[lbo-talk] Bradley effect

Charles Brown charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us
Wed Jan 16 07:28:56 PST 2008


Bradley effect bitch at pulpculture.: There are a bunch of local histories of various neighborhoods and I was

reading one about a neighborhood that successfully fought back against the way real estate agents played people. I hadn't ever heard of this, but your story reminded me of this book. Basically, real estate agents would try to whip up fear of blacks moving in, suggesting that their house values would go down, so they better sell now, and fast, before it got worse. Apparently, they were banking on people selling off at low prices, and

still being able to sell at decent prices.

^^^^

CB: The nickname for this was "blockbusting". We had lots of it in Detroit in the 1950's . Segrue has evidence on it being fomented by real estate agents.

^^^^^

This particular neighborhood got together and fought that shit on a number of levels: community newsletters, community consciousness raising and education, making sure the laws were enforced against real estate agents violating the law and local ordinances, etc.

Didn't something similar happen in NYC during the 80s.



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