I just read The New York Times article on fair housing, can my broker really not tell me whether a listing is in P.S. 234?
Because I was a child in metropolitan Little Rock when that city underwent tumultous integration (more stories on that later) fair housing is one of my very favorite subjects in the whole world.
Unfortunately, Sunday’s New York Times article by Vivian S. Toy put across the idea that agents — in pursuit of fair housing — can say very little.
And it’s true that you can’t ask your agent to speak in code. It is widely accepted, for instance, that a seller doesn’t put “walk to church” in an ad, because that could be seen as discriminating against non-Christians.
I don’t know whether I believe the same logic translates to school districts, however. In the Times article, Neil Garfinkel, who is counsel to the Real Estate Board of New York, stated that agents shouldn’t mention school districts because they’re a coded way of mentioning race.
Well, my first thought is that it would actually be a giant leap ahead in the fight against racism if racial references actually had to be coded. The current racial discrimination suit against an agent of the Corcoran Group alleges that the agent handed potential homebuyers maps with areas red-lined and said, this is where the white areas are.
For the record, Pam Liebman, CEO of Corcoran, has expressed hope the company would be vindicated and has expressed “zero tolerance” for this sort of thing.
But honestly, it’s a long, long way from discrimination through steering with maps (or what I grew up with, discrimination through violence) to discrimination by telling homebuyers or sellers that a home is in P.S. 234, widely considered to be one of the top school districts in Manhattan.
Also, the makeup of 234 is public information (remember the whole your tax dollars thing?)
It’s available from the New York City Department of Education here . The stats show that 234 is 70.75% white, 16.57% Asian/Pacific Islander, 6.34% Black, 6.20% Hispanic.
If that is not an acceptable level of diversity, we as an entire community — agents and homebuyers and people not in the market, people with kids and people without kids — need to do something about it.
Also, in case you were wondering, the cachement area for 234 is roughly south of Canal Street to Liberty (in other words, Tribeca with the southern edge expanded) running roughly from Broadway to West. (There is a decent map on www.insideschools.org) It’s possible to catch some parts of the Financial District, too, so no matter what your broker says, call the city to check on your zoning.
You can call them about discrimination, too, for that matter: 311.