If you were among those agents who attended the Scottsdale REALTORS® 2022 Fair Housing Symposium in February, you witnessed some incredible content — included an eye-opening presentation by Long Island Board of REALTORS® (LIBOR) CEO Tessa Hultz.
After five-and-a-half years as CEO at the Raleigh Regional Association, Hultz joined LIBOR in February of 2019. On November 17th of that year, it was reported that some members of her association were the subject of a three-year, undercover investigation by Newsday called Long Island Divided.
Hultz: “I’ve had a front-row seat to some of the events that have really reinvigorated the focus on fair housing in our real estate industry. We actually started hearing things as early as March of 2019, two weeks after I came onboard.”
Newsday Investigation Results
- 19% of Asian testers received disparate treatment*
- 39% of Hispanic testers received disparate treatment*
- 49% of Black testers received disparate treatment*
*more stringent conditions, fewer listings or steered into different communities than white testers
Hultz: “Receiving some listings, some service doesn’t send up the same red flags that a denial of service does. Unequal treatment with a smile is discrimination that is sometimes hidden from the victim and can only be uncovered by testing.”
Long Island Divided Timeline
- Fall 2018: Newsday sends reporters to attend LIBOR’s Fair Housing classes while concluding a 3-year investigation of agents
- June 2019: Newsday invites brokers to see undercover recordings of their agents
- November 2019: Newsday publishes initial findings; NY State Senate calls public hearing #1, only 1 of 68 invitees appear
- February 2020: NY State Senate subpoenas 25 real estate agents and their brokers
- September 2020: NY State Senate Public Hearing #2; recurring themes arise:
- Number of agents supervised by a broker;
- Office managers not having supervisory obligations or consequences;
- Education requirements and instruction did not go far enough;
- Complete lack of accountability (“No one was fired.” clip here)
- Unequal service can and does go unrecognized by the very people being discriminated against.
Hultz: “Those recurring themes that permeated the hearings drove a pretty big series of new fair housing bills for New York:
- Legislators added supervisory regulations to office managers that were equivalent to a Designated REALTOR® (DR). This does not relieve the DR of any liability but does allow the broker and the office manager to be charged with failure to supervise.
- New York licensees will be required to taking implicit bias and cultural competency classes as part of their continuing education requirements, in addition to expanded fair housing training for all of the new licensees.
- Renewal fees and fines were increased with the surcharge going toward more fair housing testing. Last year, the New York attorney general announced a two-year program with four-and-a-half million dollars available in grant money for local and state fair housing testing organizations.
“Going forward, brokers and agents need to be very cautious about any ‘unnecessary information’ that can lead to fair housing issues. If the information isn’t about the property on offer or the terms of an offer, think long and hard about why you would want to be responsible for introducing it into your real estate transaction.”
Related:
Steer Clear of Steering
Bias Override: Overcoming Barriers to Fair Housing (video)