In a decision that could shape the way communities across the nation seek racial balance as minorities move into the suburbs, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday gave nine south suburbs the go-ahead to market housing specifically to whites in order to preserve integration.
The court, without comment, turned down an appeal from real estate trade groups, which had accused the suburbs of implementing programs designed to keep out minorities.
In effect the court`s action in ending a nine-year-old legal battle told racially changing suburbs that it is legal for them to take steps to stabilize their racial makeups and prevent their resegregation from all-white to all-black.
And in refusing to hear the case, the court came down on the side of fair-housing advocates who argued that such special programs targeted at one race or another were not by definition discriminatory or part of a system of illegal quotas.
”This removes a cloud that the real estate industry has dragged over this concept,” said Alexander Polikoff, the lawyer who argued the case successfully for the south suburbs through the federal courts.
The case was the first court test of an affirmative real estate marketing program and was watched closely around the country as a model.
”This was an enormous victory,” said Charles Crumbley of the Metropolitan Strategy Group, a Cleveland organization that has championed similar marketing programs in Ohio.
Although Monday`s Supreme Court action was praised by many fair-housing advocates across the Chicago area and the nation, some civil rights leaders said it nevertheless raised disturbing questions about how a community determines its ideal or acceptable racial composition.
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”This is a bitter disappointment to us,” said Delores Whiters, president of the Chicago Far South Suburban branch of the NAACP. ”We are against the whole area of integration maintenance.
”The word `affirmative` is misleading. There is a connotation there that African-Americans are spoilers in a community and that European-Americans are needed to keep a community stable.”
The suburbs involved in the case are Blue Island, Calumet Park, Country Club Hills, Glenwood, Hazel Crest, Matteson, Park Forest, Richton Park and University Park.
Over the last two decades, their minority populations have increased, some substantially, as blacks moved out of Chicago.
In an effort to stem white flight and thus keep themselves from becoming resegregated, the suburbs, under the umbrella of the non-profit South Suburban Housing Center, began employing affirmative marketing plans designed to spread information about available housing to attract whites to integrated neighborhoods and blacks to predominantly white neighborhoods.
Through multiple-listing services and other means, the suburbs essentially asked real estate agents to seek out and inform potential buyers who would not normally be shown homes in certain areas.
The original lawsuit opposing the program was brought in 1983 by the Greater South Suburban Board of Realtors and its national parent, the National Association of Realtors, which alleged that such policies amounted to racial steering designed to keep out minorities.
The south suburbs won the first round in U.S. District Court in Chicago in 1983. Last June the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the legality of affirmative marketing and community restrictions on the size and location of ”for sale” signs.
The three-judge appellate panel also broadened the original decision by allowing communities to bar real estate salesmen from soliciting residents who indicated in writing that they did not want to be contacted about the possibility of selling their homes.
The lawsuit stemmed from a dispute between the real estate trade groups and the South Suburban Housing Center, a private fair-housing organization, over its marketing of three homes on Apache Street in Park Forest.
The center sued the real estate association, accusing it of wrongfully removing the three homes from a multiple-listing service.
The homes, all vacant and owned by Park Forest, were in a predominantly black area.
The village sought to put them on a multiple-listing service that reached white and black buyers.
But the real estate board removed them, arguing that efforts to specifically attract white buyers might constitute racial steering.
Other members of the housing center soon joined in the court fight.
”All communities should look at what the Supreme Court did,” said Barbara Moore, the director of community relations for Park Forest. ”We have set a national example for others to follow.”
Laurene Janik, the general counsel for the National Association of Realtors, said her group would abide by the court`s edict, ”but if I were a broker or an agent, I`d be very cautious” about sales in these communities.
”You can`t make a special effort to reach one group without taking time from talking to other groups,” she said.
But Sherlynn Reid, director of community relations for Oak Park, said her suburb has played an active role in such marketing programs. ”This way we expand people`s options. We make sure blacks and whites are shown places they normally would not see. We`ve never had a house we`ve told real estate agents to sell to one race, but we`ve targeted blocks that need either a black or a white demand.
”If we believe in the kind of country we want to live in, this
(program)-not to deny housing to anybody-is the wave of the future.”
The south suburban communities involved in the suit were once all-white, but blacks began moving in during the 1960s and 1970s.
According to court documents, 1990 census data shows that four of the nine-Calumet Park, Country Club Hills, Hazel Crest and University Park-are majority black, ranging from 51 to 78 percent.
Even with efforts by the communities to prevent population shifting, it continued throughout the last decade.
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For instance, Country Club Hills went from nearly 12 percent black in 1980 to almost 57 percent black in 1990.
As of 1990, Blue Island had the lowest percentage of black residents among the nine towns, about 14 percent.