Two Major Real Estate Search Engines Nix Crime Data in Racial Equity Push

From the Washington Examiner:

Realtor.com has removed crime data from its website, and Redfin has decided not to add it out of concerns that it could perpetuate racial inequity.

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…

“As a relative newcomer to the real estate industry, I’ve been struck by how entrenched this problem is,” he continued. “Stories abound about Black, Hispanic and Asian homebuyers receiving unequal treatment, starting with their ability to see whatever homes they like, and continuing through to the appraisal and mortgage processes.”…

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.

“The fact that most crimes are missing creates a real possibility that the crimes that show up in the data set skew one way or another,” Taubman wrote. “And the fact that most reported crimes go unsolved means that some of the crimes being reported in fact may not be crimes.”

In addition to the FBI’s metrics, Redfin also considered the National Crime Victimization Survey, which relies on interviews from tens of thousands of people annually and queries them about the frequency, characteristics, and consequences of criminal victimization across the country. Those who say they are victims of crime are also asked whether the crime was reported to law enforcement…

“And there are troubling signs of this: in the 2019 survey, people reporting crimes were more likely to describe their offender as young, male, and Black than would be expected given the representation of those groups in the population,” he said.

There are several glaring flaws in these decisions and their explanations.

Firstly, corporate jargon such as reimagine how we integrate safety data is not helpful, and it gives the distinct impression that the goal is not to inform, but to confuse and obfuscate – that the real intention is less wholesome than the author is letting on.

Also, the article fails to explain how withholding crime data would help non-white home-buyers see more homes and buy them – unless the goal is to deceive them into buying homes in high-crime areas. Since when is less information empowering?

The argument that FBI crime statistics are inaccurate, because they don’t include unsolved or unreported crime is ridiculous. It’s specifically black areas that have the lowest reporting and clearance rates, and this is well-known. Blacks have much lower levels of trust in the police, and yet this article implies that those same blacks report crime at a higher rate than whites; it’s arguing that there is actually MORE crime among whites, but that those crimes go unreported, in contrast to crime among blacks, where crime is reported more often. Exactly the OPPOSITE is true. Crime rates are higher in black communities than the statistics would suggest.

The last quoted statement takes the cake for absurdity. These companies are concerned about racial bias – because crime victims are more likely to describe their offender as young, male and black. Do they honestly believe that crime victims are in the habit of lying about the description of criminals? Sure, it happens on occasion, when it’s an imaginary crime – but certainly not to the extent that it would impact statistics.

Let’s take a look at Mr. David Doctorow, CEO of Realtor.com. His Twitter profile tells us that he lives in Santa Clara, California. From Wikipedia, we can see the following:

The ethnic makeup of Santa Clara was 52,359 (45.0%) White, 3,154 (2.7%) African American, 579 (0.5%) Native American, 43,889 (37.7%) Asian

Hmm… Mr. Doctorow lives in a city that’s only 2.7% black. How convenient for him, and I’m sure the crime-rate in his area is quite low…

But wait, there’s more. It turns out that Mr. Doctorow is a member of the Forbes Real Estate Council:

Hmmm… If we count hot blondes as “Diversity” then they’ve met their quota. Otherwise, it’s “Diversity for thee but not for me.” Doctorow is in the upper right corner.

I’m pretty sure that David Doctorow is Jewish, and it doesn’t take a skilled sleuth to figure this out. So on top of putting homeowners in danger, by withholding vital information from them, Mr. Doctorow is also contributing to anti-Semitism. Stormfronters will be on this like flies on a warm cow pie.

As for Redfin’s Chief Growth Officer, Christian Taubman (who appears to be responsible for Redfin’s withholding of crime data), I pretty sure that he’s not Jewish.

It’s great to see Jews and non-Jews working together to make the world a more dangerous place.