Housing Audits

Methods and History

Racial housing audits are experimental in design, characterized by the quantitative comparison of matched testers' (or auditors') experiences in the housing market. Most often, multiple teams of two racially distinct, but similarly situated, individuals (one minority and one White) are sent into the housing market in an attempt to acquire housing from a random sample of ads placed online and in newspapers. The testers, aside from their racial/ethnic status, are assigned similar identities and characteristics (e.g., same credit score, same income, same education). Testers complete detailed questionnaires following their experiences, and the data are then compiled and analyzed to determine whether minority and White testers were treated differently. Hence, with efforts to control for social and human capital characteristics, such tests have served as an effective way to uncover discrimination. Beginning in 1977, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) launched the Housing Market Practices Survey (HMPS), which conducted 3,264 tests in forty metropolitan areas. The study provided evidence of significant discrimination against [Page 657]Blacks in sales and rental markets. The results of the HMPS played a role in the passage of the 1988 amendment to the Fair Housing Act and demonstrated the need for a second national study, The Housing Discrimination Study, which was launched in 1989 and covered twenty-five metropolitan areas. A comparison of the two nationwide studies demonstrated that discrimination had not decreased between 1977 and 1989.

In 2000, HUD launched a third national housing audit, with initial analyses revealing that African Americans and Hispanics continue to face significant discriminatory barriers when searching for a home to rent or buy. However, rates of overall discrimination may have decreased somewhat between 1989 and 2000, with the exception of “racial steering”—a realtor suggesting more or less desirable alternatives based on the race of the client—of African Americans and limitations in the financing opportunities and access to rental units for Hispanics. Some scholars argue that declines in housing discrimination revealed in the 2000 HUD audit may be the result of a shift in the prevailing forms of housing discrimination used by landlords, realtors, and others in the housing market. In other words, actors in U.S. housing markets may have become more privy to the illegal forms and consequences of exclusion according to fair housing laws and, thus, have turned to more covert and subtle forms of discrimination not revealed through the audit methodology.

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