NYTimes: Corcoran steered whites to PH

October 11, 2006
Report Alleges Bias by a Real Estate Giant
By JANNY SCOTT

The National Fair Housing Alliance, a consortium of 220 groups and individuals working against housing discrimination, charged yesterday that agents in the Brooklyn Heights office of the city’s largest residential real estate brokerage, the Corcoran Group, had engaged in discriminatory sales practices, including racial steering and withholding information from African-American clients.

“During our 16 years of existence, the National Fair Housing Alliance has never seen such a literal and blatant example of sales steering,” the group wrote in a report detailing its allegations. In that particular instance, the report said, an agent “produced a map of Brooklyn and drew a red outline of the areas in which the white home seeker should consider living.” The agent used arrows to indicate neighborhoods that were “changing.”

“This racial steering tactic is reminiscent of discriminatory conduct from the 1970’s, when real estate agents would go into white neighborhoods with the specific intention of triggering white flight by showing on a map where an African-American family had bought a house,” the alliance wrote. “This Corcoran Group agent applied a new trick — he used a map to tell whites instead where they should ‘flee to.’ ”

Pamela Liebman, president and chief executive officer of Corcoran, said in an interview yesterday that her firm “has always been devoted to fair housing” and recently required all of its agents to undergo four hours of training in fair housing law and practices.

She said, “I have never been given the specific charges as they relate to the Corcoran Group and I anxiously await them as we intend to defend ourselves vigorously.”

She said she could not comment further on the allegations because she had not seen them.

Shanna L. Smith, president of the alliance, said her group conducted the investigation under contract with the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, following up on earlier housing discrimination findings in a 2000 H.U.D. report. She said the alliance has filed a complaint with the housing agency against Corcoran and its parent company, NRT Inc. NRT describes itself as the nation’s largest residential real estate brokerage firm, with companies in more than 35 metropolitan areas and more than 1,000 offices.

In its report, the alliance said the investigation of the Corcoran office “uncovered blatant housing discrimination against African-Americans, as well as steering of whites away from neighborhoods of color and to Prospect Heights, Park Slope, Windsor Terrace, Cobble Hill, Brooklyn Heights and parts of Carroll Gardens.” It said agents withheld from black clients information about incentives, like ways to reduce costs, that it gave to white clients.

The alliance said it conducted the investigation by sending white and African-American “testers” into the office posing as potential home buyers. The black testers were better qualified than the whites, based on income, employment and other factors.

Corcoran announced late last month that it was devoting the month of October to training its agents in the country’s fair housing laws, which prohibit discrimination in housing based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin and other factors. Ms. Liebman, who said she received three days’ worth of “diversity training” in 2003, said that month of training for agents was initiated before Corcoran knew of the alliance’s allegations.