Bridgeport Couple Charged With Refusing To Sell Home To Black Buyers

Fair Housing Laws and Ex. Orders

[edit on 12-8-2010 by LadySkadi]

Originally posted by conspiracy nut
reply to post by poedxsoldiervet

 

its called the fair housing act. it is illegal to refuse sale to someone based on ethnicity/race. this law was put into place because of the racist laws prohibiting blacks from living in certain neighborhoods thus confining them to the ghettos, sound familiar? let me give you some hints, nazi germany, yugoslavia etc etc.

Look , I know what the fair housing act is. I read the articles that the OP provided (as of right now) there is no hard evidence to suggest they did say that or did it for that reason. Circumstantial, but that is besides the point the federal government should not be able to make laws telling you who you can and can’t sell your property to. I mean really? Are you serious?

Granted the Couple buying the home were wealthy, they had to be for 1.7 million dollar home. So I doubt they would have been a nuisance. But the sellers also stated that after two years with no offers they had decided that they did not want to sell and wanted to keep their kids in the same school, which would make sense if their kids had reached a certain age. The sellers also stated they had not found a home to purchase.

Now the buyers are saying they but it back on the market two months after the sellers had said the buyers said they didn’t want to sell to blacks. Now if the buyers said this and other heard them there in trouble but if he just said it to the buyers it hearsay or he said/he said..... Now if I am leaving something out please let me know.

reply to post by poedxsoldiervet

It doesn't matter if all the evidence is presented in articles or not - what matters is that the buyers felt they were discriminated against and that they feel the sellers violated the FHA. The buyers have a right to take them to court and try to prove their case. The sellers also have the opportunity to prove they did not violate the Act. If there is no evidence to support the claim, the case will be tossed. Bottom line: sellers should not have backed out of an accepted offer without expecting some sort of issue to arise and pre-plan for damage control.


Having said that, I do believe that the time has come to re-evaluate and eliminate certain provisions, such as Affirmative Action (example) and move on as equal peoples. Many of the additional Orders have evolved from the Civil Rights Act and may, or may not be necessary now.

[edit on 12-8-2010 by LadySkadi]

reply to post by LadySkadi



The Civil Rights act of 1964 I am not against that. Except for Title II think if you as an owner of an eatery or bar want to be stupid and bar potential clients from eating there then it’s your loss, cause my business only turns people away who don’t have any green. That is the only part about the act I don’t like. If you’re stupid enough to not to allow someone because of the Color of their skin, then your business well fail...


The Civil Rights act of 1968 or the Fair housing act I do not like. I think the Federal Government should not be able to tell you who and who cannot rent or sell your home to. If it is my rental units or my home I could be able to sell or rent to whoever I want. No Federal government agency should be able to tell you what you can or cannot do with your property.

reply to post by poedxsoldiervet


Hi. Sorry - I was revising while you were posting. Please take a look at the additions in the post above.

reply to post by LadySkadi


I can agree with what you’re saying, they do have the right to sue anyone... But the government should not have the right to tell you can and cannot do with their land... This is not an attack on the buyers, if they feel they were discriminated against or wronged it is there right to sue and prove their case, not the Feds. And the seller also has the right to back out (as long as no money has been exchanged) for whatever the reason they choose....

I've had a lot of experience in Real Estate.
You cannot discriminate by race.

However, If you don't get an offer that is acceptable to you, if it is not a full price cash offer, you can reject all the offers and take the house off the market.

For instance, you have a $200,000 dollar mortgage. You can afford to make the payments. You try to sell your house and find out that the highest offer you get is $160,000.
To sell your house you would have to write a check for $40,000 plus closing costs. However, you can rent your house and come close to making the monthly payment.

You decide to keep the house as a rental and pull it off the market.
You have not discriminated against anyone, since you did not receive a full price, all cash offer. You are not obligated to take the highest offer.

I'll be curious what unfolds from this.

Originally posted by elevatedone
My question is, should the law be changed? It's your home, shouldn't you be allowed to choose who you sell it to?

Better yet, why would someone care who is buying their house? After all, they are moving.

With the housing market in the dumps, one would think that they would take any reasonable offer.

I'll stay tuned for the rest of the story.

reply to post by conspiracy nut


Have you lived in Bridgeport or been there lately?

Having lived their briefly and having both sides of my family's roots there, this old notion of Racist Irish Bridgeport doesn't exist any more. Daley doesn't even live there any more, he lives Downtown now. I think only his mother still lives there. It is mainly Hispanic now.

Source

I agree with the posters here that you should be able to sell to whomever you want, you own the property. But when you accept someones offer, a contractual obligation, you can't just back out no matter what the reason. Your in violation of a contract at that point.

reply to post by MegaCurious


Your comment is very interesting.

When I used to sell real estate, I didn't care what color a persons skin was. I gladly showed houses to anyone who could afford them.

When I showed houses, most of the time the owners were out of the house and would not have known what color your skin was.

When the offer is presented to the owners, it is a written document. There is no mention of race.

If I had represented you, you would have been able to purchase any house that you could afford and I would have been happy to make another sale.
I truly don't understand discrimination from a salesman's' point of view. I loved to make sales. Come the end of the month, the more sales, the fatter my check was... period.

I agree that a property owner should have the right to sell or not sell, rent or not rent to whomever they chose without Big Brother involvement. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 needs amending in a bad way.

I know that the politically correct will howl at such a remark but hey, it's the right thing to do. You see the CRA shoves a lot of BS down peoples throats that infringes on to many Constitutional issues that Congress does not have the power to monkey with. First and foremost is the right of association implied in the 1st Amendment.

My argument would be the same as many and that being that if the the 1st Amendment protects the right of assembly it then, by inference, protects the right to assemble with whomever one chooses in any manner one chooses without regard to whether that assembly is a public protest or a neighborhood in a subdivision.

The CRA is aimed at white people. Many of you will argue that it is aimed at anyone who "discriminates" and I would laugh in your face. Show me one instance where a white couple has cried foul because they were barred from living in black communities. There isn't one case to my knowledge and the reason isn't necessarily that whites don't want to live in black communities it's because of the reception they'd receive from residents of the community. Cars would be trashed, dogs tortured and poisoned, vandalism to property and on and on until the whites got the message they weren't welcome. And please don't try to tell me this doesn't happen because I've seen it with my own eyes and experienced it first hand.

When whites complain of such treatment the police (both black and white officers) look at them as though they are insane. You can see what's running through their minds though they don't dare say it out loud, "Why TF are you here and WTF did you expect"? The best one was a next door neighbor who religiously dumped his cat litter box at the end of our sidewalk (I had him on video in the act). The first time I involved the police it took the cop ten minutes to stop laughing and wipe the tears from his eyes to suggest that we move.

Wealthy whites have solved this problem with real estate prices. They move into gated communities where property prices exclude 90% of whites and 99.9% of everyone else.

My question is simply, why do we need to go through all of this. Allow us all the right to choose who we live among. Let grades determine who sits in the classroom. Let merit decide who gets the promotion. Lets get away from the utopian Shangri La notion of equal outcome and refocus on equal opportunity. It's time merit and free choice was put back into the equation.

With that said I'll relate a personal incident. Several years ago my wife and I sold a house in a fairly desirable neighborhood. At the time we bought the house we were unfamiliar with the new neighborhood and soon discovered that it was a virtual island of whites three blocks wide and five blocks long.

When we listed the house there was a steady stream of potential buyers and within a few days we had several offers. Most tried to low ball us so they were rejected with counter offers.

Before we had a chance to haggle with any of the counter offer situations a single black lady and her black realtor were shown the house by our realtor. Our realtor told us to expect an offer.

They must have driven around to a neighboring street to make the call to our realtor because the call came less than fifteen minutes after they'd left. The offer was for $10k more than our asking price. My wife and I were floored.

Our realtor explained that it was a tactic employed by blacks trying to get into white communities where there was a lot of competition for the houses. They'd blow every other offer out of the water with an offer greater than the asking price.

Our realtor explained that if we didn't want to sell the house to the black lady to accept the offer contingent on financing and refuse to come down on the price. When the appraisal came in around the asking price the buyer would have to come up with the additional money offered above the asking price as part of a down payment which she probably couldn't do. The other option was to counter offer and agree to sell at our asking price which she could probably manage after the appraisal came in. No other offers had been made at or above the asking price. Our reator then told us to think about it and call her in an hour to let her know our decision.

Within ten minutes after our realtor drove off we had three up in arms neighbors on our doorstep demanding to know if we were going to sell the house to a black (one was a city cop). I offered to sell the house to each of these neighbors for one dollar more than the lady's $10k over asking price offer.

An hour later we called our realtor and told her to make a couter offer to sell at our asking price. The black lady got her house.

The week we moved out of the house there were already four "for sale" signs in yards within a block of the house. Ten years later the street is now part of the war zone.

At the time my wife and I did what we thought was right. Today I'm not so sure. I tend to believe that if we can't get along a mountain of laws can't cause it to happen. In the forty plus years since the Civil Rights Act became law all we've managed to do is prove beyond a shadow of a doubt we can't get along.

So, why are we still trying to fit square pegs into round holes and why is the Federal government still making us?

reply to post by CmdrZero


Title II of the 1964 civil rights act needs to be thrown out, the 1968 Civil rights act dealt with housing.

But yes I agree with you.

Originally posted by LadySkadi
Fair Housing Act in effect here. If the sellers did not wish to sell to the black couple, they should not have accepted the offer. Accepting the offer, than recinding it creates this issue (not whether it is true or not) but provides opportunity to now take this to court. Which, incidently, is also a right.

[edit on 12-8-2010 by LadySkadi]

If that is the case, then it is not strictly a matter of discrimination, but more of enforcing the Contract.

If the sellers did not want to sell to black people, he should have told his Real Estate Agent who then could have simply shown different houses to the prospective buyer. If they had specified that they wanted to see this house, the Agent could have made some exuse ....Pending contract, sellers not sure they want to sell...

Apparently Sabbia has connections with the Mafia in Chicago.

On the property issue: We have no rights to property anymore as far as government is concerned. Do you really think we live in the founder's Republic any longer? We live under oligarchical collectivism.

The thinking of some people is... scary.

Its MY property, I can sell it to whomever I want.

Its MY store, I can let in whomever I want.

Its my factory, I can hire whomever I want.

Its our school district, we can let in whomever we want.

The list goes on and on, and shows exactly why the Civil Rights Act came to be.

And how we still have a long way to go.

So sad.

The actions of our society CAN be governed, and has been, thank goodness.

Racism serves no useful purpose in these UNITED States, or the world for that matter.

To hear that line of thinking, straight from the 50's, turns my stomach.

I feel sorry for those of you that cannot change your way of thinking, but you are going the way of the dinosaur. On your way out.

Kicking and screaming, but out you will be.

This is one situation were I can't preach tolerance. Racism is an infection of the mind.

We need more antibiotics.

reply to post by poedxsoldiervet


the owners of the house told the real-estate agent they would rather not sell the home to an african american after the african american made the highest bid. that was his reason. not that the he didnt want to sell his home to a drug dealer or a child molester.

and to the other person who said bridgeport is majority hispanic no its majority white, with barely any african americans.

as far as being able to sell your house to anyone you prefer, i have no problem with that as long as its not based on skin color. in this case its not like one of his relatives made an offer less than the african american and he chose to sell it to his relative because he was family, the owner had other lower offers but would not accept them. the african american made a great offer the owner refused to sell the home to him based soley on his skin color. if you read the article you will se this was the initial reason he gave for taking the house off the market. now how can you argue that refusing to sell your home to someone based soley on race is acceptable? granted i do not know all the facts but the facts that are available point to unfair housing discrimination based on the fact that the home owners sole initial reason for not wanting to sell the home was because it was to an african american.

Here are some interesting quotes from the article listed Here

"Lowe gave various reasons as to why he said the Sabbias had decided not to sell, which included Adrienne Sabbia having changed her mind when the couple couldn't find a suitable new home to move to, and wanting to keep the children in their current schools."

The lawsuit contends that the owners refused to sell based on race. But the article doesn't state that this was actually ever said. It goes on to say that the owners offered to sell their home at a higher price.

It seems to me that this may have just been negotiations and hot discrimination.

reply to post by Wildbob77


Hey! This is America. We leap to conclusions here! They're GUILTY!

I bet this stuff happens all the time, the only difference is we never hear about it.
No one has mentioned anything about the couple's credit score.
Maybe they are a credit risk, but lets not print that.

The only reason this story has come to the forefront is because the media are preparing for the next 2 years.
Like squirrels gathering as many nuts for the long cold winter, they are digging up any kind of story that may be even remotely related to race.

Basically, they are instigating a race war because they already know Obama will not get re-elected.

Those Sabbia's have ties to the Roti crime family in Chicago and have been in some scandals... Not sure why the huffington post fails to mention that, or maybe I missed it..

A commentor at the huffington post on the link the OP gave mentions some things and showed links about Daniel Sabbia being linked to that Roti crime family..

link

another:

www.thechicagosyndicate.com... html

nalert.blogspot.com... html

the plot thickens