ancient cities

of supply and demand by creating submarkets
based on segregation.
Exclusion occurs when information about housing
vacancies, financial conditions, prices, rents, or
security deposits is either concealed or distorted.
Harassment involves intimidation or psychological
abuse aimed at convincing households to move,
while poor service quality results when minority
clients do not receive the same services enjoyed by
nonminority clients. By encouraging White homeowners
to panic and sell based on suggestions that
minorities are going to move into the area, agents
engage in blockbusting. Documented cases exist
where minority agents have been sent into Anglodominated
neighborhoods to solicit homes, thereby
reinforcing panic.
Mechanisms of Discrimination
Housing discrimination is said to occur for the following
reasons. First is agent, broker, and landlord
prejudice, which treats individuals poorly because
they are from a particular minority group, even if
it means losing revenue. Second, customer prejudice
leads an agent to steer clients to a neighborhood
where people like them live or steer them
away from areas where residents discriminate
against the client’s racial or ethnic group. Third,
potential customer prejudice influences landlords
and agents not to offer housing to someone who
may be seen as unacceptable to existing residents,
fearing loss of business as a form of retaliation.
Fourth, landlords may exclude people based on
statistical discrimination, where their ethnic or
racial group identification signals them to be inferior
tenants. Fifth, and most important, pure-
profit maximizing occurs when a particular group
is viewed as having a low elasticity of demand and
thus is denied access. A group with a higher elasticity
of demand is able to generate higher sales
prices, rents, or insurance premiums.
Many states and municipalities have adopted fair
housing laws that reinforce provisions of the federal
law. Some have expanded the number of protected
groups to include marital status, military service, and
sexual orientation. Municipalities have also attempted
to regulate the activities of real estate agents.
Prohibitions include the use of “for sale” signs to promote
blockbusting practices and broker solicitation
activities that maintain do-not-call lists for potential
Fair Housing
267
home sellers. Realty firms might also be required to
register with the city government and agree to abide
by fair housing policies.
In addition to the FHA, the 1975 Home
Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) and the
Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) (1977) provide
antidiscrimination legislation. They focus on
discriminatory practices in mortgage lending.
Congress passed the HMDA in response to community
organizing against the practice of redlining,
the collective disinvestment from select
neighborhoods by lending institutions. The legislation
requires lenders to disclose the number,
amount, and location of mortgages. The CRA
requires most lenders to meet the credit needs of
their local communities, incl uding financing for
low- and moderate-income housing. More specifically,
the law requires depository institutions
(above a minimum size) to offer credit opportunity
to all individuals in the communities from
which they take deposits. Section 109 of Title I of
the CRA also prohibits discrimination based on
race, color, national origin, sex, or religion when
implementing infrastructural projects using the
federal Community Development Block Grant.
Fair housing laws have been criticized by
housing scholars for being limited to the litigation
of individual acts of discrimination. The
housing problem is thus cast as idiosyncratic
wrongdoing by agents and organizations and not
systemic and institutionalized racism. Fair housing
advocates call for laws that challenge the
systematic structural arrangements that reproduce
segregation and predominately minority,
low-income communities.
Nicole Oretsky
See also Exclusionary Zoning; Ghetto; Housing; Housing
Policy; Redlining; Social Housing: Suburbanization
Further Readings
Bratt, Rachel G. et al. 2006. A Right to Housing:
Foundation for a New Social Agenda. Philadelphia:
Temple University Press.
Schwartz, Alex. 2006. Housing Policy in the United
States: An Introduction. New York: Routledge.
Schwemm, Robert G. 1998. “Fair Housing Amendments
Act of 1988.” In Encyclopedia of Housing, edited by
William Van Vliet. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.