Title: WILL THE REAL “FORCED HOUSING” PLEASE STAND UP
Date: Sometime between 1963 and 1967.
Overview: PCR debates real estate developer – and fair housing opponent – Ray Brummet.
Link to original: https://petercrobertsonarchive.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/will-the-real-forced-housing-please-stand-up.pdf
Excerpt:
Mr. Brummet is in the process of constructing in Jefferson City one of its largest and most attractive suburban developments. … [He] has talked at length about not interfering and forcing something upon the owner of real property but yet he knows and I know that in establishing this subdivision he was protected by the knowledge that government will protect him, that society has made certain value judgments and will exercise them to protect him from anyone who would buy property in that subdivision and use it in such a way that would be harmful to the residential character of the neighborhood. Thus, Mr. Brummet, if I were to purchase one of your houses I would be forced to refrain from utilizing it to establish a filling station, a vulcanizing plant for putting retreads on old tires, a bar or a brothel. Mr. Brummet I am sure does not oppose this force being placed upon me. It seems to me that the same society which gives meaning and strength to the term private property by protecting it with police power and which forces the owner of the property not to use it in certain ways can also make the policy decision that it is in the interest of the kind of society which he wants to say that the individual can continue to dispose of his property in an unfettered fashion with the sole exception that he cannot discriminate in making that disposition because of the race of the party to whom he is selling.
Full text:
It is always a pleasure for me to appear on a platform with Ray Brummet, one of our leading real estate dealers in Jefferson City and perhaps one of the leading real estate dealers in the nation in terms of his honest willingness to publicly admit and state the point of view of the real estate industry. While I will tonight rather strongly attack some of the things which he has said because I believe they are based on misconception, I want to make it clear that I am in no way attacking him personally for I have the greatest respect for his ability as a real estate operator, for his talents as a businessman who is, as he suggested, in this field for the sole purpose of making money and not for the purpose of engaging in any social experimentation. He has outlined to you tonight the classic statement of the position of the real estate industry a position which some members of that profession sometimes adher[e] to more in theory than in practice — but nonetheless the basic theories on which they operate when they discuss problems of integrated housing.
Because Mr. Brummet has placed so much emphasis in his remarks upon the “social significance of real property” in a capitalistic free enterprise system and because he has based so much of his own opinions, views, and actions upon his own desire to make money I thought I would start out this evening by giving you a few ideas on my own frame of reference as to the “social significance of real property”, and the importance of deeply reconsidering the way we currently handle real property transactions in a free enterprise capitalistic economy. Continue reading “WILL THE REAL “FORCED HOUSING” PLEASE STAND UP”
Peter C. Robertson Archive 