I don’t normally post on social media, but the events of the past week have catalysed an anger deep inside me that I cannot ignore and feel compelled to share. So here is some of what has been on my mind these past few days:
We all know and say that this country’s original sin was slavery. This is undisputed. However, I want to share another insidious sin this country committed around 75 years ago, a sin whose rotten fruits we are harvesting today and will continue to for some time.
During World War 2, before we declared victory in Europe and the Pacific, our federal government passed the Serviceman’s Readjustment Act of 1944, which most know now as the GI Bill. This bill was designed to ensure that American soldiers would be guaranteed a prosperous life after they returned from the war. One of the most crucial components of the GI Bill was providing servicemen the option to obtain a low-interest, low- or no-down payment 30 year mortgage to buy one of the hundreds of thousands of new, suburban houses being built around the country. Just seven years after the war, 2.4 million of these loans had been made to veterans.
Sounds good, right? Well, this program had one massive, gaping hole in it: these home loans weren’t issued by the government directly. Instead, they were backed by the government, but issued by private lenders. Since this is the 40s and the 50s, hundreds of thousands of black veterans, who had answered the call of duty in the face of fascism and tyranny, were denied these loans by white-run financial institutions. The government that they had fought and spilled blood for didn’t implement protections from racial discrimination, and this was by design to appease Southern Democrats in order to convince them to vote for it.
In addition to our government not looking out for its black veterans in regards to obtaining home loans, it would take Uncle Sam another 30 years from the passage of the first GI Bill to ban the practice of racial covenants. These covenants allowed suburban developers to bar all non-white people from buying property in new neighborhoods, and these restrictions would be passed on to all subsequent owners.
A black veteran returning from World War 2 would have to wait 24 years before he could go into a bank without fear of being legally denied a home loan on the basis of being black. If that wasn’t enough of an injustice, he would have to wait another six years before he could buy a house in any neighborhood without fear of being prevented in doing so on the basis of being black.
As many of you know, I’m a real estate broker. I get to help people through one of the biggest purchases of their lifetime, and all the brokers at my office are wonderful human beings. I got into this industry because it’s exciting, fascinating, and fun. But it wasn’t until after I became a real estate professional that I learned the full extent of this dark, racist history.
In the process of obtaining your real estate license, you’re given a brief history of housing and lending discrimination in the 20th century, and this usually transitions into the laws and ethics that real estate professionals must abide by in both marketing and business activity.
However, these lessons don't touch on why this history is important.
Today, the sum value of America’s residential real estate holdings is hovering around $33 trillion. The vast majority of that wealth has been created since the passing of the GI Bill and the massive expansion of new Levittown-style suburbs. Our government, through multiple and intentional actions, denied black people, black veterans, the ability to access this financial opportunity. To put this into further perspective, we are only one and a half standard length mortgages removed from that codified segregation.
Time and time again, black people have been denied their supposedly “constitutional” rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, and real estate has been no different. If you come from a place of privilege like myself, think of it this way: If you’re my age and don’t own a home, think of all the wealth in your family. How much of that is in the form of your parent’s home, which will be passed on down to you? If you already own your own home, how much of your down payment was paid for by your parents? Or, if you make good money, how much of your college education, which allows you to make good money, was financed by your parent’s home equity? Like I said, Black Americans have only had one generation’s worth of unfettered access to that opportunity. The more I think about the implications of what this country has done, the more I am sickened by it.
Today, I see listings for homes in the Central District and the Rainier Valley, with specific descriptions that describe these neighborhoods. Every time I see an example of this I cringe, because whether the agent who wrote those words knew it or not, they are utilizing the same verbiage that white lenders used to racially classify neighborhoods all those decades ago. As you can see from this map, when the CD was all-black it was “definitely declining”, or “hazardous”. But now that white people have completely flipped the demographics of these same neighborhoods, agents can describe them as “up and coming”, or “trendy”, or even flat out using the word “desirable”, like the racially covenanted white neighborhoods were described at the time.
I don’t want any broker or lender that knows me to think that I’m directly blaming them, because I’m not. However, we as an industry need to realize this: it is absolutely imperative that we acknowledge and come to terms with our historic culpability in the plight that black Americans face today. It is absolutely imperative that we understand how our current conduct affects communities that suffered at the hands of institutionalized property segregation and racism. It is absolutely imperative that we ensure that we reform as an industry going forward, because as we all should know, THIS IS STILL HAPPENING RIGHT NOW.
We all know the terms blockbusting, steering, and redlining, but what do we know about the effects these horrible acts have on the people of color that lived and still do live in the neighborhoods we serve? We need to do better. We can do better.
I didn’t join the protests this past weekend because of my health condition, but my anger has now surpassed my fear of getting COVID-19. I will be marching this week, for George Floyd, and I will be marching this week because #BlackLivesMatter. I hope to see you all there with me too.
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