Spotlight on Fair Housing at NAR’s Annual Conference

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The National Association of REALTORS®’ fair housing team will present two sessions at the 2021 REALTORS® Conference & Expo that offer attendees the opportunity to explore the history of racial discrimination in real estate and to examine and overcome their own hidden biases.

“Bias Override: Overcoming Barriers to Fair Housing,” new implicit bias classroom training that will be offered next year by NAR, helps real estate professionals learn tactics to interrupt stereotypical thinking so that they can provide equal professional service to every prospect or client. A preview of the training, presented by Afua Addo, deputy director of programs and training at the Perception Institute, will engage participants in exercises to build new habits of equitable behavior.

The course, which expands on the 50-minute implicit bias training video released by NAR in 2020, was piloted in New York, Washington, and Texas this summer. It aims to help real estate professionals explore the assumptions they don’t know they’re making, examine their ideas about people from other identity groups, and learn how to be more comfortable working across lines of difference.

The three-hour classroom course will qualify for CE credit and will be offered by the Center for REALTOR® Development and taught by experienced At Home With Diversity instructors. Any REALTOR® association that is a licensed provider of CRD content will be eligible to provide the training.

“The Past and Future of Family Properties: Overcoming Real Estate’s Historic Harms to Communities of Color” session will feature Dr. Beryl Satter, professor of history at Rutgers University, who tells a deeply personal story of the ways Black Americans in 1960s Chicago were not only excluded from building intergenerational wealth through homeownership but also preyed upon by unscrupulous real estate operators who drained billions of dollars from their community. Dr. Satter’s father was a lawyer who owned rental properties and defended Black clients from these practices. Mabél Guzmán, a broker from Chicago and 2020 vice president of association affairs for NAR, will join Dr. Satter to examine the obstacles this history still creates today and what REALTORS® are doing to ensure that their profession helps all Americans build wealth and community.