Contest winner, Surdalyer Brown with relative (left), pose with their brand new flat screen television along with Ron Cooper (right) of R.S. Cooper & Associates.
Photo By Brian W. Carter
The long-standing company gives away free television and a message for the Black community.
“I’m excited about winning a television, especially a 50 inch,” said contest winner, Surdalyer Brown. “Yeah—very excited.”
Brown walked away Friday, Nov 1 with a plasma, flat screen television courtesy of a drawing contest by R.S. Cooper & Associates (RSCA) given at this year’s Taste of Soul festival. Founder and broker, Ron Cooper sees the contest as a way to get the black community involved in becoming homeowners.
“Homeownership does matter in our community,” said Cooper. “What we’ve went through during the downturn and during the subprime debacle had a tremendous effect on African-American people.
“We want to advocate homeownership in our neighborhood. We want to go back to the idea of investing and homeownership in African American communities is still good.”
RSCA has been in the community, in the same spot on Stocker St in Baldwin Hills for 30 years and is still committed to making African-Americans homeowners in their community. Cooper is the first vice-president of the National Association of Real Estate Brokers, one of the oldest minority trade organizations in the country. He says African-Americans are renters nowadays and he’s looking to change that.
“It’s very difficult for us to get loans today,” said Cooper. “ I was just looking at some statistics last week of how many purchase loans nationally had been done for African-Americans—38,000.
“When we start looking at those kinds of numbers and watching the homeownership rate in our community decline, it has a big effect on us.
“We lost a trillion dollars worth of equity wealth in our community—we need to replace that. We need to advocate replacement of that and we need to be with our congressmen and senators—let them know that they need to be advocating that we replace that lost wealth.”
Cooper wants to empower the community to become owners once again within the community by having their own property.
“I try to stress the idea that African-American homeownership does matter,” said Cooper. “It does to us and we want everybody else to feel that it does.
“The people who qualify under the terms today should consider being homeowners. It’s always better to be a homeowner.
“ The only investment wealth is your home because very seldom do we buy stocks and those kind of things so it’s important that we understand to leave a legacy for our children… that we go back to practicing what we saw our parents practice.”
RSCA manager, Monroe Wooton, was responsible for putting together the contest and getting the community to think about becoming homeowners.
“Our objective was really to try to promote the whole concept of homeownership,” said Wooten. “So, we thought offering this television would certainly draw attention…that proved to work pretty well for us.”
The contest also acted as a poll for RSCA to gage the community as to how many owned a home or rented.
“What we found was that majority of folks that responded are actually tenants,” said Wooten. “So there is a significant pool of individuals that can be worked with… to show there is an opportunity for them to become homeowners and they need not be discouraged by the challenges that confront them.”
Brown is looking forward to watching some quality programs on his new television set.
“We’ll watch the Clippers for sure—I’m switching to the Clippers from the Lakers,” said Brown.
“Some football, some news—the regular stuff.”
R.S. Cooper & Associates are located at 3731 Stocker Street, Suite 110 in Los Angeles, CA. For more information, you can call (323) 299-4876. You can also like them on Facebook @ RS Cooper & Associates Realty
brian@lasentinel.net
