During this year of reawakening to the devastating consequences of racial inequity across the United States, individuals and organizations are taking steps to reinforce their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. At John L. Scott Real Estate, we’ve approached these issues by educating ourselves, our staff, and our community. We’ve reaffirmed our dedication with a Declaration to Support Diversity that will be displayed in our offices. For us, this is more than a statement or a conversation starter. We see these words as an expression of who we are as a company and how we conduct business.
Declaration to Supporting Diversity
Together we are making an impact in society.
We appreciate the powerful spirit within each individual:
- We each have a different shade of skin color.
- We each have a different faith or spirituality.
- We each have a gender identity and sexual orientation.
- We each have a different ancestry with culture, customs, and language.
This is what makes each of us special.
This declaration, plus our support of individuals regardless of their familial status or disabilities, rounds out our commitment to Fair Housing. While April is designated as Fair Housing Month by the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR), our commitment to Fair Housing is unwavering every day of the year.
Diversity commitment at leadership level
As a company, we’ve deepened our internal discussions of what we can do to support diversity, inclusion, and equity in our offices and community. We understand that to have a real impact, it’s essential to have an authentic commitment from our leadership team. We started at the top by asking our leaders in every office to do the work and get an education about the history of racism in the real estate industry. Every office leader read or listened to Richard Rothstein’s 2017 book, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, and discussed it with their staff.
Additionally, our leaders and many members of our support staff completed NAR’s Implicit Bias Training, which demonstrates how sometimes even unconscious stereotypes can result in different groups being treated unfairly. NAR’s At Home with Diversity program was also offered companywide to help our broker associates and staff develop sensitivity to our multicultural world.
Sharing our commitment to diversity with our staff and community
We share our declaration with new agents as well as our existing staff and agents, and continue to discuss diversity. We support making diversity training mandatory to promote understanding of the meaning of the Fair Housing Act and to continue the growth of diverse, equitable communities.
Our declaration was written in the spirit of creating a safe environment at our company, where each person can reach their full potential. We hope our declaration provides encouragement within our company to always do the right thing, and we’re also sharing our values with our clients and community.
If the words of our declaration to support diversity speak to you, please take them on at your own company and in your own work. For all of us at John L. Scott, this declaration adds positive power and energy to our dedication to a fair and equitable world. It’s a verbal proclamation of who we are and how we are that infuses each of us with the commitment to do everything in our power to serve every individual’s housing needs and to strengthen the ties in our community.
John L. Scott Real Estate, led by third-generation Chairman and CEO J. Lennox Scott, has been helping buyers and sellers realize their homeownership dreams since 1931. JLS has 101 offices with more than 3,000 brokers in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and California. JLS is recognized as one of the top 20 residential real estate brands in the nation.