Discrimination against blacks, Hispanics and Asians looking for housing persists in subtle forms, according to a new national study commissioned by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. Though less likely to face overt obstacles, like being refused an appointment to see a home, minority customers were shown fewer available units than whites with similar qualifications, the study found.
They were also asked more questions about their finances, according to the study, and given fewer offers of help financing a loan.
“Although we’ve come a long way from the days of blatant, in-your-face housing injustice, discrimination still persists,” Shaun Donovan, the department’s secretary, said in a telephone conference on Tuesday unveiling the findings. “And just because it has taken on a hidden form doesn’t make it any less harmful.”
In each of the study’s 8,000 tests, one white and one minority tester of the same gender and age, posing as equally well-qualified renters or buyers, visited the same housing provider or agent. In more than half the test cases, both testers were shown the same number of apartments or homes. But in cases where one tester was shown more homes or apartments, the white tester was usually favored, leading to a higher number of units shown to whites overall.
In one test, a white customer looking for a two-bedroom apartment was shown a two-bedroom and a one-bedroom and given applications for both, while a Hispanic customer who arrived two hours later was told that nothing was available. In another, a real estate agent refused to meet with a black tester who was not prequalified for a loan, while a white tester was given an appointment without being asked if she had prequalified.
The study was the fourth of its kind since 1977, when the results showed a starker form of discrimination known as door-slamming. In 17 percent of the cases in that study, whites were offered a unit when blacks were told that none were available. In 2012, when the new study was conducted, the vast majority of testers of all races were able to at least make an appointment to see a recently advertised house or apartment.
But once they arrived, they were given fewer options. Over all, black prospective renters were presented 11 percent fewer rentals than whites, Hispanics about 12 percent fewer rentals and Asians about 10 percent fewer rentals. As prospective buyers, blacks were presented 17 percent fewer homes and Asians 15 percent fewer homes, but Hispanics were given the opportunity to see roughly the same number of homes as whites.
White testers also were more frequently offered lower rents, told that deposits and other move-in costs were negotiable, or were quoted a lower price. Taking into account fees, deposits and rents, apartments were more likely to cost whites slightly less in the first year of rental than blacks might pay.
The study did not examine discrimination in lending practices, though there is already considerable evidence that minorities have suffered significantly from predatory lending and were far more likely during the housing boom to be offered subprime loans even if they qualified for cheaper conventional mortgages.
The tests were performed in 28 metropolitan areas but found no substantial differences across cities or regions, the authors wrote.
Margery Austin Turner, a senior vice president at the Urban Institute, the research group that conducted the study, said that buyers and renters with poor credit or other blemishes on their financial records had experienced more pernicious forms of discrimination than the well-qualified customers in the study. “The findings probably understate the overall levels of discrimination in the market today,” she said.
Even subtle discrimination like steering minorities to certain neighborhoods or failing to offer them the homes most likely to increase in value would result in substantially weaker accumulation of wealth, said John Taylor, the president and chief executive of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, which seeks to improve housing in underserved communities.
Polling shows that many Americans think financially stable customers have the same opportunities to obtain good housing regardless of race, he added.
“A study like this,” he said, “helps you understand that there really is very different treatment occurring when it comes to things like housing and lending.”
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