Housing Discrimination by Race

New York City is one of the most racially segregated cities in the world. This didn’t occur naturally; this was the result of years of laws and real estate practices that allowed this to happen. Housing discrimination is still practiced in New York City and it continues to create divides in the city’s diversity. Specific real estate practices that contribute to this are assigning codes to neighborhoods based on desirability, redlining, and blockbusting. All of these practices essentially go the same way. The real estate broker will determine a person’s race. They use this information to decide which property to rent or not rent based on what will make the broker the most money.

The racial segregation in New York City contributes to the cities large division between the wealthy and the poor. Race and class are very often connected. According to Tom Angotti, ” the majority of African Americans live in northern Manhattan and central Brooklyn, areas that also have high proportions of people living in poverty. Incomes in African American neighborhoods are 55 percent of incomes in white neighborhoods” (New York For Sale 48-49). Racial and wealth divisions in conjunction with the practices that create and sustain these discriminations continue to push poor people of color down.

Housing discrimination, although illegal, still occurs. This advertisement for the fair housing law gives a clear explanation of how real estate brokers control which housing options someone has available based solely on their race. This means many people don’t even have the opportunity to see properties in a neighborhood with better school opportunities, or a park, because the broker has already decided this is not an appropriate area for them.