Yesterday @Newsday published an extraordinary and damning investigation into the blatant discrimination real estate agents engage in against homebuyers of color, and specifically black homebuyers on Long Island, one US’s of most segregated regions. projects.newsday.com/long-island/re…
The breadth of the investigation and the amount of resources it took are breathtaking, but not as breathtaking as the discrimination they exposed. Black homebuyers faced disparate treatment in nearly 50 percent of the transactions! And the quotes from agents. Wow. 
Real estate agents simply refused to show black and brown homeseekers properties in white areas and steered white homebuyers into white areas often warning them away from black and Latino areas. None of the agencies even operate offices in heavily black and Latino areas.
This practice is called steering. It is the most common discriminatory practice that homeowners face and has been barred under the Fair Housing Act since 1968.
These @Newsday findings reek of the covenants that real estate agents signed in the mid-1900s promising not to sell homes to black people in white areas and to protect the racial homogeneity and exclusivity of white neighborhoods.
This investigation bolsters years of research that show housing segregation — and its cousin, school segregation — has never been about individual choices because black folks, the most segregated group in America, have never experienced a fair and open housing market.
I mean, this quote in one the most educationally segregated suburban areas in the nation says everything.eraseracismny.org/our-work/educa…
And yet as I reported 7 years ago, most agencies charged with enforcing the Fair Housing Act, including HUD and the DOJ, refuse to engage in consistent, widescale testing of discrimination, meaning racial discrimination is allowed to run rampant. propublica.org/article/no-sti…
This is also why any presidential candidates who think they will fix inequality merely with race-neutral economic policies are willfully ignoring easily documented facts on the ground. Kudos to the @Newsday team. I look forward to seeing what enforcement actions govts take.
