertwined with jobs, transportation,&nbsp;education, family, friends and wealth — is Long Island's lifeblood and the core of its development. 
So it's no wonder&nbsp;that alarm bells sounded here, and around the state, with&nbsp;the publication of Newsday's "Long Island Divided" project. In&nbsp;riveting&nbsp;detail, the series charted evidence of unequal treatment &nbsp;of&nbsp;minority home buyers and minority communities by some real estate agents. We welcome the calls for action as both necessary and overdue, though possibly&nbsp;still not sufficient. Addressing unjust practices&nbsp;of the past to&nbsp;ensure&nbsp;they are not repeated in the future&nbsp;is critical, but that's not the same as resolving&nbsp;the&nbsp;inequities of the present that these practices have created. 
Evidence presented of racial steering was compelling. Using paired testing, the gold standard of discrimination investigations, Newsday found evidence that nearly half of black testers, 39 percent of Hispanic testers and 19 percent of Asian testers received disparate treatment compared &nbsp;with white testers. Hidden in those dismaying results was a shard of light: In more than half of the cases, real estate agents treated minority&nbsp;testers fairly. But that's not enough. 
Progress can be made 
Among new, sensible proposals to reduce housing discrimination: 
<ul> 
 <li>State Attorney General Letitia James plans to investigate evidence uncovered by Newsday,&nbsp;and has asked&nbsp;the public for&nbsp;tips about such discrimination.</li> 
 <li>Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo&nbsp;said three state agencies will launch a&nbsp;housing discrimination investigation on Long Island, and announced a social media campaign to raise awareness and a hotline for filing complaints. That's good.&nbsp;But Newsday’s series showed that victims of&nbsp;unequal treatment often don’t realize they've been targeted. So how would they know to lodge a complaint? The&nbsp;state must complement&nbsp;these steps&nbsp;with money for enforcement.&nbsp;Cuomo, who has deep experience in housing on the state and federal levels, vowed in 2016 to launch a “groundbreaking” effort to ferret out discrimination in home sales. But the follow-through fell short. Not enough money was allocated to the nonprofit fair-housing groups that do the bulk of paired testing. The groups say they’re ready and eager, but they lack resources that typically come from governments. It’s time for Cuomo to up the state’s ante.</li> 
 <li>The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, after&nbsp;a request by Reps. Kathleen Rice and Tom Suozzi, also said it will investigate. That's a start. HUD&nbsp;also should abandon its proposed rollback of what's called&nbsp;the disparate impact standard,&nbsp;which holds&nbsp;governments and businesses accountable for discriminatory practices even if they did not intend to discriminate. Weakening it is a terrible idea that would make proving&nbsp;unintentional discrimination more difficult. Disparate impact also&nbsp;has been the best way to attack exclusionary zoning laws used to steer housing construction.&nbsp;HUD also should increase its funding for local governments to educate the public and test for discrimination.&nbsp;</li> 
 <li>The State Senate's Democratic majority will hold hearings on Long Island next month on housing discrimination, and some state lawmakers&nbsp;are talking about new legislation to help create a fairer housing market. The state, for example, requires training in fair-housing laws for real estate agents, but that training often is inadequate; new legislation to establish more rigorous training standards and accountability for meeting them is essential. Fines for violations could be increased with&nbsp;the money directed to nonprofits for more testing. More funds for paired testing could be raised with a fee on real estate agents.</li> 
 <li>Numerous local elected officials and advocates, including Suffolk County Executive&nbsp;Steve Bellone and Nassau County Executive Laura Curran,&nbsp; have called for improved training programs, better testing and more education, as have local and national Realtor&nbsp; groups. County&nbsp;legislatures and their respective human rights commissions should hold hearings to bring more light and heat to the issue;&nbsp;publicity can be an effective eradicant.</li> 
</ul> 
All of this is encouraging. Discrimination must be exposed&nbsp;in as close to real time as possible. Progress&nbsp;can be made with persistent effort. But the legacy of racial steering remains — in our divided neighborhoods and,&nbsp;perhaps most sadly and profoundly,&nbsp;in our&nbsp;separate and unequal school&nbsp;systems. That, too, must be addressed. To perpetuate the current system is to deny some of our children a sound education, and to deprive all of our children&nbsp;the richness of growing up with people of&nbsp;other races and cultures. Cloisters of color,&nbsp;forged by hostility and suspicion, only perpetuate that mindset.&nbsp; 
Will online ads discriminate? 
The kind of discrimination uncovered by Newsday has existed for decades. But what is the next generation of housing discrimination? Just as the blatant racial covenants of Levittown gave way to more subtle practices, these also will morph as people buy houses in different ways,&nbsp;often online, often with much less contact with agents. Are the algorithms that govern this process vehicles for discrimination? With real estate firms buying digital ads, and immense amounts of personal data available commercially —&nbsp;already being used to focus advertising —&nbsp;will&nbsp;buyers, sellers or communities be targeted in discriminatory ways?&nbsp;How can paired testing for unfair treatment be conducted when buyers locate houses on their own, and contacts between them&nbsp;and agents are minimal? 
Good housing, fairly acquired, is precious.&nbsp;As a region, we must finally get this right.&nbsp;Long Island is not unique in being plagued by housing discrimination. But by&nbsp;attacking the problem with vigor, Long Island&nbsp;could lead the way.

VPDIVIDED191124

Act now for fairness in housing on Long Island

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&nbsp;The right things were said, repeatedly. 
From the state senators on the three-committee panel holding a hearing Thursday on housing discrimination on Long Island, to the experts, advocates, elected officials and representatives of the real estate industry who testified, everyone pronounced &nbsp;himself or herself dismayed, disturbed and angered by the findings of Newsday’s "Long Island Divided" project. 
Newsday’s revelation that 40 percent of minority homebuyers received disparate treatment compared with white homebuyers in paired testing — and 49 percent of black homebuyers — has been followed by many promises of action from many players at different levels of government and within the real estate industry, as well as by proposals for other corrections by fair housing advocates. 
This is promising. But it will mean nothing without forceful follow-through, a point driven home by advocates appearing before the&nbsp;panel at Hofstra University. Discrimination has long been entrenched on Long Island, especially in housing. It will take a long time and lots of effort to uproot it. 
There has been no shortage of good ideas. New anti-discrimination measures can be adopted. Existing ones can be vigorously enforced. More state funding for more paired testing, the gold standard of ferreting out housing discrimination, is essential. State agencies, from the attorney general’s office to the Department of State to the Division of Human Rights, must be more proactive and reactive. The state also can be more aggressive in revoking or suspending the licenses of agents found to have discriminated. A bill from State Sen. James Gaughran and Assemb. Kimberly Jean-Pierre to add discrimination to the&nbsp;list of justifications&nbsp;for license suspension or revocation is worth exploring. Training in fair housing laws for real estate agents must be strengthened. Among the many other remedies proposed is one offered&nbsp;Thursday by Johnnie Mae Alston, a black woman and one of Newsday’s testers, who suggested posting required notices about discrimination prominently in real estate offices so unwary homebuyers can see them. 
The real estate industry has a role to play, too. But of the 68 real estate agents or representatives of real estate companies mentioned in Newsday’s expose who were invited to give testimony Thursday, only one showed up. The other 67&nbsp;declined the &nbsp;invitations or did not respond. That's unforgivable. State Sen. James Skoufis, who chairs the Committee on Investigations and Government Operations, promised future subpoenas to compel their testimony. That's the right move. 
This awakening has been a long time coming. Generations of Long Islanders victimized by housing discrimination have been robbed of the opportunity to build wealth and&nbsp;&nbsp;enroll their children in high-performing schools. 
Most of those in the hearing room at Hofstra seemed to understand that. Exorcising that, as one witness noted, will be a marathon, not a sprint. The first steps have been taken. Now the hard work begins. 
—&nbsp;The editorial board

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Awakening about discrimination in home sales is long overdue

Awakening about discrimination is long overdue

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Podcast Episode 1: Newsday blinks

podcast

Podcast Episode 2: Alicia Patterson and Levittown

Podcast Episode 3: Peaches and yards

Podcast Episode 4: Epilogue

nextLI: Focus group participants react to LI Divided

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nextLI: Watch participants get candid about diversity

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