Qualified Renters Need Not Apply: Race and Housing Voucher Discrimination in the Metropolitan Boston Rental Housing Market

Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law and Policy

Volume XXVIII, Number 1, Fall 2020

35

Qualified Renters Need Not Apply: Race and

Housing Voucher Discrimination in the

Metropolitan Boston Rental Housing Market

Jamie Langowski, William Berman, Grace Brittan,

Catherine LaRaia, Jee-Yeon Lehmann, Judson Woods**

Black, Indigenous, and People of Color have long had to navigate the barriers

of racist laws, policies, and actions in housing. Housing discrimination

perpetuates segregation and contributes to maintaining the status quo of

disparities with respect to health inequities as well as income, wealth, and

opportunity gaps. The COVID-19 pandemic has put these inequities in stark relief.

Data on the current status of such discrimination is valuable for policy makers

who should develop anti-racist policies that dismantle structural racism and its

attendant harms.

 This Article is the companion piece to a study and report funded by the Boston Foundation. The

report and the webinar presentation are both available at the Boston Foundation’s website.

** Jamie Langowski is a Clinical Fellow and Assistant Director of the Housing Discrimination

Testing Program, Suffolk University Law School; William Berman is a Clinical Professor of Law and

Director of the Housing Discrimination Testing Program, Suffolk University Law School; Grace Brittan

is a former Senior Analyst at Analysis Group, Inc., and a current MBA student at the Berkeley Haas

School of Business; Catherine LaRaia is a Clinical Fellow and the Director of Investigations & Outreach

of the Housing Discrimination Testing Program, Suffolk University Law School; Jee-Yeon Lehmann is a

Vice President at Analysis Group, Inc.; Judson Woods is a Senior Analyst at Analysis Group, Inc.

The authors wish to thank the testers who participated in this research, without whom this work

would not have been possible. This research also would not have been possible without the financial

support from the Boston Foundation and the Fund for Racial Justice Innovation, established by the

Boston Foundation in collaboration with the Hyams Foundation to strengthen partnerships between

community-based organizations and lawyers that use legal tools to advance equity resource distribution

for communities or groups marginalized by race, color, ethnicity or immigration status. Thank you to

Sandy Kendall for her help editing the study report and graphic designer Kate Canfield. Thank you to

Barbara Chandler, Senior Advisor on Civil Rights and Fair Housing at Metro Housing Boston, for her

advice throughout and assistance in test design. Thank you to Shannon Seitz for facilitating the

connection between the HDTP and Analysis Group. Thank you to Analysis Group and the following

individuals for their excellent research assistance: Jeremy Albright, Catherine Alford, Amanda Ballard,

Jori Barash, Nick Dadson, Stephanie Lee, Corey McGinnis, Kevin Ward, Solvejg Wewel, Luke Wilder,

and Qi Zheng. Thank you to Dean Andrew Perlman and Associate Dean Kim McLaurin of Suffolk

University Law School for their support of this work and AnnaKatherine Wherren for her legal research

assistance. Grace Brittan, Jee-Yeon Lehmann, and Judson Woods conducted the research underlying this

report as part of the Analysis Group, Inc. Pro Bono Program, which enables employees to independently

participate in projects that contribute to their communities and research interests. Results and opinions

expressed herein are the work of the authors and do not represent any opinions or positions of Analysis

Group, Inc. © 2021, Jamie Langowkski, William Berman, Grace Brittan, Catherine LaRaia, Jee-Yeon

Lehmann, and Judson Woods.

36 The Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law & Policy [Vol. XXVIII

Using matched-pair testing, we measured the level of discrimination based on

race and income level in the Greater Boston rental housing market, where both

race- and income-based housing discrimination is illegal. Data from the study

shows high levels of discrimination against both Black people and individuals

using housing vouchers throughout the pre-rental application process, with

evidence of race-based discrimination in 71% of tests and voucher-based

discrimination in 86% of the tests. In the vast majority of cases, real estate

professionals discriminated against Black people and voucher holders, beginning

with the initial interaction and continuing throughout the process. The promises

of the Fourteenth Amendment, Civil Rights Act of 1866, and the Fair Housing Act

remain unfulfilled, caught in a cycle of new forms of discriminatory behavior and

enactment of policies and laws that are ineffective in combating discrimination.

Policy makers should heed the findings from this study and work to enact measures

that can curb housing discrimination effectively.

I

NTRODUCTION

................................................................................................. 37

B

RIEF

O

VERVIEW OF

R

ACE AND

V

OUCHER

D

ISCRIMINATION

........................ 38

A. Race Discrimination in Housing ................................................................. 43

B. A Brief Overview of Housing Vouchers ...................................................... 47

C. Voucher Discrimination .............................................................................. 48

M

ETHODOLOGY

.............................................................................................. 49

A. Assembling Testers ...................................................................................... 49

B. Site Selection: Rental Ad Scraping, Selection, and Randomization ............ 51

C. Conversion of Tester’s Reports into Variables Used in Analysis ............... 52

F

INDINGS

........................................................................................................ 52

A. Measurement of Discrimination by Analysis Group ................................... 52

B. Initial Interactions with the Housing Provider ........................................... 53

C. Opportunity to Visit the Site ........................................................................ 55

D. Housing Provider On-Site Behavior ........................................................... 56

E. Measurement of Discrimination by HDTP ................................................. 61

TESTER

ANECDOTES .................................................................................. 61

A. Biased Ghosting .......................................................................................... 62

B. Discrimination with a Smile ........................................................................ 63

C. Differential Criteria .................................................................................... 63

D. Outright Refusal ......................................................................................... 64

E. Steering ....................................................................................................... 65

R

ECOMMENDATIONS

...................................................................................... 65

A. Increase penalties and training for real estate professionals and

prohibit them from charging broker's fees. ..................................................... 65

B. Strengthen anti-discrimination laws and fair housing enforcement

and education and increase resources for testing. .......................................... 67

C. Improve and streamline the system for using vouchers. ............................. 68

N

o. 1] Qualified Renters Need Not Apply 3

7

C

ONCLUSION

................................................................................................. 69

A

PPENDIX

.................................................................................................... 70

I

NTRODUCTION

Housing has a major impact on a person’s health, economic, and social

outcomes.

1

The inability to obtain quality housing has negative health and social

consequences that can perpetuate the cycle of poverty and detachment from the

labor market.

2

Discrimination prevents a person from living in a neighborhood

that can provide easy access to economic and educational opportunities and lowers

the ceiling on that individual’s future success.

3

These negative effects harm not

only the individual facing discrimination, but also society in general. This study,

conducted by the Housing Discrimination Testing Program (HDTP), measured

race and source of income discrimination in the Greater Boston rental market and

examined whether source of income discrimination was a proxy for race-based

discrimination. The results revealed a high level of discrimination based on both

race and source of income (i.e., housing vouchers), and that source of income

discrimination was not a proxy for race-based discrimination, as the impact of

source of income on the level of discrimination was not equivalent to the impact

of race across the variety of measures used in the study. Overall, the HDTP , a full-

service non-profit fair housing organization, found that the housing providers

discriminated based on source of income in 86% of the tests and based on race in

71% of the tests.

Section II of this Article briefly describes the history of race and source of

income discrimination. Section III describes the design and parameters of the

study. Section IV describes the study’s findings, including a wide disparity

between the treatment of white testers with no voucher, Black testers and those

with a voucher. For example, white market-rate testers were able to view 80% of

the apartments they sought to visit, while similarly situated Black market-rate

renters were only able to view 48% of the same apartments. Compared to market-

rate testers, both Black and white voucher holders were only able to view a

substantially lower fraction of the same apartments. Black voucher holders were

able to view only 18% of the same apartments and white voucher holders viewed

only 12%. Section V gives anecdotal examples from numerous testers who

1. See N

AT

’

L

F

AIR

H

OUSING

A

LLIANCE

,

W

HERE

Y

OU

L

IVE

M

ATTERS

:

2015

F

AIR

H

OUSING

T

RENDS

R

EPORT

1 (2015), https://nationalfairhousing.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/2015-04-30-

NFHA-Trends-Report-2015.pdf (“Where you live determines whether or not you have access to a high-

performing school, fresh foods, reliable transportation, good job, quality health care, and recreation in a

green space. It often determines even how long you will live.”).

2. See

JOHN YINGER

,

CLOSED DOORS

,

O

PPORTUNITIES LOST

:

T

HE

C

ONTINUING

C

OSTS OF

H

OUSING

D

ISCRIMINATION

158 (Russel Sage Foundation, 1997) (referring to research that discrimination restricts

the access of minority workers to suburban jobs and making the connection between housing

discrimination leading to lower educational attainment for minorities having an indirect impact on the

labor market).

3. See Raj Chetty, John N. Friedman, Nathaniel Hendren, Maggie R. Jones & Sonya R. Porter, The

Opportunity Atlas: Mapping the Childhood Roots of Social Mobility 1 (Nat’l Bureau of Econ. Rsch.,

Working Paper No. 25147, 2018), https://opportunityinsights.org/wp-

content/uploads/2018/10/atlas_paper.pdf.