Two major real estate search engines nix crime data in racial equity push Realtor.com has removed crime data from its website, and Redfin has decided not to add it out of concerns that it could perpetuate racial inequity. On the same day that Realtor.com announced that it was removing its crime data, Redfin came out with a full-throated denunciation of crime data being included on real estate websites. Redfin’s chief growth officer Christian Taubman announced that, after consideration, the company would not be adding crime data to its own platform. Taubman said that Redfin had been weighing whether to add information about crime because one of the metrics that consumers consider when looking for a home to purchase is how safe the area around that home is. The company concluded that available crime data doesn’t accurately answer that question, and “given the long history of redlining and racist housing covenants in the United States there’s too great a risk of this inaccuracy reinforcing racial bias.”
This is absurd. I am sure other websites will pop-up that overlay crime data by neighborhood in real estate portals. Of course, websites like SpotCrime still exist which map all the reported crime on a map -- which is quite useful when making decisions whether to buy or rent in an area.
Remove the data. People will now make decisions based on stereotypes and incorrect or assumed data. And this will just make that decision making worse.
This is akin to the issues with Trip Advisor which faced legal challenges a few years ago. I am not sure where it all ended out but they were being sued by women/men who were sexually assaulted or some other violent crime when they visited a travel destination. They alleged that Trip Advisor was being paid by local businesses, hotels, restaurants etc in those areas to advertise or recommend them, and that Trip Advisor was deleting all the scary reviews that were trying to warn people that the area was an unsafe shit-hole. And that they would never had been assaulted if they had balanced information and decided not to go.
I was talking about Citydata’s information on each city which is very useful — not their idiotic forums.