Posted on 04/22/2005 10:54:48 PM PDT by freepatriot32
The modest brick house, with its yard full of wilting tulips and rusted old cars, isn't a candidate for the pages of Better Homes and Gardens.
But on a spring day in 2002, it was just what Nealie Pitts had in mind. She approached the owner, Rufus T. Matthews, and asked the price.
According to court documents, Matthews said the house was selling for $83,000 - but that a deed restriction meant only whites were eligible to buy it.
"I was hurt and angry, like he had slapped me in the face," Pitts, who is black, said in an e-mail.
Nearly three years later, the Virginia Office of the Attorney General said it will soon take Matthews to court for the alleged fair housing law violation.
It's a bittersweet victory for fair housing proponents, who wonder how many other people are turned away by racially restrictive deed covenants.
"We very rarely encounter anybody who believes they can be enforced," said Connie Chamberlin, president of Housing Opportunities Made Equal (HOME). "We are aware they're certainly out there."
In milder forms, covenants can be used to control things like the color homeowners can paint their houses.
But in the Jim Crow South, they were often used to keep neighborhoods white. Racially restrictive covenants were ruled illegal by the Supreme Court in 1948.
"Many people don't even know they're in their deeds," Chamberlin said, adding would-be homebuyers can ask to have the racist language removed. "That can't be used as a reason to stop a sale."
According to court documents, Matthews told Pitts his house in suburban Richmond was "not for colored. We decided we are going to keep this area right here all white."
The next day she contacted HOME, which sent out a black test buyer.
"Precisely the same thing happened," Chamberlin said. "We have it on tape."
On Thursday, Matthews told The Associated Press that he would sell his home only to a white buyer. But he denied the house was for sale, saying a sale sign he had was for items in his yard. "The house has never been for sale," he said.
Matthews is accused of violating the Virginia Fair Housing Law. The same code says officials can attempt an out-of-court settlement in cases where the law has been violated.
At an April 13 meeting, the Virginia Fair Housing Board rejected a settlement offer. Board Chairman David Rubinstein declined to detail why it refused the proposal from the attorney general's office.
But Thomas Wolf, an attorney representing Pitts, said the offer would have required Matthews take two hours of class on fair housing law, at taxpayer expense.
"That is not a serious settlement proposal given the facts of the case," Wolf said. "Were they planning to pass out Happy Meals with little Confederate flags?"
Emily Lucier, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Judith Williams Jagdmann, could not explain how the proposal was formulated, but said settlement is not unheard of in discrimination cases.
Pitts is seeking $100,000 in damages in a separate case against Matthews. Lucier said because Pitts has gotten her own lawyer, the office cannot legally seek monetary damages in the civil matter.
Instead, she said, the office will continue pressing for injunctive relief and education. A court date has not been set
Liberty is liberty. Government should never discriminate between one citizen and another, but a private citizen, especially on his own property has a right to be a bigot if he wishes.
It's been a while since I took my real estate licence classes and I don't know about the Virginia law, but I do not believe he is in violation of the federal statute. No real estate agent would work with him, but if he sells it himself, he can do what he wants.
Thanks for the complement that I'm "unreconstructed," even though you are wrong about me being a segregationist.
We do not live in a perfect world. There is discrimination against whites and against blacks, hispanics and asians. But in reality, the discrimination that each group faces is currently relatively minimal and not much worth argueing about or complaining about. No one is being enslaved, or sent to internment camps or segregated by force.
For most people, discrimination is now a minor nuisance for everyone. For example, if every white guy who said what this guy said lost his house, how bad would that be ? Answer is not all that bad. Ditto for the racial slights that the minorities and women get.
I say that people who are complaining are mostly complaining about relatively insignificant things and that includes the people defending this guy, while if he were a minority, he would be getting nominated for a Darwin award.
The only way you can limit access is to make it a private (ie: members only) club.
First of let me say that a number of private clubs have been forcibly integrated by the courts. Gender and not race has been the main cause for such actions. But more importantly here, is the idea that private clubs is the "only way." Imagine if some one had said that due to the Jim Crow laws, the only way to have integrated access to a restaurant, swimming pool, or movie theater was to make private (i.e. members only) clubs. Obviously you are not correct on this one, as we now have integrated them with out resorting to such clubs as the means.
So also the opposite could occur.
It was not a cop out, it was in answer to the STUPID statements he made. I still say that when you buy a piece of property and pay for it with your own money, you have a right to chose to whom it is sold to. Logically I would not expect the person that buys it to put up a 400' high fence, open a half way house for the insane, start a pot farm or any of the other statements he made. I was talking about selling it to a family and you have the right to chose which family to sell it to.
Our country is currently pretty much free of major racism like lynchings and gas chambers and concentration camps and slavery.
The "racists" of today are small time racists and certainly no where near KKK or Nazis or anything else. No one, black, white, or other has very much to complain about in the US today. There is some racism, but it is ineffective at harming the other race and pretty minimal. A little racism is no big deal.
Plus, I don't care if the people buying it are black, brown, pink, yellow, red, purple or green with orange stripes. He still has the right to chose to whom he sells it.
No one says in the context of this thread that a man can not sell his home to who ever he wants to. Rufus was not told that he could not sell his home to who ever he wanted to. That has not been the issue. The issue has to do with him presenting his home for sale on the open market. That is he used view from a public street to advertise and invite the public to purchase his home, and then when potential buyer expended effort to make the purchase, he denied them due to their race. Any just society would afford the denied some amount of restitution.
The "private clubs" that were forcibly integrated were done on the grounds that they were "private" in name only. There still are a number of "no blacks" private golf courses in the US. If you claim the "private club" exemption, you really need to closer to "private" than "public".
This above reply #148 to my reply #143 to you, has nothing to do with the discussion. That discussion grew out of the idea of a neighbor building a high wall blocking out the sun, etc. Racial discrimination in the sale of a homes was not in dispute there. Quite possibly you meant your reply to another of my replies. At any rate, you did not answer staytrue's #117 question in your reply #131, as I pointed out in my reply #143.
That reminds me of an article I read several years ago. An old lady wanted to hire a Christian, live-in handyman and so she ran an ad in the paper to that effect. She got busted big-time by the local city EEOC and had to pay a $5,000 fine.
Damned if you do and damned if you don't.
You are quite right here. I did not think it necessary to make that distinction, as it was not the main point I was arguing. But staying with that point, the forced integration of private clubs was a very short lived controversy as I recall it. The establishment forces quickly backed off on pursuing such cases by government action, as there was a strong backlash to such actions. Civil rights groups then focused on using social pressure, and did so quite successfully for the most part. At least that is how I recall it.
Me either (she says sarcastically)
Of course I view the loss to the woman as being far greater than the current troubles inflicted upon Rufus. First off, she stated up front what she wanted, bringing no harm to anyone. Where as Rufus did do harm, and should have to pay $5,000 +/- $4,500 or so. But $100,000 is outrageous, and amounts to nothing more than criminal plunder. Even suing him for that amount is evidence of legal extortion in my opinion. And on that basis, I say he should get off the hook entirely.
ofFENded!
IIRC, SCOTUS ruled the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to be Constitutional. If that's the case, then it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks.
Most ofFENded - jack
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.