Cityscape Examines Housing Discrimination

January 19, 2016  

Cityscape Examines Housing Discrimination

The latest issue of Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research features a research symposium on the current state of paired-testing methodology as it is used to measure discrimination in the housing market. Guest Editors Margery Austin Turner and Judson James introduce the symposium with a brief history of efforts to measure housing discrimination, from the first applications of paired-tests in 1950s community audits, to HUD's pioneering role in expanding and developing paired testing with initiation of the Housing Market Practices Survey in 1977, and concluding with the department's ongoing efforts to adapt and refine this methodology.

The symposium articles present paired-testing research evidence, design and methodological issues, and ideas for new methodologies and uses of paired testing.

Sun Jung Oh and John Yinger review audit studies, both in-person paired audits and correspondence audits, and note that despite variations in methodology and social context, such studies consistently indicate statistically significant discrimination against historically disadvantaged racial and ethnic groups. Although over the long term housing discrimination has declined in some areas, it persists in others, with steering of African-American homeseekers away from white neighborhoods actually increasing over time. The authors argue for the continued importance of audit studies as an enforcement tool, while suggesting future research projects might benefit by combining other methodologies with paired testing.

Rob Pitingolo and Stephen L. Ross address whether paired-testing studies of the type used in the 2000 Housing Discrimination Study (HD2000) have understated the extent of housing discrimination. Using data from the more recent HD2012 and earlier studies, they find little evidence to support this concern.

Fred Freiberg and Gregory D. Squires reveal that some housing providers routinely circumvent fair housing law by modifying their practices, making paired-testing methods aimed at identifying discrimination less reliable. They offer recommendations for structural changes in testing methodology and suggest that research and enforcement organizations collaborate to explore new testing approaches.

Claudia L. Aranda discusses the findings of the HUD-sponsored study "Housing Discrimination Study-Disabilities," which used paired testing to produce the first national estimate of discrimination in the rental housing market against deaf, hard-of-hearing, and wheelchair-using individuals. She advocates additional paired testing of discrimination against all forms of disability, as well as studies that examine housing compliance with Fair Housing Act design and construction standards to produce regional or national estimates.

Margery Austin Turner looks at the challenges of applying paired testing methods to study under-examined forms of discrimination including discrimination on the basis of national origin, religion, disability, and non-English fluency. She highlights key questions that influence test design, including selection of appropriate comparison groups, exclusion or oversampling of segments of the housing stock, and disclosure of a tester's status to housing providers. Turner then discusses three pilot studies that address these questions and offers templates for future studies.

Four contributors provide commentary on paired testing and the issue's articles. Ali M. Ahmed examines paired-testing experiments from a European perspective, arguing for more widespread employment of field experiments in Europe, where ethical concerns discourage their use. He also cites European studies of disability- and age-based discrimination in the housing market that can be useful to American researchers. Samantha Friedman suggests ways to broaden the scope of paired-testing housing discrimination research through increased data sample sizes, more complex sampling designs, incorporating multiple homeseeker/homeprovider interactions into tests, and by formulating tests to examine discrimination against various combinations of protected classes. James Perry asserts that paired testing is a sophisticated tool that should receive greater funding and more widespread use by policymakers. Fred Underwood recommends that researchers work with the housing industry, particularly with practitioners who are committed to fair housing, to refine testing methods and argues that both groups would benefit from such cooperation.

In addition to the symposium, the issue features two refereed papers: Robin E. Smith, Susan J. Popkin, Taz George, and Jennifer Comey's analysis of why households leave housing assistance and how they fare on their own, and Michela Zonta's study of the effectiveness of government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) in providing the most underserved homebuyers with access to mortgage credit.

Articles in this issue's regularly appearing departments include "Measuring Neighborhood Opportunity With AFFH Data," by Brent D. Mast in Data Shop, "Civil Unrest and Marginalization in Baltimore," by John C. Huggins in Graphic Detail, "Rural America: Perceptions of Residential Energy Retrofits," by Nathan Barry in Industrial Revolution, "Preparing Our Housing for the Transition to a Post-Baby Boom World: Reflections on Japan's May 26, 2015 Vacant Housing Law," by Peter Manda in Foreign Exchange, "Predicting Local Crime Clusters Using (Multinomial) Logistic Regression," by Martin A. Andresen in SpAM, and "Fair Housing Testing: Selecting, Training, and Managing an Effective Tester Pool," by Claudia L. Aranda and Sarale H. Sewell in Evaluation Tradecraft.

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