Zillow to Celebrate Juneteenth

Leading US property portal Zillow is to celebrate Juneteenth as the portal joins a growing number of businesses in the United States that will celebrate the signing of the emancipation proclamation which outlawed slavery in the country.

CEO Rich Barton penned a blog post entitled “Racism Has No Home Here” outlining what the company had to do to combat racism including mandatory bias training, new recruiting methods and using housing data to illuminate inequality. When asked what the company had done to combat racism in the past, Barton’s answer was forthright:

“The short answer is: not enough”

Barton then took to Twitter later in the week to announce that Juneteenth, a day traditionally celebrated by the Black Community, would be  “a day of reflection, education, and action to support our Black team members and the Black community” for all employees.

Addressing the importance of the housing sector in combatting systemic racism, Barton noted that the gap between Black and White home-ownership is worse now than in 1900 and that Zillow would

“continue to partner with groups like the National Fair Housing Alliance and the Urban League to help identify gaps and do more to advocate for change, solutions and justice.”

Clearly property portals can be part of the change and Zillow is to applauded for not only being vocal about it but for actually recognising that it has perhaps not done enough up to now and for taking action to address this.