Brooklyn Housing Discrimination

This is what I call, "good ol' fashioned discrimination"... A black woman calls a real estate agency looking for an apartment, is asked if she is Jewish, replies "no", agent promises to call her back and never does.

This happened to Vanessa Lee in Brooklyn, NY.  The real estate agency is Bais Seller Real Estate in Midwood.  (Switch the letters around in "Bais" and you get "bias"... Coincidence?  I think NOT!)  (Also, I think Midwood is in Queens... No?)

—Feeling something was amiss, Lee told the Fair Housing Justice Center about her experience. The nonprofit conducted a four-month investigation, sending African-American and white testers wearing recording devices to the firm.

The four black testers were asked to fill out forms and told they would be called back. The calls never came. The four white testers, on the other hand, were given solicitous service. A Bais broker, driving one of the white testers around Bensonhurst, allegedly remarked that it was a nice neighborhood because it had “white people” and there were “no drugs, no crimes, no nothing. Mostly Italians and Russians and some Jewish people.”

Lee returned to Bais five months later. A realtor told her about an apartment on Avenue O, then failed to call her back. That same day, a white tester asking for the same type of apartment was shown two, the lawsuit states.



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