Homebuyers Deserve the Facts About Crime and Schools

Nothing is more natural when buying a house than looking into how safe the neighborhood is, and, if you have or plan to have children, whether the schools are any good.

Yet the last Democratic presidential administration tried to prevent real estate agents from answering those kinds of questions because it prioritized "diversity" over safety and education.

The Trump administration revoked the de facto gag rule this year, but the damage the Biden administration inflicted is still being felt.

What's worse, state regulations in New York and elsewhere still prevent real estate agents from speaking freely to homebuyers about crime and schools.

Interfering with homebuyers was a first-week priority for the Biden administration:

Six days after he was sworn into office, Joe Biden issued his directive establishing enforcement priorities for the Department of Housing and Urban Development that would scare real estate agents into remaining silent on two of the subjects most important to their clients.

"Diverse and inclusive communities strengthen our democracy," the executive memorandum began.

What mom or dad wants their community to be "inclusive" of failing schools?

Who wants diversity to mean mixing criminals with innocent people?

Black families don't want to live in dangerous or educationally dead-end neighborhoods any more than people of any other color do.

Yet too many progressives believe racial equality is best achieved by demolishing standards for everyone.

That was the effect of Biden's memo, which made clear that racial politics and the doctrine of "disparate impact" would now guide HUD's enforcement of federal housing laws.

The major online real estate companies understood immediately what was being demanded of them — Realtor.com and Zillow stopped providing crime data, while Redfin, going out of its way to embrace the party line, even posted a blog proclaiming, "Neighborhood crime data doesn't belong on real estate sites."

The National Association of Realtors put up a webpage in early 2023 titled "How to handle client questions about schools and neighborhoods," which told realtors to point homebuyers to other sources of information rather than providing the facts themselves.

The page is larded with the jargon of DEI — "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion" — but it also testifies to the association's worry that fair-housing laws will be interpreted aggressively, with Realtors who do tell their clients too much running the risk of punishment.

The Trump administration this April announced that Realtors and other real estate agents should not feel intimidated — "the Fair Housing Act does not require withholding useful information on school quality and crime statistics," HUD announced.

The "Dear Colleague" letter from Assistant Secretary Craig Trainor goes into considerable detail and "strongly urges" the real estate industry "to revisit ethics training materials and reconsider public statements that stifle real estate agent speech ..."

But the New York Association of Realtors, for one, says it can't do that because "NYSAR members may be subject to liability under (New York state) law" if they do speak frankly to homebuyers about schools and crime.

How many voters know some state governments — and, under the last Democratic administration, the federal government — are muzzling real estate agents in this way?

How many know how easily the industry rolled over when Biden decided to put homebuyers' safety and their children' s education at risk?

What the Biden administration did was unethical, and the industry did a disservice to its clients by giving in — though perhaps the prospect of selling more homes in bad neighborhoods appealed to the least scrupulous members of the profession.

Buying a home is a trust-intensive process: it's not only expensive but it ranks alongside marriage as one the most consequential decisions anyone can make, holding the potential for decades of happiness or misery.

Buying a home is buying a future.

It isn't right to withhold any information a family needs about the neighborhood, and state laws as well as federal ones must put homebuyers — of all races — first, above any political commitment to abstractions like diversity and inclusion.

The point of withholding information about crime and schools is to get more people to buy homes where they otherwise wouldn't want to live.

What could be more wicked, more destructive, than that?

The intrepid journalist Helen Andrews, who's never afraid of a controversy, deserves credit for calling attention to this corruption of the real estate industry in a recent essay for the web magazine Compact.

This is a big story, one that ought to be on voters' minds as they think about the state and local elections, as well as federal ones, coming up in November.

If Americans don't want their real estate providers gagged, they have to speak up themselves at the ballot box.

(COMMENT, BELOW)

Previously:
• 08/04/26: Diversity, Equity, and Confabulation
• 07/28/26: Democratic Socialists of America vs. John Adams
• 07/21/26: Why Dems Can't Do Better Than Kamala Harris in 2028
• 07/14/26: Prescription for a Socialist Workforce
• 07/07/26: The Smithsonian's Patriotism Problem
• 06/30/26: Bill Maher, Liberalism's Apostate
• 06/23/26: Can Anyone Govern Britain -- or America?
• 06/16/26: University Professors Against Academic Freedom
• 06/09/26: Pope Leo Courts the Global Left
• 06/02/26: A Mass-Graves Myth Is Media Malpractice
• 05/28/26: Dems Face Midterm Disappointment
• 05/26/26: Dems Face Midterm Disappointment
• 05/12/26: Dems finally come clean 'bout their radical design
• 05/05/26: The Silenced Generation
• 04/28/26:Colleges Are Making Political Violence Worse
• 04/21/26:Immigration Amnesty by Any Other Name
• 04/14/26: A New Extreme in Gerrymandering
• 04/07/26: A New Extreme in Gerrymandering
• 03/17/26: Why Are Senate Dems Making Air Travel Worse?
• 03/10/26: Cuba Should Accept Trump's 'Friendly Takeover'
• 03/03/26: Immigration Enforcement Saves Lives
• 02/24/26: How a Party Offends Its Voters
• 02/17/26: Why Are Anti-ICE Activists Building Borders?
• 02/10/26: A Japanese Lesson for Troubled Britain
• 02/03/26: The Trump Coalition Wins But the GOP Brand Doesn't
• 01/27/26: Canada Should Warm to Trump's Arctic Plans
• 01/20/26: From Rock to Tech, Talent Flees Taxes
• 01/13/26: Woman Who Weaponized Car Against I.C.E Endangered Her Life -- and Yours
• 01/06/26: Tim Walz Personifies Dems' Decline
• 12/30/25: Harvard Says Yes to Discrimination, No to Western Civ
• 12/23/25: JD Vance Gets America's Creed and Heritage Right
• 12/16/25: Trump's Inflation Trap
• 12/09/25: Biden's Immigration Debacle Is the Media's, Too
• 12/02/25: 'Iryna's Law' and the Bad Judges Who Make It Necessary
• 11/26/25: Marjorie Taylor Greene's Exit Is a Warning to Republicans
• 11/19/25: Trump Hasn't Lost Hispanics (Yet)
• 11/11/25: Trump's Tariffs on Trial
• 10/28/25: MAGA Makes Allies Great Again
• 10/21/25: How To Make the AmericaS Great Again
• 10/16/25: Columbus Day Celebrates Our Civilization
• 10/09/25: Why Sharpies Are Made in America Again
• 09/30/25: Assata Shakur and Other Parents of Political Violence
• 09/09/25: Who's Accountable for Autopen Pardons?
• 09/02/25: Gender dysphoria is a mental-illness, NOT an all-encompassing delusion
• 08/26/25: Trump's Industrial Policy Is Realism, Not Socialism
• 08/19/25: Is Gavin Newsom the Dems' Answer to Trump?
• 08/12/25: Just Say No to More Marijuana
• 08/05/25: Will the GOP Make Libs Generous Again?
• 07/30/25: Trump's Trade Lesson for Economists (and the World)
• 07/22/25: Whose Politics Canceled Stephen Colbert?
• 07/08/25: A Big Beautiful Test of GOP Principles and Discipline
• 07/01/25: Dems Need Populism, But Not Zohran's Sort
• 06/25/25: Secure Borders Win Wars Like This One
• 06/18/25: WEIRD Protesters Should Stay Home
• 06/17/25: WEIRD Protesters Should Stay Home
• 06/04/25: State that's long eluded GOP turns toward Trump
• 05/21/24: Trump's Sun Belt Hopes and Rust Belt Needs
• 05/14/24: What Trump Sees in Doug Burgum
• 05/07/24: The Vietnam Era Never Ended for Biden's Party
• 05/06/24: Nationalists of the World, Unite?
• 04/25/24: Foreign Policy Splits
• 04/16/24: How pro-lifers stand to lose everything gained in overturning Roe
• 04/02/24: PBS Misremembers William F. Buckley Jr.
• 04/02/24: Who Wants to Be House Speaker?
• 03/26/24: Trump Hunts for a VP Close to Home
• 03/19/24: Princess Kate and Democracy's Discontents
• 03/12/24: Can Biden Buy the Voters?
• 03/05/24: Veepstakes Give Trump an Edge
• 02/20/24: Do Americans Trust Either Party?
• 02/13/24: Vladimir Putin -- A Passive Aggressor
• 01/23/24: Will 'Lawfare' Take Trump Off the Ballot?
• 01/16/24: Will Africa Save America?
• 01/09/24:'The Sopranos' at 25: A new world tragedy
• 01/02/24: Trump, Biden and a Fight for the Heart
• 12/12/23: What Happened to Ron DeSantis?
• 12/12/23: Biden Looks Doomed -- But Is He?
• 12/05/23: A Test for Trump and His Rivals
• 11/21/23: When Inequality Is Fatal for Men
• 11/14/23: Nevermind, The Battle's Over
• 11/07/23: War in the Dem Party -- and at the Opera
• 10/24/23: Israel's Lesson for 2024: A Lib Crackup
• 10/17/23: Libs' Dilemma: Immigration or Israel?
• 10/10/23: Why Bidenflation Defines Bidenomics
• 10/03/23: Will Gavin Newsom Copy Trump?
• 09/26/23: Biden's a Loser -- but Dems Can't Ditch Him
• 09/19/23: Do Sex Scandals Matter?
• 09/12/23: Cornel West Spells Doom for Biden
• 09/05/23: What Trump Does for Democracy
• 08/2/23: Ramaswamy: A Trump Versus Trump?
• 08/22/23: Take 'Rich Men North of Richmond' Seriously
• 08/16/23: How America Kills Its Own
• 08/08/23: The Biden Pardon That Can Spare America
• 08/01/23: Harding, a consevative for the ages
• 07/25/23: Demography Destiny, for Us and China
• 07/18/23: The Frontrunner Who Looks Like a Loser Is Biden
• 07/11/23: Britain's Bad Example for American Conservatives
• 07/05/23: Could We Still Win a Revolutionary War?
• 06/27/23: Civilizations Clash -- in Ukraine and at Home
• 06/20/23: China Comes for the Caribbean
• 06/13/23: Fertility, Family and Bio-Socialism
• 06/06/23: From American Dream to Orwell's Nightmare
• 05/23/23: Ukraine war is an existential struggle --- for the West
• 05/23/23: Learn the Right Midterm Lessons -- or Lose in 2024
• 05/16/23: Feinstein Today Is Biden Tomorrow
• 05/09/23: Trump, DeSantis and Political Courtship
• 05/02/23: RFK Jr.'s Threat to Biden
• 04/25/23: Biden's Lost Generation
• 04/25/23: Who's In Charge of Clarence Thomas?
• 04/11/23: Beyond AI, Our Cyborg Future
• 04/04/23: 2024: 3 Leaders, 1 Way to Win
• 03/28/23: Climate Science Makes a Bad Religion
• 03/21/23: All the Conspiracy That's Fit to Print