Housing discrimination refers to patterns of

discrimination Discrimination is the process of making unfair or prejudicial distinctions between people based on the groups, classes, or other categories to which they belong or are perceived to belong, such as race, gender, age, class, religion, or sex ...

that affect a person's ability to rent or buy

housing Housing refers to a property containing one or more Shelter (building), shelter as a living space. Housing spaces are inhabited either by individuals or a collective group of people. Housing is also referred to as a human need and right to ...

. 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 property such as a house, apartment, condominium, land, or real estate that is rented or leased to an individual or business, known as a tenant (also called a ''lessee'' or ''renter''). The term landlord appli ...

who rejects offers from potential tenants based on factors such as race,

age Age or AGE may refer to: Time and its effects * Age, the amount of time someone has been alive or something 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 social, psychological, cultural, and behavioral aspects of being a man (or boy), woman (or girl), or third gender. Although gender often corresponds to sex, a transgender person may identify with a gender other tha ...

, 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 and

racial segregation Racial segregation is the separation of people into race (human classification), racial or other Ethnicity, ethnic groups in daily life. Segregation can involve the spatial separation of the races, and mandatory use of different institutions, ...

, 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 an offensive nature. It is commonly understood as behavior that demeans, humiliates, and intimidates a person, and it is characteristically identified by its unlikelihood in terms of social and ...

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 abuse, psychological/mental abuse that involves the use of Oral language, oral or w ...

), 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 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 Meta-analysis is a method of synthesis of quantitative data from multiple independent studies addressing a common research question. An important part of this method involves computing a combined effect size across all of the studies. As such, th ...

of 25 correspondence studies in 15

OECD The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; , OCDE) is an international organization, intergovernmental organization with 38 member countries, founded in 1961 to stimulate economic progress and international trade, wor ...

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

Ontario Ontario is the southernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Located in Central Canada, Ontario is the Population of Canada by province and territory, country's most populous province. As of the 2021 Canadian census, it ...

, housing discrimination is addressed under the Ontario Human Rights Code.

United States

In the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

, the

Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity An office is a space where the employees of an organization perform administrative work in order to support and realize the various goals of the organization. The word "office" may also denote a position within an organization with specific du ...

is charged with enforcing fair housing laws, based on the

Fair Housing Act The Civil Rights Act of 1968 () is a Lists of landmark court decisions, landmark law in the United States signed into law by President of the United States, United States President Lyndon B. Johnson during the King assassination riots. Titles ...

of 1968. A study conducted by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) found that "the greatest share of discrimination for

Hispanic The term Hispanic () are people, Spanish culture, cultures, or countries related to Spain, the Spanish language, or broadly. In some contexts, Hispanic and Latino Americans, especially within the United States, "Hispanic" is used as an Ethnici ...

and

African American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from an ...

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.

References

External links

File a Housing Discrimination Complaint

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