SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The California Association of Realtors formally apologized Friday for its active role in racism in the past. In the 1960s, the organization endorsed a proposition that allowed agents to openly discriminate.
The organization has been working with lawmakers to pass legislation to address the issued they played a large part in creating.
Estella Sanchez remembers when her parents tried buying a home in Sacramento in the 1950s.
“The fact that they were Mexican, they would be turned down,” Sanchez said.
She doesn’t know exactly how many times they were turned down. What she does know is that her dad never gave up. He door knocked on homes that had for sale signs himself until someone said yes.
“He goes 'okay, I will sell you guys the house with one condition- that I could live in the in the mother in law house until I until I until I pass away'," Sanchez said.
That’s exactly what happened. Even with another man living on their property though, Sanchez considers her family lucky. They were able to purchase a home.
“For decades, (CAR) promoted policies that encourage discrimination and the idea that neighborhood integration would negatively impact property values," CAR President Auto Catrina said. "The association endorsed racial zoning, redlining and racially restrictive covenants."
Redlining is when a family is refused a loan to buy a house.
A covenant?
“The house that I currently live in now had a covenant in there that related to specific ethnicities that were not allowed to spend 24 hours in a neighborhood," Catrina said. "So a lot of those covenants were throughout California, and we have pushed legislation to get those cleaned up.”
Catrina, a child at the time the organization was promoting these policies, acknowledges the lasting impact. Generations do not have the land or equity to pass down to their kids like he does.
“We totally condemned those past bad practices of what happened and will not tolerate that," he said. "We are a different association today.”
Today, his group provides grants to underserved families to help them put down payments on a home. They’ve recently passed a law that requires bias training for all real estate salespeople.
In the 50’s, the group passed a constitutional change that allowed wealthy neighborhoods to deny affordable and low income housing in their area. This year, they helped pass a bill to overturn it, but because it is a constitutional change, it will be on your November 2024 ballot.
In a magazine that the hundreds of thousands of members have access to, CAR wrote an article apologizing last year. The diversity team, however, felt like the company needed to go public with the apology to be more transparent, so that’s what they did.
WATCH RELATED: Rynor Report: Environmental racism protest in Sacramento (Oct. 2021).