By Chris Barranco 

“Small actions, perhaps unintentional, can have a huge impact in creating or perpetuating a segregated system.” 

The Northern Virginia Association of Realtors® (NVAR), in a collaborative effort with neighboring local Realtor® associations , hosted Pulitzer award winning investigative journalist, Bill Dedman, for a conversation regarding the Newsday feature, “Long Island Divided” and its partner documentary, “Testing the Divide”. These publications were an overview of a three-year undercover investigation that revealed continued and significant non-compliant real estate practices that reinforce racial  segregation through illegal steering of customers. Dedman and the Newsday team received national recognition for this investigation, including a Peabody award.  

The investigation took place in Long Island, New York. Long Island is very diverse, with hundreds of communities, but it is a highly segregated suburb with a strong divide in demographics between communities. According to Dedman, there had been stories and anecdotes from black home buyers in Long Island who had problems buying homes outside of certain areas, so Newsday decided to investigate and test the home buying process with the addition of hidden cameras to capture video and audio. Rather than looking at historical records to study the divide, this investigation presented clear and definitive evidence of real estate agents violating Fair Housing laws. It was repeatedly shown that “while one customer would receive service from an agent, another customer in the same circumstance would be refused service.” 

There is evidence of this in the “Testing the Divide” documentary. An agent had a meeting with a Black homebuyer and a white homebuyer. These two buyers had the same finances, same budget and made the same requests. The agent told the Black homebuyer that the homebuyer absolutely needs a prequalification letter before continuing to work together, but the same agent asked the white homebuyer when she had the availability to look at houses. This was not an isolated occurrence. The investigative team, which included two fair housing experts, reviewed more than 200 hours of video and analyzed thousands of listings to see which school districts and communities the test buyers were directed to consider.  

The following statistics are from the “Long Island Divided” Newsday article.  

In his talk with NVAR and other nearby associations, Dedman raised the question “Would the results be the same if they did these tests in our community?” To uncover this, it is important to look at the motivations behind those agents involved in the investigation.  

A major component of steering is “profiling.” Some agents may in effect be assuming a person of color cannot afford certain homes or won’t qualify for a mortgage and they would therefore be "wasting the agent's time." In addition, agents could think that other people involved with or impacted by the transaction will be biased, including neighbors, appraisers or lenders, therefore making it harder to close sales. This results in steering behavior by the agent and a violation of the law. Dedman stresses that complying with Fair Housing regulations is not a form of political correctness – it is the law.  

How Do We Learn From This? 

Dedman believes that “cultures can change” and there are many learning opportunities from this investigation. Perhaps the most important takeaway is that we all need to be self-reflective of the unconscious biases we hold. As one example, a recurring form of steering shown in the investigation was when agents were asked about the schools in an area. Evidence suggests that discussing “good” or “bad” school systems is a euphemism for race. School systems with majority white students were described as “high-performing” but school systems with a high minority population were described with less positive attributes.  

The New York Legislature responded to this investigation with a series of changes in the law. Dedman believes this is important, because changes in one state's laws can influence neighboring states to change their laws. The following is a list of changes that were passed by the New York Legislature, provided by Dedman in his session with NVAR. 

Dedman emphasized measures the National Association of Realtors® (NAR) has taken to improve training materials. There is a new course coming out this summer on Implicit Bias in Real Estate. This will be a 3-hour class designed for brokerages, teaching Realtors® how to recognize and overcome the biases that we all have. NAR has tested this course and will be rolling it out for CE credit.  

In addition, NAR rolled out a Fairhaven situational training where individuals make choices to try to close transactions. In this process, the trainee experiences common fair housing issues and questions that often come up during the buying and selling process. Dedman suggests that this role playing can be extended in offices, and individuals can pass the microphone around and practice answering questions such as, “What schools are good?”. The purpose of these training is to teach empathy, as individuals step into the shoes of both the agent and the client.  

Dedman recognized that “we are not saying that real estate agents created segregation, but the effects of segregation continue and we need to be aware of ways this is happening in our communities.” To read the Long Island Divided article and view the documentary “Testing the Divide,” click here or navigate to newsday.com/divided