Readers have a clear memory of racist LA housing practices

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To Editor: Thanks to Gene Slater for his opinion piece on the history of housing segregation in Los Angeles. It brought back memories of my shock and disgust when my husband and I bought our first home in Westchester in 1955 and unwittingly became part of the Kentwood Home Guardians.

This was an organization created by the Superior Oil Company in 1943, whose protective restrictions statement included the provision that only members of the white race could live in the Kentwood area of ​​Westchester. Anyone living in this part of Westchester was automatically a member.

This was applied until the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968, and even after that it was the unwritten policy of realtors to keep black housing applicants away from Westchester. Additionally, it was well known that any real estate agent who sold to a black buyer would never sell another property in that area again.

Thank goodness those days are over, but we must not forget them.

Jean Koch, Los Angeles

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To Editor: The aerial photo of the San Fernando Valley in 1953 caught my attention. This is the year our family moved from Cleveland to Sun Valley, purchasing a new land home for $ 11,000.

My elementary school in Cleveland in the late 1940s and early 1950s was incorporated. My new elementary school in the San Fernando Valley was not; it was mostly white, with a few Asian students.

One day in 1954, a neighbor knocked on our door with a petition he wanted dad to sign. Apparently an Asian family was planning to move to the streets, and this had to be stopped. With language I can’t use here, daddy told the man he could go to hell, and besides, we’d rather have the Asian family as neighbors than this bigot.

It was an awakening moment for me. I was very proud of my father that day.

Jerry Lasnik, Thousand Oaks

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To Editor: I lived in the Windsor Hills / View Park neighborhood of Los Angeles in the 1950s and 1960s with my parents. I remember the block busting, which was not mentioned in the opinion piece.

The blockbusting was an effort to get white people to put their homes up for sale because, they were told, people from southern LA were coming to the area to buy, and the owners would have to sell while they could get a good price. .

When the Fair Housing Act was passed, we saw how African Americans could be legally excluded from housing. Lender redlining practices existed until at least the 1990s.

I became a real estate agent in 1980 in Orange County. Fair housing rules were emphasized back then and still are today. It is okay to teach over and over again about past discrimination, otherwise we will either forget it or fail to learn it in the first place.

Jane Olinger, Irvine

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To the Editor: Los Angeles real estate agents may have paved the way for residential segregation, but they certainly weren’t the only ones. When we bought our home in Sacramento in 1993, there was a provision in the Standard Purchase Agreement that said people of color could not buy in the neighborhood.

After finding this, I brought it to the attention of our real estate agent. Oh, that’s no longer in effect, she said, as it’s being superseded by federal law.

I was appalled and scratched the section with a Sharpie pen. I could not, would not accept such a contract, regardless of the racist intent rendered irrelevant. The fact that he was still there indicated a lack of concern, which I hope does not hold true today.

David Comden, Ventura

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