(upbeat music) - I'm Jasmine Anderson.

In 2019, Newsday published a groundbreaking investigation, Long Island Divided.

Our journalists spent three years documenting interactions between real estate agents and potential home buyers.

That reporting became one of the nation's most concentrated real estate investigations in nearly 50 years.

And it uncovered widespread evidence of separate and unequal treatment of racial minorities shopping for homes on Long Island.

We're joined now by Keith Herbert and Olivia Winslow, reporters on the project.

Olivia, I'll begin with you.

What did the investigation find?

Thank you, Jasmine.

Generally speaking, Newsday found evidence of widespread, disparate treatment of potential minority home buyers.

Specifically, Newsday conducted 86 what's called matching pair tests.

We found in 40% of the 86 tests, that's 34 tests, the evidence suggested real estate agents subjected minority testers to disparate treatment compared to their white counterparts.

Newsday used a process called paired testing to uncover the findings.

Keith, explain what paired testing is and how Newsday utilized this in the investigation.

What it involves is matching would-be home buyers of different races to engage with a real estate agent to see if both sides of the pair are treated equally and fairly from a real estate agent's perspective.

You want people of the same gender, you want them to have similar backstories, how much they earn, how much they have for a down payment, so that you get a measure of equal treatment after the test.

Olivia, how much training did the testers go through?

We utilized the Fair Housing Justice Center in Long Island City, an organization that has the nation's most extensive paired testing experience.

They trained our testers.

They had multiple hours of training sessions, multiple day-long training sessions for our testers.

In addition, a member of the Fair Housing Justice staff helped develop testing protocols for Newsday's investigations and assisted in analyzing the tests.

You also used actors as well.

We used actors.

You know, we went on backstage to recruit people.

We went to -- We had an academic professor who was one of our testers, a university professor, a lawyer, just a range of people who helped -- white, black, Hispanic, and Asian.

As a companion to Newsday's coverage, we also produced an award-winning doc called "Testing the Divide."

Let's watch.

[ Background noise ] >> My name is Jesus Rivera.

Today is the 21st of April.

>> It's about 10 after 2 and I'm in my car.

>> So it's Richard Helling testing as Pat Browning on May 3rd.

>> Hello.

>> Hi.

>> Hi.

My name is Kelvin Tune.

How are you doing?

>> Kelvin too?

Yeah, it's Kelvin.

Me and my wife are looking to purchase a home, which is a purple area.

They were ordinary Long Islanders.

We're gonna get some water, okay?

And we sent them to meet with real estate agents to ask about buying their first home.

Nice to meet you.

Good morning.

>> Good.

Nice to meet you.

They were trained, confident, and followed scripts.

Tag end, Stephen Makropoulos as Nicholas Paris They had no idea what houses agents would suggest, or even which communities.

You're not going to like those schools.

You don't want to go there, it's a mixed neighborhood.

Mixed neighborhood.

If agents are courteous and professional, how can you know that they're treating you equally compared with someone of a different race or ethnicity?

I have to say it without saying it, you know.

Behind smiles and handshakes, how do you know if they're giving you fewer options or suggesting different areas?

I'm not going to send you anything in Wyandanch unless you don't want to start your car to buy your crack.

Or that rules don't apply to you and another home buyer in the same way.

Yeah, oh, I definitely need that.

Long Island is one of America's most segregated suburbs.

Newsday set out to discover what role real estate agents might play in keeping it that way, potentially affecting the quality of lives.

Technically, as a real estate agent, we shouldn't tell the buyers... In house hunting, it's nearly impossible to see evidence of hidden discrimination.

You would never know unless you go undercover.

In one test, Johnnie Mae Alston was the Black tester and Cindy Parry was the white tester.

And they met with Anne Marie Queally Beachon at Signature Premier Properties Office in Cold Spring Harbor.

They asked for the same thing.

As often happens, the agent discussed getting pre-qualified or pre-approved for a mortgage by a bank, showing how much a buyer can spend on a house.

Are you pre-qualified?

I asked you... I guess.

My husband's working with somebody in a bank.

We've done some preliminary talks, you know, about getting pre-approval.

Neither had been pre-approved or pre-qualified.

Here's what the agent told the Black tester.

So I really need that.

I won't take out anyone unless you have a prequalification letter.

So I need to know that you're pre-qualified for a mortgage.

Oh, so that means I can't go out to see anything.

I won't do it.

You can try another person, but I don't have the time.

And without pre-approval, here's what the agent told the white tester.

What is your availability?

Where can we start looking at housing?

I would say not this coming week.

Cindy received 79 listings from this agent.

Johnnie Mae couldn't get any listings.

And Cindy, the white tester, received two home tours.

Yeah.

They had the same finances, the same budget, and they made the same request in the same area.

But one was white, the other was Black.

The agent treated them differently.

Quealy Beachon did not respond to a letter, calls, and emails.

Her agency's signature premier properties co-owner and two branch managers viewed the recordings and declined to comment.

A three-year undercover Newsday investigation revealed evidence of widespread hidden discrimination by real estate agents brokering home sales across Long Island.

For Hispanic home seekers, evidence of unfair treatment emerged 39% of the time.

For Asians, the rate was 19%.

Black house hunters in the investigation risked unequal, lesser access to homes and communities just about half the time when compared to white buyers.

[music] Kelvin Toon is a Black man in his early 50s, and he went in to meet with an agent involving a test in the Brentwood community, a community that is 80% Hispanic and Black.

The agent communicated to Kelvin, our Black tester, that she enjoyed meeting with clients from the Brentwood area.

Every time I get a new listing in Brentwood or a new client, I get so excited because they're the nicest people.

When we sent Kelvin's counterpart in to meet with the same agent, the white tester was actually warned about Brentwood not being a nice place.

The nursing home we need to be near is in Brentwood.

And so we found a couple that are in Brentwood.

Pretty close to each other.

Okay.

And it just seemed like those would be handy also for going to visit.

Do you want to give me them and I'll look into them for you?

Yeah, yeah, I can do that.

That warning came later to the white testers saying there was concern about gang activity going on in Brentwood.

[ music ] This agent wanted the white tester to know, but that information wasn't provided to Kelvin, the Black tester.

The listings centered Black tester Kelvin in Brentwood with 27 house listings, while the white tester got zero listings in Brentwood and was directed towards much whiter neighborhoods.

Vickery said she had warned only the white tester about gang activity because she had not been aware of it when she met with the Black tester, despite widespread media coverage.

She also said her business partner, Jean Gillen, sent the listings to the Black tester.

Gillen said the listings were unquestionably prepared based on Vickery's criteria and that Vickery may have sent the listings using Gillen's email.

She said she didn't know the race of the Black tester until she met him later on a house tour.

Keller Williams, which was their employer at the time, released this statement.

"Keller Williams does not tolerate discrimination of any kind.

All complaints of less than exemplary conduct are addressed and resolved."

Newsday conducted 86 tests that matched white and black, white and Hispanic, and white and Asian buyers.

We focused on agents associated with the 12 brands that represented more than half of the island's home sellers in 2017.

The primary question was whether the agents provided equal service.

Was one tester provided more listings than the other?

Also, where were those listings placed?

Did the agent recommend similar neighborhoods to both testers?

Here in Test 56, the agent Frederick Wallenmaier provided the testers with comparable listings.

In my eyes, you're a buyer, you're a buyer.

I wanted to give the potential buyer a more diverse look and background of the Hamptons and what they like.

The same two testers from number 56 met with a different agent, Kevin Getty, in test 59.

And despite asking for the same parameters, they received disparate listings.

The Hispanic community came in and they really took over Springs and Northwest Woods area.

In an email, Getty described his statement about the Hispanic community as out of context, adding, "I apologize for the remark and I look forward to continually improving in order to serve all of my clients with respect."

He added the statement, "does not represent who I am as a person and does not reflect my professional commitment to treat everyone, clients, family and friends, equally and with respect."

As permitted by law, Newsday recorded all meetings between testers and agents and then transcribed the recordings.

Here an agent gives conflicting advice about Freeport.

I like Freeport.

Now you have a bad school district and that's not good for resale value.

Matching those tests, mapping the listings, and relying on the judgment of fair housing experts, you start to get a picture of whether an agent, or more importantly, agents at large across Long Island, engaged in different treatment of testers.

All the school bus, see the moms that are hanging out on the corners.

But you don't want to go on that, it's a mixed network.

Mini United Nations.

Because you might be more comfortable in a certain demographic area that isn't heavily one way or another in terms of the people.

Bayshore has two school districts, Brentwood and Bayshore.

You don't want to have Brentwood school districts.

You want to have Bayshore school districts.

I can't say anything, but I encourage you, I want you to go there at 10 o'clock, midnight if you want to buy diapers.

Go to that 7-Eleven.

They didn't buy them.

No, that's great.

I have to say it without saying it, you know, you have the knowledge of the areas.

Yes.

I don't want to use the word "steer" when I try to edge out.

No, listen, absolutely.

>> If you're not getting the same information, then something is definitely wrong.

How do you prove that in the heart of this agent or in the mind of this agent, they did steer you someplace?

So you're just at the mercy of the realtor to do the right thing.

There's no way of proving it.

Unless they're testers.

I'm looking to speak to an agent about purchasing a home.

I'm an agent.

I can talk to you.

Oh, great.

New York is a one-party state, which means that only one party to a conversation has to consent to a recording.

So men had body cams affixed to their chest.

It was a buttonhole camera.

Women used cameras hidden in their purses.

That allowed us to record as evidence what transpired between the testers and the agents.

The tester would have to memorize the details of the profile.

What was your name again?

Patrick.

Are you pre-qualified?

No, not yet.

That's a tough one.

We're both new.

How did you hear about us?

You guys are close to the city.

I mean, we went over and over again.

What's your tester name?

What's your age?

How much money do you have in the bank?

What's your credit score?

How long you've been working at your employer?

What's your wife's occupation?

What's your child's name?

All to build their confidence so that when they hit the street, you were ready to go out with the recording equipment.

They were ready to play that role.

Well, the testers were a diverse group of people-- white, black, Hispanic, and Asian.

They range from a 20-year-old college student to '60s pro bono attorney.

We did make use of a significant number of actors.

The things actors do for work, it's really-- When the tester beats with the agent, they're basically saying in broad terms what their housing search is.

So I just need her to get to Penn Station within an hour.

When you send in a tester, they have no idea what's happening on the other half of the test or what their counterpart experienced when they went to the same agent at the same agency.

It was really unique and interesting for us to bring the testers together and tell them what happened.

It's definitely different.

I see it more visually.

It makes me feel sad that this is a person who's a gatekeeper.

I mean, she's telling him, "These are some of the nicest clients I've ever worked with," etc., etc.

She's steering me away from that, and not only in the listing she sent me, but also in telling me that about the gang violence.

Okay, so I don't come back until we get that.

Yeah.

Okay.

I definitely need that.

She couldn't even take me out until I got approval.

Oh, was I lied to?

I was lied to, walked over, stomped.

I'm starting to wonder if maybe they're doing that 'cause they think that's where you'll feel comfortable.

I thought it was all about money, to be honest.

That's the way the world works.

This country is based on money.

If I come to you with a certain amount of money to get a house, give me the same house that you're gonna give her, we have the same amount of money, why not?

So I didn't expect, "Oh, you go there because you're Spanish, and you go there because you're white."

I didn't expect that at all.

To determine whether there was potential evidence of fair housing violations, we relied on the judgment of two nationally recognized experts in the fair housing field.

I've coordinated more than 12,000 investigations across the country.

I have personally done over 1,500 tests.

I've been named as a witness in 400 fair housing lawsuits, and I've testified 56 times in state and federal courts around the country.

So yes, I have some experience.

My name is Bob Schwemm.

I'm a law professor at the University of Kentucky, and I've been a law professor for a long number of years.

All we're asking in these tests, you've got two people who come in and ask for exactly the same thing.

Why don't you give them the same listing?

Why don't you pre-qualify them in exactly the same way?

It's not that big a burden.

Most commonly, the experts found evidence of potential steering or directing two testers to disparate neighborhoods based on race or ethnicity.

-Carlo?

-Yeah.

-How are you?

Russ.

-How you doing?

We're either waiting for the owner or waiting for the agent to show up.

You don't want to be, I don't think you should be in Elmont.

I think you should probably just be Franklin Square.

And I remember specifically he talked about steering.

Yes, that's what he said.

"Steering," yeah.

And in the same breath he mentioned, well steering is bad, but this is what I'm going to do.

There's something called "steering."

You know steering, you know like steering.

Oh like a car or something?

No, like a horse even.

In Test 78, experts saw evidence both of steering and of the denial of equal service.

That agent declined to view recordings as invited by Newsday, and the owner of Realty Connect USA did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Steering is a practice where real estate agents or others essentially discourage people from considering certain housing opportunities or neighborhoods based upon their race or national origin or some other factor and it perpetuates segregation and this practice has been illegal since the fair housing laws were passed.

Agents can steer through words, it can be done through actions.

Without the prospects knowing it, I'm just giving the white prospect listings in a white area.

It's really amazing how people can really express to a realtor what they desire and yet they still get taken to where the realtor desires to take them.

Really in Realtor 101, you do learn that it's against the law to steer.

Steering has some devastating consequences.

For the consumer, it limits their housing choice to certain areas.

It locks people out of communities.

It can deny people of all races the opportunity to enjoy the social, professional, and personal benefits of living in an integrated community.

And it sends a disgraceful message to African American people that the real estate industry, or at least some within the real estate industry, still view them as less worthy.

The home buying experience for blacks was a sharply different experience than it was for whites in our testing.

The identification part really shocks me.

In one test, Black tester Lisa Culpa was asked for ID.

What else?

I do need a copy of your license.

Oh.

>> The thing is because I've gone on so many tests where they have never asked me for ID, why would they need ID?

>> All right, but this is a routine, I mean this is something that's not unusual.

Yes.

No, no, that's what we do with everyone.

You know, if you want to give it, you give it.

If you don't, you don't.

But don't forget, I'm going out with a stranger also, you know, so we just asked for identification.

That didn't happen when her white matched pair counterpart went in to the same agent and asked for the same criteria.

All of these surrounding areas are great, and they're great for your commute, and they're great for your husband.

And Lisa's listings were in more diverse neighborhoods like Hicksville and East Meadow.

Her white counterparts listings were in more white communities.

Petrelli declined to comment.

We conducted 39 match tests involving Black testers.

In 19 of those tests, the Black tester experienced unequal treatment.

That is 49 percent of the time.

Being Black, you have to prove yourself four times over.

You have to prove that you deserve what you get.

- As Black testers, they were getting directed to more diverse neighborhoods, or that they weren't getting equal service compared with their white counterparts.

If I go into a real estate office and I say, I'm looking for a house in this price range, I work for this employer and I make this kind of money, generally my word is taken.

Is it possible for you to start sending me some listings?

I can send you listings in those areas.

And I'm not asked to show pay stubs.

I'm not asked to go get pre-qualified by a lender.

I'm not asked to do a variety of things.

So you need that?

Definitely.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Can't even look at listings or anything?

I wouldn't know what to show you.

It suggests that African Americans and other people of color are not always taken at their word for what they can afford.

It certainly has major consequences for that person and their opportunity to obtain housing.

On your pre-approval, start with pre-approval.

Do you have your pre-approval?

Torres asked both testers about pre-approval or pre-qualification multiple times, but only required it from the Black tester.

He even gives the white tester a home tour.

"You have an outside entrance."

When asked to comment on the tests, Torres responded saying, "One seems a little bit more eager than the other.

That's the bottom line.

Sometimes you may make a decision that may be interpreted incorrectly.

That's the only thing I can tell you."

Torres also said he has adopted a firmer policy.

"So now if you don't have a pre-approval, I'm not going to show you a house."

The founder of Charles Rutenberg Realty, Joseph Moshe, viewed Newsday's recordings and offered no comment.

"I said, 'Do you really want your future children to go to Amityville School District?'"

"I'm going to try and stay away from Freeport, Roosevelt, Hempstead, for now because of the school districts."

"This part, the Salisbury part, this is the Salisbury part."

"Okay."

"It's in demand because the schools are much, much, much better."

In Newsday's 86-pair test, agents often applied a laser-like focus on school districts, highlighting their perceived quality when recommending places that house hunters should consider buying or avoid.

Fair housing experts say touting or disparaging school districts can put agents in jeopardy because talking about school districts can be taken as a euphemism for race.

There's a few districts that I know I would like not like I won't look in those towns you know like Freeport and Baldwin and Amityville which is part of Massapequa schools but it's just certain parts of Massapequa.

Ross declined comment.

A lawyer for Ross at her present employer Douglas Elliman said Ross never referenced race and was merely speaking to her understanding of school ratings.

If the customer asked about the quality of the schools and the agent responded with accurate information, I think the agent would be fine.

The problem with talking about differentials in schools is that at least in the last 10 or 15 years, that has been a proxy for race.

They don't mention the race of the community.

Good schools are available in these areas.

Those areas I'd stay away from because they have poor schools.

I want to ask, did you tell that to the other tester?

If you're only giving that information to one tester of the two and the only difference is the race, then you've provided what I call differential service.

If you're in Massapequa, you only want school district 23.

You don't want six in Massapequa because that takes in Amityville and you're not going to like those schools.

It's really a strange phenomenon on Long Island that these lines have been created.

They know.

Hi, how are you?

It's interesting, within blocks of each other, you can find that we've artificially created these school districts.

I have no idea who drew them, but try to move them, and you will have World War III.

Nassau County is divided into more small little pockets of municipalities and school districts than almost any other county in the country.

And that definitely exacerbates the segregation that we see on Long Island.

They may have some test score data, but even when you control on test score data, they're still more likely, if you're a white home buyer, to choose the predominantly white and/or Asian school district, even without ever stepping foot in the other school district, which could have tremendous teachers and leadership and other things.

Altogether, agents provided Newsday's testers with 5,763 listings.

The agents' choices formed patterns.

They provided white buyers with high proportion of listings in Rockville Center, Merrick and Levittown, communities that are predominantly white.

They selected Huntington, an area with a growing Hispanic population, for Hispanic buyers five times more frequently than they chose for white buyers.

He got something like 30 listings in Huntington and Huntington Station, and I got three.

Most starkly, for buyers of all backgrounds, the agents from Long Island's 12 largest brands almost entirely avoided suggesting houses in predominantly minority communities.

These areas that we identified were unique because they showed up on the map as not having many dots in these geographic areas.

But that doesn't mean there weren't listings available in those neighborhoods.

There certainly were on the days that we sent testers in, and there were multiple opportunities for agents to provide homes in these areas that they didn't take advantage of.

I've been practicing here for 18 years and I've never had the experience of seeing an agent from the North Shore or the South Shore bringing in a Caucasian looking for a home in the Hempstead area.

Something else we learned from public records, the 12 largest brands have no offices in Long Island's predominantly minority communities.

A homeowner would have to travel somewhere else to meet with an agent at one of their offices.

Long Island has a growing minority population.

Overall, it's becoming more diverse.

But the community divisions, the racial segregation that separates the 2.3 million people on the island persist.

These divisions are part of Long Island's history.

[ music ] Fair housing for all, all human beings is now a part of the American way of life.

A half century after the enactment of America's landmark civil rights law, the Fair Housing Law, Long Island remains a persistently segregated society, and it seems completely embedded in the social fabric of Long Island.

Through the 1960s and into the 70s, it wouldn't be uncommon for a Black home seeker to have the door slammed in their face at a real estate office, or to be sent to another real estate office in a more diverse neighborhood.

The real estate agent in Huntington in 1969, he says it would be very difficult for you as an African, as a Black, a Negro as we were called then, to get a house in a neighborhood that's not Black, all Black.

He told me that, flat out.

I'm surprised that I was completely excluded from an entire area.

Like, I wonder what it is about Levittown that I wouldn't be interested, but Richard would be.

Long Island was established as a white township, basically.

I mean, Levittown, suburbia, Levittown.

This was the beginning of major suburbia after World War II.

It was financed to provide housing for veterans in World War II.

But African Americans could not live in Levittown.

We were looking for a place of our own.

At the time I saw an ad for homes in Levittown.

We looked at the house.

I went up to the salesman and I said to him, "We're interested in buying the house."

He looked at me, paused for a while, and he looked at me and he said, "Listen, it's not me.

But the owners of this establishment has not, at this time, decided to sell to Negroes."

Mr.

Leavitt required restrictive racial covenants on the leases of the Levittown properties.

It was formed that way as a protection against having desegregation.

And it was, you have to remember that this all was occurring in the 50's right after Brown vs.

Board of Education.

So there was no interest in having that community desegregated.

And while Levittown today has a growing minority population, it's still 1% Black.

And our testing found that of all listings provided in Levittown, agents gave 80% of them to white buyers.

We moved to Long Island in 1954.

Unfortunately, that bliss didn't last very long because the village of Rockville Center decided they were going to have an urban renewal.

You could see what the game plan was and we were helpless to do anything about it.

Our home was the first home to be destroyed.

And so that was the end of our peaceful and country style life in Rockville Center.

And 60 years later in our testing we found AGE has provided 91% of Rockville Center listings to white buyers.

It's gone so the whole episode I try not to think about.

You know you you would have incidents of race which I had in my youth but you never would expect that not in New York.

In fact while I was in the service we used to tease fellows from the South the kind of stuff that you have to put up with Mississippi and South Carolina and so forth.

We don't have to put up with that in New York.

That ain't gonna happen.

But it did.

How were you feeling in that moment when the salesman, you know, he hesitates and finally tells you that they're not selling to Negroes?

Devastated.

It shaped who I am to this day.

As opposed to 50 years ago, the reality of racism today, a lot of it's underground, clandestine, it's covert.

There's no way for me to ever find out unless there's a pair testing, as in this case.

It almost makes me wish that the racism is more explicit so that I would know about it.

Too often I hear people who don't, maybe aren't as familiar with this kind of work say, "Oh, they were just testers."

But all you have to do is tell someone, which I have to do on a fairly regular basis, that you were turned down because of your race, and tell them the circumstances that occurred on a particular test, and you will see just how real and painful that injury is.

"Elmont, you know, it's OK, it's good, you're very close to the city.

Some of them are not as nice, Elmont... I do remember him, he was nice and I do remember him pointing out on the map.

Oh, he loved that map.

I remember that.

Yeah, he had the map and he's like, you know.

Some of these towns, in my opinion, are not necessarily the greatest in terms of school district, safety, you know, crime, resale.

Hubbard said that he based his statements about communities on a website that purports to ascribe livability indexes, including crime statistics.

Newsday discovered that the data behind the crime indexes was flawed.

I think they're nice towns.

I was brought up in Elmont, so I don't know.

That kind of hurts my feelings.

People are judgmental.

I didn't expect to reach my age and not have a country that was basically salt and pepper integration.

This is a law.

This should be treated like a tax law or any other law.

You have to obey this law, and particularly if you're in a licensed business like real estate agents.

If you can't obey the law, you ought to just get out.

When you say to a real estate agent, "You have to take three hours of fair housing," they're going to go, "Ugh."

A question remained for us.

If 39% of our tests revealed evidence of fair housing violations, might there be a flaw in agent training?

New York State mandates 22.5 hours of continuing education every two years for agents to remain licensed.

We observed six of these courses.

So the Long Island Board of Realtors offers state-mandated training in fair housing for real estate agents and brokers.

This is a recording of Lagos' current president, Diane Scalza, teaching fair housing last year.

They say everybody comes from the same two places in Africa.

So like, we're related.

We may not look alike.

But deep down inside, you're still my sister.

She spent less than 20 minutes discussing fair housing.

And if we could just treat people with that kind of kindness.

It would be wonderful.

Ok, so fair housing, I think we covered that.

(laughing) I just want to make sure you get everything you're entitled to.

An expert who reviewed a transcript of the class called it shockingly thin in content.

Scalza told Newsday she is deeply committed to providing equal opportunities to all home buyers.

She said of her fair housing instruction, quote, "Can I do it better?

I'm teaching a long time, I'm sure I can.

Do I want to?

Without a doubt."

Here's another trainer, Donald Scanlon, explaining fair housing laws in his class.

I'm really, I'm trying to share with you how not to get caught.

And the way not to get caught is not to violate the law.

And the way not to violate the law, is to know what the law is.

Then if you do get caught, then it's your choice.

I'm telling you the speed limit out here is 55 miles an hour.

If you choose to do 65 miles an hour, that's your choice.

You're going to make the decision whether you want to do 65 miles an hour.

Generally, when you see one of Suffolk's finest there on the road, you tend to be more compliant so that you don't get caught.

Scanlon sat down with Newsday to discuss our findings.

But I'm certainly open and my fiancé said, "Well Don, you know, they might even consider, you know, that you're saying that it's okay to do 65 miles an hour as long as you don't get caught."

No, it's not okay.

That's not what I had meant.

But if some people interpreted that, then I'm going to have to perhaps readjust the way I cover fair housing.

Of the six courses we observed, experts found that only Nicholas Gigante's met the fair housing training guidelines.

Because maybe realtors are either discriminating against certain peoples, or were asked by the buyers and sellers to discriminate.

I mean I'm sure all of you have your stories, where you ran into a homeowner that said, "Oh, we can't bring those people over here.

I don't want to sell to those people.

Oh no, no, this is a Christian neighborhood.

You can't bring anybody else but the Christians here."

Is that happening today?

Yes.

>> Yeah, how could that possibly happen?

You know, as an instructor, you can teach them all day long, and then once they leave that room, they hopefully do the right thing.

But we don't follow them around.

You know, they have some responsibilities on their own as licensees to stay within the law.

I think one of the reasons why DOS mandated three hours of fair housing every two years is because they know it's an issue.

And you had an experience with a homeowner in Dix Hills.

I wonder if you could tell me about that.

It was a seller.

He wanted me to really represent him.

He just got to one point where he said, "Roy, I just want you to make sure that you do not bring Black people to the house."

And I was stunned, first of all, being that I was Black and we're not over the phone.

He's just looking straight at me.

But no, I don't want any Black people to come into the neighborhood.

And he started to talk about the neighbors and how they would look at it and how they would look at him in selling a home to a Black family and so on.

He was really so blown up in his mind that it would be such a negative, negative thing.

Of course I didn't take the listing.

He had something about, "We're not putting Black people in the house."

We're asked to steer.

>> How often?

On a daily basis.

Well, it's just like how people get away with doing 65 miles an hour here on Sunrise Highway.

How do they get away with it?

There's just not enough enforcement.

There's not enough people pulling us over.

The enforcement of this law relies substantially on its victims.

And in steering in particular, I think its victims often don't know they've been victimized.

As a Black person, you always feel like somebody's trying to take advantage of you.

But when I went to these places, I really didn't think about that, you know, because everybody was so nice.

That's why it becomes a mystery to people until they actually see what happens when people of other races or national origins encounter this problem.

How would I be aware of any of these things if there wasn't this sort of testing going on?

It also portends a more serious problem for our society because if the dominant kind of discrimination in the marketplace is the variety where African-Americans and Latinos and others are unaware they're being discriminated against, no complaint is going to be filed and the discrimination simply continues.

You have to be more proactive with your enforcement.

If I wasn't on this project, I would have never known how well she was treated.

That's because you don't see the other side.

There's no way I would know this was taking place.

I had no inkling that any of this was going on, any of this covert discrimination.

You know, life goes on and years change and you think that things are changing, but basically they're staying the same.

It's just that nobody's like making a big fuss over it.

Everybody wants a nice place, a nice home.

Everybody wants the same thing.

Reza Amir Amiryavari and Margaret Petrelli did not respond to requests for comment.

Diane Leyden at Laffey Real Estate did not respond to requests for comment.

Both Sanghvi and Century 21 American Homes declined to comment.

O'Brien did not respond to requests for comment.

Coach Realtors owners Lawrence Finn, Georgiana Finn, and Whitney LaCosta viewed video recordings of the tests but declined to comment.

RE/MAX agent Joy Tuxson did not respond to requests for comment.

RE/MAX LLC said in a statement, "We have spoken with the franchise owners whose agents were included in the inquiry and are confident they have taken this matter seriously and are committed to following the law and promoting levels of honesty, inclusivity, and professionalism in real estate."

Etri declined to comment.

Maurando did not respond to requests for comment.

Her company, Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage, wrote in an email statement covering Miranda and other agents, "Incidents reported by Newsday that are alleged to have occurred more than two years ago are completely contrary to our long-term commitment and dedication to supporting and maintaining all aspects of fair and equitable housing.

We take this matter seriously and have addressed the alleged incidents with the salespersons.

Maura McDermott also worked on the project and is joining us now.

Maura, did this investigation lead to any change within Long Island's real estate industry and nationwide?

Absolutely.

I've talked to people in the real estate industry and in the fair housing world, and what they say is this was a turning point.

They say that it's led to massive changes at the local level and at the national level.

So at the local level, New York passed a package of nine new laws that did things like doubling fines for discrimination.

And also the local realtors group overhauled its fair housing training program.

In addition to that, at the national level, the powerful National Association of Realtors apologized for what it said was the first time for a history of real estate discrimination.

There was examples of steering throughout the dock that we watched.

Were any of the agents or agencies held accountable?

Yes, they were.

So the New York State Agency that regulates the real estate industry actually revoked the licenses of three of the agents who were involved in Long Island Divided.

It suspended the licenses of seven agents and it fined ten agents.

Keith, I want to bring you back into the conversation.

Has enforcement of fair housing laws gotten better?

Well, that's kind of a value judgment about whether it's gotten better or not since Long Island Divided.

I don't know, but I do know there are plenty more resources around for the state government and local governments to do testing.

And there's much more training of real estate agents about how to effectively market a home without violating the fair housing laws.

And that goes down to the local level here.

We have two counties with human rights organizations that are also empowered to look after fair housing standards.

So you have the Attorney General, as Maura mentioned, that increased the resources available to local fair housing groups to go out and do testing.

Whether that's actually happened or not, I'm not certain.

Perhaps it has.

But even more so than whether or not there's more testing and the quality of it, the consciousness about fair housing standards being applied to whoever's shopping for a home has been raised since Long Island Divided published four or five years ago.

Maura, if I could bring you into this, the fair housing training, we see in the doc that they're learning maybe some illegal things.

What has been done to try to change this or does it still remain?

Oh, there's been massive changes in the way that training takes place.

So there has been a very large increase in the amount of training that's required for real estate agents in order to maintain their licenses.

But in addition, there's also been a change in the kinds of training that are required.

So now some of the things that are required are things like training in something called implicit bias.

So that's bias that somebody might not even be aware of while they're perpetrating it.

And in addition to that, one of these new laws that was put into place imposes new fees on real estate agents when they get a new license or when they renew their license, and those fees go to fund increased testing.

Olivia, I want to bring you back into the conversation.

What was the reaction from the community to Long Island Divided?

Politically, New York State Senate and Assembly held a hearing at Hofstra University to talk about the issues that the Long Island Divided project brought up.

Then county officials talked about bolstering, adding to their human rights commissions to engage in enforcement.

Interestingly, one of the, and that was something, even though enforcement was something that should have been done for decades, it hadn't been.

I think the previous time Nassau County, the Nassau County District Attorney at the time in the 1980s, I think, conducted his own fair housing investigation, but nothing had been done.

Not much had been done statewide.

And so there was a lot of interest.

And then people brought up their experiences.

Even political leaders talked about what they now recognize as discriminatory treatment that their families experienced when trying to get housing on Long Island.

So that was interesting.

What were some of the key takeaways?

I would say that in the aftermath of Long Island Divided, I think that not only the awareness of the fact that this was happening, but also the awareness of the impact that it has.

One of the impacts that it has is on allowing people to create generational wealth, the kind of generational wealth that people accumulate when they own houses and are able to pass those houses down to the next generation.

I think that that's something that people became much more aware of.

I think people also became much more aware of the kinds of penalties and other negative impacts that can come when real estate agents do practice discrimination.

There was a statistic that I think came out of your reporting, Maura, that there had only been fewer than a half dozen enforcement cases in New York State for discrimination with respect to fair housing.

After Long Island divided, that number, including the cases that we uncovered, was like 40.

So that's a monumental leap when it comes to the government enforcing fair housing standards and holding real estate agents accountable for this type of conduct in the housing market.

So when we talk about the impact, that's one.

But as Maura mentioned as well, sort of the consciousness of fair housing in people's mind when they interact with real estate agents on both sides of the table may be long out of the table.

And that's the reason why it's the strongest impact.

If I could add, I guess it's the implicit bias that the project brought to the fore.

This isn't the type, this kind of potential discrimination isn't like the discrimination of old in the 1960s where people would say you can't live here.

If a Black person brought a house in a white neighborhood, sometimes their houses would be burnt down.

Newsday's own clips from the 1960s showed this happen.

No, so today you don't get that kind of pushback, but you do get subtle things like, well, you don't want to send your kids to this school district, an agent would say.

You want them to go to this school district.

Then you look at the demographic makeup of that school district.

Well, the agent didn't want to send a white tester to a school district that had a lot of minority students.

So that's where, at least on Long Island, it has 124 school districts where school districts become a proxy for race.

And that's problematic as well.

So was there anything that surprised you all in putting all of this together, in your research?

I guess some of the, you know, I've been around a long time, so, and I have my own experience where a real estate agent on Long Island, when I was just in my 20s looking for a summer place, because I was interning at Newsday, and the real estate agent said, "You want to live with your own kind, don't you?"

So, you know, so I've experienced that personally.

But so, some agents were comfortable in marginalizing minority communities.

In fact, what I had expected was that maybe our black testers would be steered toward minority communities, whereas a lot of the listings were not given in minority communities at all, not to white, black, or Asian, or Hispanic testers.

So that was a surprise to me.

I remember being surprised by the reaction of Long Island's real estate industry in general.

The leadership of the groups that are sort of professional standards group, they would say to us immediately after it was published, "Thank you for doing this."

This is something, as a problem, we've identified and Newsday's work really helps us keep us ourselves on our toes when it comes to fair housing standards.

You would anticipate perhaps some hostility after an investigation with findings like this, but the industry itself was forward-looking and ready to change.

I've been surprised actually by how long-lasting the impact has been.

I mean, even now, years later, it's something that still comes up even at national real estate gatherings, I'm told.

And it's something that is still creating, you know, change in terms of increased testing, which, you know, people in the fair housing world say is the only way to really catch and prevent this kind of discrimination.

You know, there still is a dedicated funding stream to make sure that this kind of testing still goes on, you know, into the future.

Let's talk about some of the testers, because I noticed a lot of them, there were a few, who were a bit emotional about this.

Yes, they were hired for the job, but it evoked some sort of emotion from some.

There was one Black male tester that we had who, in comparison to his white counterpart, you know, he would get listings in heavily minority -- he was one of the few who got listings in a heavily minority area.

And then hearing from his white counterpart, who didn't have any -- who wasn't asked if he was pre-certified for a mortgage, who was taken out on tours with not a lot of questions being asked of him, as was being asked of the Black tester.

And so some of them were really emotional.

Even there was one white female tester that we had who was taken out multiple times, never asked anything about prequalification for a mortgage.

And you know, she was offered everything, it seemed, whereas her counterparts, her minority counterparts were not.

And she was emotional about that.

Yeah, I think what you see in the documentary from the testers is a result of them doing test after test, month after month, and are not sharing with them the results of their individual tests.

So they were just curious about what this investigation was finding as it rolled out.

And in the documentary they're learning for the first time that you were a part of a test that showed evidence of disparate treatment or showed clear evidence of perhaps racial discrimination or steering.

So particularly the testers of color to learn that information for the first time had emotional reactions.

You can read more about this investigation on Newsday.com.

I'm Jasmine Anderson.

We thank you for your time and thank you for watching.

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