The Fair Housing Act of 1968, which aimed to eliminate housing discrimination and promote equal housing opportunity, was enacted. Still, racial discrimination and widening gaps in the real estate industry are found on Long Island, New York, based on recent investigations by Newsday. This paper aims to analyze whether or not these actions can be deemed egregious violations of the Fair Housing Act and what new laws should be adopted to eliminate discrimination.
Violation of the Fair Housing Act
While going through the Long Island real estate practices, Newsday encountered troubling signs of discrimination against minority property buyers. Agents typically directed their white clients to heavily white areas whenever paired work was conducted with undercover testers of a different ethnicity. In contrast, minority testers were either diverted to mixed-raced locations or told to avoid majority-minority towns (James Stewart, 2019). Fair Housing Act forbids discrimination in housing based on race, color, religion, sex, familial status, national origin, or disability; such acts of discrimination are compatible with the abovementioned behaviors. This research concludes that, despite equal access to housing in the USA, some citizens still need help obtaining housing opportunities. That is why stronger laws and regulations are necessary to eliminate inequalities in the US housing market.
Instances of Discrimination
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Disparate Treatment
According to (James Stewart, 2019), in 38% of the situations they were in, Black testers experienced different treatment than their white counterparts, and 49% of the time, whites also saw a variant behavior. Even though there were fewer barriers, 19% of tests showed indications of prejudice towards Asian buyers.
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Steering
Real estate agents would resort to things like racial and ethnic profiling to point the white clients to primarily white neighborhoods and the minority clients to predominantly minority neighborhoods.
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Inadequate Training
It was a common occurrence that real estate brokers received biased, incomplete, or wrong information in their state-mandated continuing education programs as concerns regulation of fair housing.
Need for Additional Legislation
The presence of discriminatory practices in the housing market even after the Fair Housing Act is another reminder of the need for more lawful provisions to eliminate structural social injustices and provide equal housing opportunities to everyone. Lawmakers could take such measures as
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Enhanced Enforcement
We need more effective enforcing mechanisms and large amounts of money to detect housing discrimination to perform detailed testing.
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Improved Training
To meet the responsibility and rules of fair housing, real estate brokers are required to undertake obligatory training,e training.
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Increased Penalties
Fair housing legislation must prescribe severe penalties for disobeyers, and consequently, more consequences on violators should be imposed to prevent discriminatory activities and promote fair treatment in the housing market.
In conclusion, the persistent problems faced by individuals when trying to gain fair and equal access to housing for all became evident after the recent investigative study on discriminatory behaviors in the real estate market of Long Island in New York. The next step should be more legislation to address systemic injustices and to ensure that every person, regardless of race and origin, has equal housing opportunities. Nevertheless, the Fair Housing Act is a positive move in that direction. The policymakers are looking forward to a housing market wherein people with varying backgrounds can all afford an inclusive and equitable place to live by enforcing, training, and raising the penalties for infractions.
References
James Stewart. (2019, November 17). Go inside agents’ fair housing training: Experts say it needs to be more accurate and complete. Newsday. https://projects.newsday.com/long-island/real-estate-fair-housing-training/#break
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