Cybersegregation: Are Neil Kelly and Greg Baker More Desirable Tenants Than Tyrone Jackson or Jorge Rodriguez? A Research Proposal

Abstract

African Americans and Latinos encounter discriminatory treatment approximately 20 percent of the times they inquire about renting or purchasing a home according to the Urban Institute’s most recent nation-wide housing discrimination study (Turner et al., 2002). While this represents a lower level of discrimination than was found ten years earlier, it demonstrates that discrimination persists as a systematic reality in the nation’s housing markets. But discrimination is more subtle today than in previous decades. Rental and real estate agents no longer hang out the equivalent of “NINA” (No Irish Need Apply) signs. The explicitly racist language that permeated underwriting guidelines of financial service providers and codes of ethics of realtors has largely disappeared. But major metropolitan areas continue to experience hypersegregation and its associated costs, and discrimination is a major contributing factor (Massey and Denton, 1993; Lewis et al., 2004). Several subtle practices have been uncovered among housing and related financial service providers. Minorities are shown fewer homes. Real estate agents provide minority homeseekers less information about financing and fewer services in the homeseeking process. Racial steering, whereby Whites are encouraged to look in predominantly White neighborhoods while minorities are directed to integrated and predominantly non-White areas, has actually increased in recent years. And it is White families who are likely to be subject to the more explicit forms of steering. Among the comments directed to White “shoppers” in the Urban Institute’s recent study were the following: