The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith charged tonight that real estate agents throughout the country “often use the Code of the National Association of Real Estate Boards as their sanction for discriminating against Jews and other minority groups.”
Arnold Forster, the ADL National Civil Rights director, told a Joint Defense Appeal dinner in the Hotel Plaza that recent surveys showed that a pattern of religious discrimination in private housing is perpetuated by real estate agents from New York to California. Joint Defense Appeal is the fund-raising arm of the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League.
“In New York City, where half the Jewish population of the United States resides, a survey of 175 cooperative apartments, managed by 13 of the city’s leading real estate firms, showed that about a third of the buildings had no Jewish tenants,” Mr. Forster said. In Chicago, one large realty board has been a factor in closing virtually the entire areas of Kenilworth and Lake Forest to Jews. In suburban Detroit, a third of the real estate agents surveyed indicated clearly that they discriminate against Jews. “The pattern is the same in other large cities and their suburbs throughout the nation,” the League official declared.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
