Mark Winston Griffith

Corcoran Caught with Hand in Discrimination Jar

Oops. Busted!

The National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) dropped a bombshell last week when it released a report that documented how the Corcoran Group, which is part of NRT, Inc., the largest real estate brokerage firm in the country, has maintained a "pattern and practice" of discrimination in Brooklyn. The report details how NFHA's testers revealed that Corcoran real estate agents treated clients differently based on their race:

"Agents provided limited service and information to potential African-American homeseekers, thereby restricting their opportunity to view a number of homes in a variety of neighborhoods where their race does not predominate. In one test, a White homeseeker saw thirteen homes versus only one seen by an African-America...One agent presented a White homeseeker with a sales application, and offered to negotiate a reduced sales price and research alternative living arrangements. The African-American homeseeker received no such service.

"Agents at the Corcoran Group Real Estate were also found to have engaged in racial steering...[O]ne agent produced a map of Brooklyn and drew a red outline of the areas in which the White homeseeker should consider living. He pointed to the neighborhoods of Prospect Heights, Park Slope, Windsor Terrace, Cobble Hill, Brooklyn Heights and parts of Carroll Gardens as attractive neighborhoods for the White homeseeker, and indicated with arrows the neighborhoods that were 'changing.' The agent also noted the high quality of schools in these neighborhoods as further indication of their desirability to the White homeseeker. During our 16 years of existence, the National Fair Housing Alliance has never seen such a literal and blatant example of sales steering...[A] Corcoran Group agent...used a map to tell whites instead where they should 'flee to.'"

For those who over the last few years have kept their eyes on Corcoran, perhaps the most visible symbol of gentrification and racialized real estate development in Brooklyn, this may come as little surprise.

But the National Fair Housing Alliance's larger point is that New York is a disturbingly segregated place. And for those who insist that neighborhood "market" forces, like the ones that determine where people live and, by extension, the quality of services available to them, are blind and dispassionate, this report should come as a rude awakening.

One of NFHA's recommendations is that there should be a nation-wide testing and investigation program that would help keep racial steering and discrimination in check. Unfortunately, when it comes to those who move real estate around like pieces on a chess board, too few can be trusted to do the right thing.

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Posted at 8:06 AM, Oct 20, 2006 in
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