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Housing discrimination refers to patterns of
discrimination Discrimination is the act of making unjustified distinctions between people based on the groups, classes, or other categories to which they belong or are perceived to belong. People may be discriminated on the basis of race, gender, age, relig ...
that affect a person's ability to rent or buy
housing Housing, or more generally, living spaces, refers to the construction and assigned usage of houses or buildings individually or collectively, for the purpose of shelter. Housing ensures that members of society have a place to live, whether it ...
. This disparate treatment of a person on the housing market can be based on group characteristics or on the place where a person lives. The most straightforward form of housing discrimination involves a
landlord A landlord is the owner of a house, apartment, condominium, land, or real estate which is rented or leased to an individual or business, who is called a tenant (also a ''lessee'' or ''renter''). When a juristic person is in this position, the ...
who rejects offers from potential tenants based on factors such as
race Race, RACE or "The Race" may refer to: * Race (biology), an informal taxonomic classification within a species, generally within a sub-species * Race (human categorization), classification of humans into groups based on physical traits, and/or s ...
,
age Age or AGE may refer to: Time and its effects * Age, the amount of time someone or something has been alive or has existed ** East Asian age reckoning, an Asian system of marking age starting at 1 * Ageing or aging, the process of becoming older ...
,
gender Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures u ...
,
marital status Civil status, or marital status, are the distinct options that describe a person's relationship with a significant other. ''Married'', ''single'', ''divorced'', and ''widowed'' are examples of civil status. ''Civil status'' and ''marital status ...
, source of funding, and others. The landlord may perform the discrimination explicitly or implicitly. Housing discrimination can also occur among existing tenants, who may face detrimental treatment in comparison to others for the same reasons. Housing discrimination can lead to
spatial inequality Spatial inequality refers to the unequal distribution of income and resources across geographical regions. Attributable to local differences in infrastructure, geographical features (presence of mountains, coastlines, particular climates, etc.) an ...
and
racial segregation Racial segregation is the systematic separation of people into race (human classification), racial or other Ethnicity, ethnic groups in daily life. Racial segregation can amount to the international crime of apartheid and a crimes against hum ...
, which, in turn, can exacerbate wealth disparities between certain groups.


Types

Sociologists Vincent J. Roscigno, Diana L. Karafin, and Griff Tester have determined that the variety of actions that constitute housing discrimination can be classified as either exclusionary or nonexclusionary.Roscigno, Vincent J., Diana L. Karafin, and Griff Tester, 200
“The Complexities and Processes of Racial Housing Discrimination,”
Social Problems, Vol. 56, No. 1. University of California Press. pp.49-69.


Exclusionary

Exclusionary discrimination practices refer to practices that seek to prevent certain individuals or families from obtaining housing, based on factors of discrimination. This includes explicit refusals (which may also include
harassment Harassment covers a wide range of behaviors of offensive nature. It is commonly understood as behavior that demeans, humiliates or embarrasses a person, and it is characteristically identified by its unlikelihood in terms of social and moral ...
and
verbal abuse Verbal abuse (also known as verbal aggression, verbal attack, verbal violence, verbal assault, psychic aggression, or psychic violence) is a type of psychological/mental abuse that involves the use of oral, gestured, and written language direct ...
), proactive requests for or against specific minorities in advertising, as well as implicit tactics such as like lying about standards for rental qualification to disqualify certain individuals, unfair financing or loan qualifications or terms, steering or restricting the choices of people seeking homes, and refusing to provide insurance, which would prevent the individual or family from acquiring a home. Consumer advocate groups conducted studies and found that many minority borrowers who were eligible for affordable, traditional loans were often steered toward incredibly high-priced subprime loans that they would never be able to repay."Fair Lending and Accountability"
New York Times, September 7, 2011.
The majority of discriminatory actors in exclusionary discrimination are landlords and landowners, as they have the positional power and direct access to the individual or family and the housing being sought. Other discriminatory actors or institutions responsible for exclusion include real estate, insurance, and banking and lending agents and institutions.South, S. J., & Crowder, K. D. (1998). Housing discrimination and residential mobility: Impacts for blacks and whites. Population Research and Policy Review, 17(4), 369-369-387.


Nonexclusionary

Nonexclusionary discrimination practices refer to "actions and practices that occur within an already established housing arrangement, most often entailing racial harassment, differential treatment of tenants, or disparate application of contractual terms and conditions of residency." Individuals and families already housed experience ongoing intimidation, differential treatment, and harassment, and nonexclusionary discrimination often results in distress for victims since the victim is often legally bound to the home and usually has direct contact with the perpetrator on a regular basis. Landlords and owners are still responsible for the majority of this type of housing discrimination, but neighbors and banking and lending institutions participate more. For instance, even without institutionalized exclusionary power, residential neighbors can harass and intimidate tenants. Most nonexclusionary discrimination cases involve applying discriminatory terms and conditions within the victim's current residential setting. The majority of these cases involve terms, conditions, and privileges relating to a current rental arrangement. These cases are often seen as unfairly raising the rent of a select group or allowing certain tenants privileges, like using a facility after hours or being lenient on pet policies. Many nonexclusionary discrimination cases involve the failure to provide equal access to services and facilities, such as purposely delaying or completely forgoing fixing a broken pipe. More terms and conditions cases involve discriminatory financing, loans, and appraisals of the individual or family's property, which is when the discriminatory actor takes advantage of the victim financially. Other forms of nonexclusionary discrimination include the use of harassment, intimidation, and coercion toward victims. This includes racial slurs and threats of violence, both of which create an uneasy environment in which the victims live. These forms can cause excessive anxiety and stress for the individual or family affected. If an individual holding a position of an authority, such as the landlord, is responsible for the nonexclusionary discrimination, the victim is left with a feeling of powerlessness and lack of ability to get help.


Gender discrimination

In many countries,
structural discrimination Structural discrimination is a form of institutional discrimination against individuals of a given protected characteristic such as race or gender which has the effect of restricting their opportunities. It may be either intentional or unintentio ...
in housing disadvantages men and favors women. This is typically studied by correspondence studies, where fictitious applications are sent to landlords and real-estate agents. The experimenter can then manipulate the name of the applicant to change gender or ethnicity while keeping everything else identical. In 2018, a
meta-analysis A meta-analysis is a statistical analysis that combines the results of multiple scientific studies. Meta-analyses can be performed when there are multiple scientific studies addressing the same question, with each individual study reporting me ...
of 25 correspondence studies in 15
OECD The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; french: Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques, ''OCDE'') is an intergovernmental organisation with 38 member countries, founded in 1961 to stimulate e ...
countries (totalizing over 110,000 letters) found that women are 30% more likely than men to be chosen, everything else being equal. There is an interaction between sexism and racism, so that sexist discrimination in stronger against men of ethnic minorities. However, men from the dominant majority also suffer from discrimination compared to women. Consistently, men make up the vast majority of homeless people and a 2019 French study found that 90% of homeless people who die in the street are men.


By country


Canada

In
Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...
, housing discrimination is addressed under the
Ontario Human Rights Code The Human Rights Code is a statute in the Canadian province of Ontario that guarantees equality before the law and prohibits discrimination in specific social areas such as housing or employment. The code's goal specifically prohibits discrimina ...
.


United States

In the
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
, the
Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity The Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity (FHEO) is an agency within the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. FHEO is responsible for administering and enforcing federal fair housing laws and establishing policies th ...
is charged with enforcing fair housing laws, based on the
Fair Housing Act The Civil Rights Act of 1968 () is a landmark law in the United States signed into law by United States President Lyndon B. Johnson during the King assassination riots. Titles II through VII comprise the Indian Civil Rights Act, which applie ...
of 1968. A study conducted by the
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is one of the executive departments of the U.S. federal government. It administers federal housing and urban development laws. It is headed by the Secretary of Housing and Urb ...
(HUD) found that "the greatest share of discrimination for
Hispanic The term ''Hispanic'' ( es, hispano) refers to people, Spanish culture, cultures, or countries related to Spain, the Spanish language, or Hispanidad. The term commonly applies to countries with a cultural and historical link to Spain and to Vic ...
and
African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
home seekers can still be attributed to being told units are unavailable when they are available to non-Hispanic whites and being shown and told about less units than a comparable non-minority."


Turkey

In Turkey, the Human Rights and Equality Institution is charged with enforcing fair housing laws, based on the law of the same name as the institution, which published in April 2016.


See also

*
Right to housing The right to housing (occasionally right to shelter) is the economic, social and cultural right to adequate housing and shelter. It is recognized in some national constitutions and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and International ...
*
Ownership equity In finance, equity is ownership of assets that may have debts or other liabilities attached to them. Equity is measured for accounting purposes by subtracting liabilities from the value of the assets. For example, if someone owns a car worth $2 ...
*
Real estate economics Real estate economics is the application of economic techniques to real estate markets. It tries to describe, explain, and predict patterns of prices, supply, and demand. The closely related field of housing economics is narrower in scope, conc ...
*
Redlining In the United States, redlining is a discriminatory practice in which services (financial and otherwise) are withheld from potential customers who reside in neighborhoods classified as "hazardous" to investment; these neighborhoods have signif ...
*
Subprime In finance, subprime lending (also referred to as near-prime, subpar, non-prime, and second-chance lending) is the provision of loans to people in the United States who may have difficulty maintaining the repayment schedule. Historically, subpri ...
*
Subsidized housing Subsidized housing is government sponsored economic assistance aimed towards alleviating housing costs and expenses for impoverished people with low to moderate incomes. In the United States, subsidized housing is often called "affordable housin ...
*
Racial steering Racial steering refers to the practice in which real estate brokers guide prospective home buyers towards or away from certain neighborhoods based on their race. The term is used in the context of ''de facto'' residential segregation in the Unite ...
, real estate agents guiding prospective buyers to or from neighbourhoods based on their race


References


Further reading

* Richard R.W. Brooks and Carol M. Rose, ''Saving the Neighborhood: Racially Restrictive Covenants, Law, and Social Norms.'' Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2013.


External links


File a Housing Discrimination Complaint

Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity
{{Authority control LGBT rights by issue Housing