Realtors embraced fair housing — at least publicly — following the adoption of the federal Fair Housing Act in 1968, Slater said.
“NAR has been reckoning with this history for awhile,” said Bryan Greene, NAR’s vice president for policy advocacy and the association’s first fair housing policy director. “It’s just been a groundswell of recognition in various communities how real estate policy has affected racial inequality nationally and in various communities.”
Dolores Golden, chief executive of the Multicultural Real Estate Alliance for Urban Change, said the apology is a step toward making a unified effort to support open housing and stamping out redlining, the 20th-century practice of restricting mortgages in minority neighborhoods.Integration fell apart
“In the segregated South, it was government that did the segregating,” said Tom Hogen-Esch, chair of the political science department at Cal State Northridge. “On the West Coast, it was the private sector that was fulfilling the desire for segregated communities. The real estate industry was one of those elements that contributed to racial and class segregation.”