Racial and ethnic minorities encounter unlawful discrimination approximately one out of every five times they inquire about renting or purchasing a home. Such practices deny the targeted victims access to decent schools, safe streets, good jobs and many other public and private amenities. The mental and physical health of household members, including that of young children, are directly affected by discriminatory housing practices, and the adverse consequences persist after they have left segregated communities for what are generally viewed as more privileged and protected middle class, predominantly white environs. But discrimination has become more subtle in recent years. Many housing providers detect the race of applicants by their voice on the telephone, and as a result of such """"""""linguistic profiling"""""""" steer white and non- white callers to different communities, provide unequal levels of service, or choose not to serve those with non- white voices at all. Some employers treat job applicants differently just on the basis of whether they have white or black sounding names. While housing services are increasingly provided via the internet, virtually no research has explored whether or not names have a similar effect in the housing market though anecdotal evidence suggests this is the case. Those seeking to rent homes have increasingly turned to electronic lists of current vacancies. We propose to use the """"""""audit"""""""" or """"""""testing"""""""" approach whereby equally qualified applicants, one with a distinctively black sounding name, one with a Hispanic name, and the other a white name, respond via e-mail to a random sample of ads placed by a major electronic listing service in two major metropolitan areas;Boston, MA and Houston, TX to see if the name affects services provided. Given continued widespread discrimination in the housing market, the growing use of electronic resources, and the virtual absence of any research of these services, we anticipate our findings will significantly inform debates over the nature and extent of discrimination and provide valuable guidance for future fair housing enforcement initiatives. Fair housing advocacy remains critical to assure equal access to virtually all valued goods and resources, ranging from good neighborhoods to sound physical and mental health.
Racial and ethnic minorities encounter unlawful discrimination approximately one out of every five times they inquire about renting a home. Such practices deny the targeted victims access to decent schools, safe streets, good jobs and many other public and private amenities, which has direct impacts on their health. We propose to use the audit methodology, whereby equally qualified applicants, one with a distinctively black sounding name, one with a Hispanic name, and the other a white name, respond via e-mail to a random sample of ads placed by a major electronic listing service in two major metropolitan areas, Boston, MA and Houston, TX, to see if the name affects services provided, a virtually untested domain of the housing market.
