HUD study reveals rental discrimination

The agency plans to use the comprehensive study, “Discrimination Against Persons With Disabilities – Barriers at Every Step,” to educate consumers and landlords on their rights and to provide fair housing advocates with new guidelines and strategies that will allow them to investigate and detect discrimination against people with disabilities.

In addition, the study will assist the agency in continuing to monitor the progress of eliminating discrimination against persons with disabilities nationwide.

“The Americans with Disabilities Act, the landmark legislation signed 15 years ago (July 26), has made great strides in reducing barriers to people with disabilities in employment, government and public places,” HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson said in a news release. “At HUD, that means breaking down the barriers to affordable rental housing and homeownership that disabled individuals sometimes face.”

In the Chicago-based study, hearing-impaired people were discriminated against approximately 50 percent of the time when using a telephone-operator relay to search for rentals. Mobility-impaired people using wheelchairs faced discrimination about a third of the time when they visited rental properties.

“We would all like to think we have made more progress in educating landlords about the Fair Housing Act but, this study paints a different picture of the problems faced daily by people with disabilities,” Jackson said. “It is imperative that landlords provide people with disabilities the same attention and respect afforded all potential renters.”

The study, conducted for HUD by The Urban Institute, is the most comprehensive effort to date to measure the extent of housing discrimination in the United States against people with disabilities. It specifically provides statistically valid measures of the level of discrimination faced by two groups in the Chicago metropolitan area: deaf persons using a TTY (text-telephone) relay system to inquire about apartments advertised for rent and persons in wheelchairs visiting rental providers in person in response to an advertised rental unit.

Using “paired testing,” the study compared treatment of the person with a disability against a similarly qualified nondisabled person inquiring about the same advertised unit. Analysts looked at objective measures, such as whether they were told the advertised unit was available, how many units they were told about and if they were offered an application to complete.

Based upon the methodology and results, HUD is releasing “Guidance for Practitioners” for fair housing advocates and including the study as part of the Fair Housing Academy’s core curriculum.