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Wednesday 7 October 2009

BIAS IN PRIVATE HOUSING

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BIAS IN PRIVATE HOUSING
New York Times (1857-Current File), Jun 15, 1957;
ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851-2000)

first paragraph:

BIAS IN PRIVATE HOUSING

For years this newspaper has dedicated itself to opposing bigotry. On many a front, covering civil rights of all kinds - to vote, to seek employment, to be educated in the public schools, to gather in public assembly, to live in public housing - we have fought against discrimination for reasons of race, religion or color.

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With this precedent we approach our decision on the Sharkey-Isaacs-Brown bill now pending in the City Council, which proposes to outlaw by statute and to punish with a possible jail term discrimination against potential tenants for reasons of race, color, religion, national origin or ancestry in privately owned multiple dwelling apartments. The bill also forbids discrimination in the sale of houses in the larger developments.

We confess to being troubled as we take the position we feel we must take against this bill. In principle the objectives cannot be opposed. They are admirable. But the method of compulsion is a dubious substitution for education and the admittedly gradual spread of understanding that can be the only foundation of complete neighborliness.

The question of legality we shall leave to the lawyers. This would involve, of course, the constitutional protection not to be 'deprived' of property without due process of law.

But here, as often, we have a conflict of freedoms. There is, on the one hand, the 'right' to live, rent, buy where one will; on the other hand is the right to control the use of property privately owned, complete freedom in the choice of tenant of buyer, the right to expect in leased or purchased quarters a reasonably stable continuation of the surroundings that were obtained in taking residence.

As matters stand, existing state and local laws forbid discrimination in 164,172 dwelling units here. Of these about 20,000 are public housing and the others are projects that have received aid by way of Federal mortgage insurance, state loans or city tax abatement. Statuary prohibition against discrimination in all these units is entirely proper, and in fact imperative. It would be a shocking miscarriage of justice to deny any part of the public equal access to housing for which the whole public pays, in whole or in part, and either by public loan or by subsidy of any kind.

When we come to housing which is completely financed and owned by private individuals or corporations, the situation seems to us to be essentially different. This is not to say that we approve of discrimination in privately owned housing. On the contrary, we deplore such discriminations and particularly the unhealthy social conditions which it has helped to create in certain sections of the city. But progress here, we believe,
must be a matter of education and spiritual growth rather than a consequence of legislation.

The Sharkey-Isaacs-Brown bill would outlaw discrimination in 1,787,183 privately owned flats and apartments. But its exceptions are noteworthy. It will make it wrong to discriminate against rental in multiple dwellings, as defined by law, but it does not forbid discrimination in the rental of one- or two-family homes, or in sale of single family homes unless one owner happens to own ten or more housing accommodations on land that is contiguous.

These exceptions are a complete contradiciton of the policy statement incorporated by way of preamble in the law, which says 'it is necessary to assure to all inhabitants of the city equal opportunity to obtain living quarters'. It means the city will compel owners of private property to make way for everybody in the flats and apartments of Manhattan, for instance, but it will not enforce equal opportunity to tenants or home-buyers generally in Queens. This is discrimination within avowed anti-discrimination, and the aim of its exceptions can only be construed as political.

We do not think that the people of New York have been adequately prepared for the passage of this bill, and we fear that the consequences of its adoption in such circumstances would be a stopping of large-scale construction and a drastic depreciation of property values. We believe that the difficulties of enforcement are enormous, that nuisance cases would be innumerable and that intolerance might be aggravated rather than diminished.

So, with the deepest regret, we oppose this bill as being the wrong way to a right end.


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