Equity & Inclusion Statement
At Neighbors Realty, we believe that being a good neighbor means making an authentic commitment to equity and inclusion. We pledge to work to advance these values in our company, our industry, and our community.
Our understanding of equity and inclusion
Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC); people with disabilities; LGBTQ+ people; and other marginalized communities disproportionately lack resources and opportunities due to the systems of oppression that organize our society. We understand equity and inclusion as conditions under which the needs and perspectives of these communities are prioritized and centered, giving everyone what they need to thrive.
Real estate’s responsibility
Those of us who are white and work in the real estate industry have a special responsibility to fight against systemic racism, because our industry has actively reinforced it. From the 1920s to the 1960s, real estate professionals helped develop and carry out “redlining,” the practice of refusing to provide home loans in predominantly Black areas. Real estate brokers also maintained racial segregation by declining to sell homes in white neighborhoods to Black people. When homes were actually sold to Black Americans, some were on contracts designed to fail and strip Black Americans of their home and any equity they’d hoped to gain.
We’ve seen this pattern repeat itself as recently as the Great Recession, where Black Americans were overly represented in the number of foreclosures related to sub-prime, adjustable rate mortgages that were marketed to them by some of the United States’ biggest banks.
In Portland and across the country, this deprived Black people of the valuable opportunity to build wealth through homeownership. As a direct result, in 2019, the median wealth of a white household was $188,200, while the median wealth of a Black household was just $24,100 (Source). To this day, bias on the part of real estate professionals still exists and disproportionately impacts BIPOC and their access to housing.
Our commitments
How can we begin to repair this damage and create a more just sector and society? We offer the following strategies:
Expand access to the real-estate industry for BIPOC: Our industry—including Neighbors—is overwhelmingly white, and it’s no mystery why: From a lack of representation to prohibitive startup costs, the barriers to entry for BIPOC are high. At Neighbors, we’re working on a program that would lower those barriers by providing new BIPOC real estate professionals with a scholarship to pay for their required education, licensing, dues, and subscriptions. We hope to launch the program soon.
Ally with fellow progressive businesses: Neighbors is a member of Portland’s progressive business association, Business for a Better Portland. To have access to essential services to perform our jobs (such as the multiple listing service), we’re required to be members of certain national organizations and their local affiliates— but we often oppose their lobbying efforts. We have, and will continue, voicing our concerns on housing issues with local and state governments— regardless of the official message shared by organizations that claim to represent us. We love our local community of values-driven small businesses and seek to partner with them whenever possible.
Support nonprofits working toward social justice: Since we spend most of our time helping clients buy and sell homes, we invest in community-based organizations spending most of their time making Portland and Oregon a more just place to live. Visit the Giving Accountability page to learn more.
Advocate for equitable housing policies: Neighbors was the only real estate firm to endorse HereTogether, the successful campaign to create a regional funding stream for homelessness services. Neighbors owner Brad Twiss was also active in the 2016 campaign to pass Portland’s first affordable-housing bond, and has testified before the Oregon Legislature in support of reforming the state’s inequitable Mortgage Interest Deduction. We are committed to leaning into our partnerships with progressive housing policy organizations to tackle future reform to create housing security and homeownership opportunities for BIPOC Oregonians.
We promise to continue following these and other approaches. None of us are perfect; we’ve made mistakes and we’ll make more. But we’re always trying to do better, and we welcome accountability from the community.
Updates
May 25th, 2021
Today, on the one-year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd, we reflect not only on his legacy but also the promises we made after the events of that day. These promises include expanding access to the real-estate industry for BIPOC, allying with fellow progressive businesses, supporting nonprofits working towards social justice, and advocating for equitable housing policy.
This is not a victory lap, as we feel we’ve fallen short on some of these benchmarks. Our goal is rapid transparency with our own agents, our clients, and the community we serve. Until there’s a uniform process for companies to report on their progress towards these goals, we are sharing this information to start a dialogue among our peers, to be held accountable, and to solicit feedback from our community (especially from BIPOC members).
Resource Generation
In the last year, Neighbors Realty and our agents have given $11,110 to Taking Ownership, an organization established to renovate and revive Black-owned homes that have requested our help, with an emphasis on enabling Black homeowners to age in place, generate wealth and simultaneously deter predatory investors and realtors to deflect the gentrification process.
We’ve contributed an additional $6,349.07 to organizations such as ACLU, Oregon Labor Candidate School, Center for Black Equity, NAACP Portland, Urban League of Portland, Oregon Justice Resource Center, and more.
Policy
Metro Measure 26-210
Neighbors Realty was the only real estate brokerage to officially endorse and campaign on behalf of HereTogether-- a Metro measure (26-210) to provide additional support for homeless prevention and services in the tri county area. This measure passed, and counties are working on their implementation plan. You can read more about it here.
Mortgage Interest Deduction Reform
Neighbors owner Brad Twiss has been a strong supporter of reforming our state’s largest housing subsidy (the mortgage interest deduction, or MID) so that it benefits more first-time homeowners and lower income families, rather than high income earners and those with second homes. Most recently, he testified in support of Oregon Senate Bill 852.
Shortcomings
Last year, we set a very clear goal of creating diversity among our ranks and establishing a scholarship program to offset the high cost of entry to this field. We hoped to have a scholarship recipient awarded by the start of this year. However, we’ve failed to organize this program on our own. Mostly due to administrative capacity to develop a wholistic program that will truly set the recipient up for success.
We believe it’s important to make sure we have an established training program before bringing on a recruit, but we also don’t want to make perfect the enemy of good. We’re engaged with a local organization that’s tasked itself with helping brokerages achieve this goal, and have pledged financial support, but we know we need to do more.
While this goal will take us longer to reach than anticipated, we pledge more consistent updates and encourage questions and feedback.
October 5th, 2023
Resource Generation
To date, our agents have given over $80,000 to organizations like Taking Ownership, Outside In, Central City Concern, Outside In, Northwest Abortion Access Fund, and more. We’re committed to transparency on our giving and will continue to update our giving quarterly on our Giving & Accountability Page.
Policy
Now that the Supportive Housing Services (SHS) tax has passed, we continue to support the HereTogether housing coalition through Willamette Week Give Guide sponsorship and in-kind donation of photography, graphic design, and use of our office space. Heretogether places a crucial role in pushing for accountability and progress on the part of Metro (our regional government), as well as Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas Counties.
Scholarship and Mentorship
With the goal of getting more Black, Brown, and Indigenous people into the business, we’ve committed to reducing the barriers to entry in our industry by paying for our scholarship recipients’ pre-licensing education, licensing fees, MLS and Realtor dues, as well as waiving all desk fees and transaction fees for two years– a value of over $40,000 per recipient.
We make these commitments with no obligations of our recipients to repay any costs or continue hanging their license with Neighbors. Recipients are free to exit the program (or leave our brokerage for a competitor) with no expectation of repayment.
We’re proud of the progress we’ve made in the last year, adding two scholarship recipients to our roster. We have a third candidate who has started pre-licensing education via PCC in the Fall 2023 term. We’ll continue to expand the program at a measured pace, with our only limitation being sure we never take on more candidates than we can fully support. Any member of an under-represented community who is interested in a career in real estate is encouraged to reach out to us at info@workwithneighbors.com.
Shortcomings
With over two years since our last update, it’s obvious that we’ve fallen short of our commitment to provide consistent updates. That said, we’re proud of the progress we’ve made and believe we’re just getting started. We’re optimistic of being able to share further progress in future updates and encourage anyone with feedback or questions to submit them below.