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Racial steering in urban housing markets: A review of the audit evidence

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The Review of Black Political Economy

Abstract

A secondary analysis of thirty-six fair housing audits conducted between 1974 and 1987 reveals that racial steering has been a widespread, consequential phenomenon in many urban housing markets during the last decade. It is difficult from extant work to assess precisely its incidence nationally in the home sales sector because sites reporting such data have had atypically active fair housing enforcement efforts. It appears, however, that selective commentary by agents has been practiced as much if not more than differential patterns of home-showings. The consequence of this steering rarely has been to limit the number or concentration of geographic alternatives available to black auditors. Nor have all their options in predominantly white communities typically been precluded. Rather, steering in the sales sector most often has constituted a failure to show white auditors options in areas (and school districts) with nontrivial proportions of minority residents, and a propensity to show black auditors disproportionate numbers of homes in areas currently possessing or expected to possess significant proportions of minority residents. Limited evidence suggests that steering has occurred often in the rental apartment sector, although its consequences have yet to be ascertained in a systematic fashion. Implications of the findings for racial stability in neighborhoods and for fair housing policy are discussed.

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Notes

  1. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, “Implementation of the Fair Housing Amendments Act of 1988,”Federal Register 53, no. 215 (November 7, 1988), pp. 44992–45007.

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  2. Ibid., p. 45025.

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  5. Fair housing audits conducted for research purposes should not be confused with those conducted for law enforcement purposes. In the latter context, one or more “tests” may be developed to ascertain whether a complainant has probable cause to file suit. A series of tests of a suspected agent or agency may also be used to uncover illegal “patterns and practices” of discrimination. Such enforcement applications differ from research applications only insofar as the sample selection is not random in the former, but purposive. For further discussions of audit methodology, see Ronald Wienk, Clifford Reid, John Simonson, and Frederick Eggers,Measuring Racial Discrimination in American Housing Markets: The Housing Market Practices Survey (Washington, DC: HUD-PDR-444, 1979); John Yinger, “Measuring Racial and Ethnic Discrimination with Fair Housing Audits: A Review of Existing Evidence and Research Methodology” (Wash-ington, D.C: paper presented at HUD Conference on Fair Housing Testing, December 6-7, 1984); John Yinger,The Statistics of Fair Housing Audits (Cambridge, MA: Unpublished paper, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 1985); John Yinger, “Measuring Racial Discrimination with Fair Housing Audits,”American Economic Review 76 (1986), pp. 881–893; and Clifford Reid, “The Reliability of Fair Housing Audits to Detect Racial Discrimination in Rental Housing Markets,Journal of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association 12 (1984), pp. 86–96.

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  6. Same as note 3.

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  40. See, e.g., the cases ofVillage of Bellwood v.Gladstone Realtors, 569 F.2d 1013 (7th Cir. 1978) modified, 441 U.S. 91 (1979);Heights Community Congress v. Rosenblatt Realty, 73 F. 2d 1 (N.D. Ohio 1975);Johnson v. Jerry Pals Real Estate, 485 F.2d 528 (7th Cir. 1973).

  41. A fuller analysis of current federal fair housing enforcement efforts and recommendations for improvements is provided by George Galster,The Great Misapprehension: Federal Fair Housing Policy in the 80s (Cambridge, MA: MIT Center for Real Estate Development, Housing Policy Project Paper #5, 1988).

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  1. George Galster
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Galster, G. Racial steering in urban housing markets: A review of the audit evidence. Rev Black Polit Econ 18, 105–129 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02717878

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