Fair Housing
Equal Housing Opportunity, and the editorial rule that follows from it.
Updated
The commitment
Move Up NC and eXp Realty LLC support the Fair Housing Act and the Equal Opportunity Act. Real estate services are provided without regard to race, colour, religion, sex, disability, familial status, national origin, or any other class protected under federal, North Carolina or local law.
What that means for the writing on this site
This site publishes neighbourhood studies, and neighbourhood writing is exactly where fair housing law is most often broken — usually not by malice but by shorthand. So there is a standing editorial rule here.
- Neighbourhoods are described by what is physically there: the era of the housing, the lot sizes, the road network, the trail access, the architecture, the commute.
- They are never described by who lives there, and never with coded language about who a place is really for.
- Schools are referred to by assignment and by the fact that assignments change. Test scores are not used as a proxy for anything.
- Words like “safe”, “good area”, “family neighbourhood” and “up-and-coming” do not appear as descriptions, because in practice they are used to mean something the law does not permit an agent to mean.
- Where the reporting notes that a place is unusually diverse, it is stated as a fact about the place alongside its practical consequences, not as a recommendation for or against.
If you think something here crosses the line
Say so and it will be corrected in place. A complaint can also be made to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development or to the North Carolina Real Estate Commission.