(2 of 4)
The often-cited Fifth Amendment applies only to the deprivation of property, and the rights of the property owner over the years have been circumscribed by scores of restrictions, ranging from the state's right of eminent domain to a tangle of local ordinances. The courts seem to agree that the rights of U.S. minorities to compete equally in the housing market stand on a par with the rights of landowners. In tests of some of the fair-housing laws that already exist in 17 states and 31 cities, State Supreme Courts have ruled almost unanimously that the laws are constitutional. Said the Massachusetts Supreme Court: "Neither property rights nor contract rights are absolute. Equally fundamental with the private right is that of the public to regulate it in the common interest."
Panic Peddlers. After the constitutional issue, the most powerful surface argument concerns the pocketbook. "This is largely an economic issue," says Republican Craig Hosmer of California, who opposed Title IV. "A home is the only major asset most people have. Whether it is a fact or not, people fear that when Negroes move in, property values go down."
They do indeed decline if most of the whites in a neighborhood stampede to another area as soon as Negroes begin moving in. The chief profiteer from this process is the "panic peddler" or "blockbuster"—the real estate agent who buys cheap from frightened whites, sells dear to Negroes who cannot buy anywhere else. (Last week's bill specifically prohibited blockbusting by making it unlawful for real estate agents to coax homeowners into selling by alarming them with stories of a Negro influx.) Wherever white residents resist the impulse to get out and cooperate in integrating a Negro family in a neighborhood instead, values not only fail to fall but frequently rise. The first Negro family moved to Baldwin, L.I., eight years ago, and nine soon followed; houses then worth $9,000 are now selling for $17,000, paralleling the general trend in steadily increasing realty values. According to a study of 1,810 neighborhoods in 47 U.S. cities, property values increased in the 1950s, when the Negro middle-class was growing rapidly, by 61% in Negro areas, and by 45% in integrated areas—while they rose 35% in white neighborhoods.
Quotas or Ghettos. Part of the problem, of course, is to persuade Negroes not to inundate one area out of proportion to their 10% share of the population. In the New York suburb of Hempstead, front lawns were forested with FOR SALE signs after the first Negroes arrived, and there were fears that the neighborhood might turn into a suburban ghetto. But calmer residents decided to hang" on. Forming a community association, they saved their hardest sell for prospective white buyers to replace families that had left, urged Negroes to avoid a wholesale rush into the area. Given a choice between a quota and a ghetto, Negroes cooperated. The result: an integrated but balanced community. Across the U.S., more than 500 similar fair-housing committees have been set up to thwart blockbusters.