You need a compelling reason to change what works

Every five years or so, someone brings up the Oak Park “For Sale” sign ban and harrumphs that it’s outdated and unconstitutional. It may have been well-intentioned during the era of panic-peddling and white flight, the harrumphers grumble, but that era is long over. You don’t have to worry. Trust us.

They always cite the U.S. Supreme Court case involving Willingboro Township, N.J., where their For Sale sign ban was overturned in 1977. And they always note that African-American Justice Thurgood Marshall actually wrote the majority opinion in Linmark v. Willingboro, so it must be OK.

The last time all of this came up in 2003, I did a little research. Here’s what I wrote at the time:

“One thing the letter-writer didn’t include, of course, in his little history lesson were the results of that ruling. So I called Willingboro, N.J. to see how things turned out. According to their website, the current racial breakdown of the population of Willingboro Township is roughly 67 percent African-American and 25 percent white. The library’s local historian confirmed those percentages were roughly reversed before the ban and afterward, housing prices plummeted. Rapid racial change is almost always accompanied by a rapid rise in poverty–as occurred on the West Side of Chicago.

“Most towns that were likewise liberated by the ‘free’ market didn’t have an enlightened Board of Realtors who voluntarily complied with a sign ban like Oak Park‘s does–which has contributed significantly to a climate of stable diversity, resulting in the village this letter-writer says he fell in love with.”

And for those who don’t know what real estate panic-peddling can produce, here’s a refresher from that same 2003 column:

“Those ‘Free Speech’ signs you champion so vigorously were used by unscrupulous real estate agents throughout the 1960s and ’70s to incite panic-selling among white homeowners on the West Side of Chicago. For their mass exercise in free speech, no less than 50,000 whites moved out of Austin in the 1970s alone, and 60,000 mostly low-income African Americans moved in. The entire West Side of Chicago resegregated in a matter of about 15 years. If you want to improve your ‘sense of history,’ take a drive through Austin some day and see how it’s going.”

For some reason, in 2003, we were told by staff at village hall that there was no official For Sale sign ban. It was simply a voluntary ban observed by local Realtors all these years. Well, they weren’t being entirely upfront about that. Turns out the ban is still on the books, only it’s not enforced. Here’s the explanation we received last week by Village Communications Director David Powers:

“Section 13-2-3 of the Village Code prohibits real estate For Sale signs. However, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Linmark Associates, Inc. v. Willingboro Township, 431 U.S. 85, 97 S. Ct. 1614 (1977), held that a similar ordinance prohibiting real estate For Sale signs was an unconstitutional suppression of free speech. A government may only prohibit a form of speech, which includes signs, if the government shows it has a compelling interest to do so, and that the ordinance prohibiting the speech is narrowly tailored to meet that interest.

“Although the court acknowledged that maintaining racial integration is a compelling governmental interest, it held the Willingboro ordinance unconstitutional because the Township did not show that the ordinance was narrowly tailored to meet that interest. In layman’s terms, the town did not show that prohibiting For Sale signs would effectively eliminate panic-selling and white flight.

“It is my understanding that the Oak Park Board of Realtors, in recognition of the legitimate goals of the ordinance, has voluntarily agreed not to use For Sale signs even though the village does not enforce its ordinance.”

Given the results of the ruling in Willingboro and the documented resegregation of the West Side of Chicago, Oak Park might very well be able to withstand a court challenge. Then again, the current Supreme Court leans so far to the right, if it ever went that far, the ban would undoubtedly be overturned because, for this court, commercial interests outweigh everything else.

But it would likely be a waste of time and money since the village would merely take the ordinance off the books and the voluntary ban would remain in force.

You might think the era of panic-peddling is over, and that Oak Park in all its virtue is impervious to rapid resegregation, and that a few For Sale signs might be of some minor assistance in selling a few houses, but those arguments don’t sound terribly compelling to me, and, frankly, the first argument sounds pretty naïve.

When something works, you should change it only if you have a compelling reason to do so. The For Sale sign ban has clearly worked, and I haven’t heard a single argument compelling enough to change it.

If it ain’t broke, please do us all a big favor and don’t try to fix it.