I know about it. It’s a practice that Hasidic communities would like to discourage, too. In Crown Heights, the Jewish Community Council has a waiting list for bidding on homes that are put on the market. In the Bayswater section of Far Rockaway, there’s a house that’s to die for with a huge parcel of land, and on the door there’s a sign saying, “no, this house is not for sale, but I will entertain offers starting from a million dollars and above.” That was years ago, when I lived in Far Rockaway. I think the bottom offer he’d entertain has probably gone up exponentially. It really is a beautiful house in a neighborhood with many beautiful old houses.
But people are hungry for land, once they can afford it. Big families, crowded apartments in crowded neighborhoods. Still, it’s extremely rude and inexcusable.
This idiot woman somehow amplifies that problem into a casus bellus, sprinkling it with blood libel and racial determinism to make this ethical leap into mass murder more palatable. But it’s not.
That is organization, in Crown Heights. Do you mean simply that when an ultra orthodox owned home is sold, that there is an u.o. list of buyers so that it never need go on the open market, or do you mean as well that when a non u.o. home goes on the market, there is a queue so the u.o. don’t bid against each other, and they are ready to zip in with an offer as soon as it’s listed, before a non u.o. buyer does the same?
In many towns now in NJ (that have no noticeable Orthodox population, such as mine, but also in more rural-type areas), laws are being passed setting minimum curb space (for example) for new constructions to prevent those large lots from being “overdeveloped”. There are also more requirements for off-street parking; these places are simply seeking to prevent urban sprawl.
Other posters have indicated the Orthodox want an urban environment where places are accessible on foot (to deal with Sabbath restrictions); understandable, but I don’t know how they expect to find that in what is one of the most expensive areas on the planet. That would explain why the run-down section of Jersey City is an option, but they can’t at the same time discount the plight of the people that would be moved aside to make way for them.