Major Real Estate Websites Dumping Crime Data to Satisfy Woke Activists Crying Racism
Several big-time real estate websites are putting potential home buyers in danger by ending crime statistic reporting because woke activists claim it is “racist” to tell people what the crime rate is in a given neighborhood.
Leftists who cry raaacism and who push for “equity” have convinced Realtor.com and Redfin to stop informing homebuyers of local crime data because they don’t want people to avoid dangerous neighborhoods.
This is purely a political move, of course, but what these websites are now doing is putting people who want to buy a home in danger by hiding how dangerous a neighborhood is when home prices are searched on their websites.
Per the Washington Examiner, Realtor.com just announced its decision:
David Doctorow, the CEO of Realtor.com, said in a company update this week that the crime map layer has been removed from all search results on the website “to rethink the safety information we share on Realtor.com and how we can best integrate it as part of a consumer’s home search experience.”
Doctorow said the removal was part of a company effort to “level the playing field” and scrutinize what safety means to buyers and renters so that it can “reimagine how we integrate safety data” on the platform. Realtor.com has been collaborating with fair housing advocates as part of the initiative.
“At this time of complexity in real estate, our team has been energized by our purpose to simplify real estate choices, especially for first-time homebuyers,” he wrote. “Yet we keep bumping up against one very old and persistent problem: the ability to afford and own a home can be unjustly limited by one’s race, ethnicity, or other personal characteristics.”
Redfin did the same thing:
On the same day that Realtor.com announced that it was removing its crime data, Redfin came out with a full-throated denunciation of crime data being included on real estate websites. Redfin’s chief growth officer Christian Taubman announced that, after consideration, the company would not be adding crime data to its own platform.
Taubman said that Redfin had been weighing whether to add information about crime because one of the metrics that consumers consider when looking for a home to purchase is how safe the area around that home is. The company concluded that available crime data doesn’t accurately answer that question, and “given the long history of redlining and racist housing covenants in the United States there’s too great a risk of this inaccuracy reinforcing racial bias.”
Redfin highlighted the difference between crime and safety and said that through its research, which included surveys, people defined safety in a variety of ways. Taubman said that the available data, namely the Uniform Crime Report from the FBI, pertains to reported crimes and excludes information about crimes that go unreported and crimes that go unsolved. He said that data at a neighborhood level could lead to high inaccuracy.
However, there is no “equity” involved here. This is 100% political.
Activists want to prevent people from deciding not to buy homes in dangerous, high crime areas. They hope to fool people into thinking that buying a home is perfectly safe in high crime neighborhoods by simply refusing to tell new homeowners that the area is dangerous to live in.
This is not helping potential homeowners. Indeed, it is purposefully endangering their lives, and it’s all being done to serve the left’s political goals.
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