Welcome back to the Deep Dive. We have quite
the stack on the table today. We certainly do.
I spent the entire weekend just reading through
these reports, these sociological studies, all
the HUD data. And I have to be honest with you,
I walked away looking at my own neighborhood,
my own apartment complex, in a completely different
light. It's one of those topics where you think
you know the score, you know, but then you peel
back that first layer and you just... you realize
you were only seeing a tiny fraction of the picture.
Well, that's the goal, isn't it? To take something
that feels familiar, something that almost feels,
you know, normal, and actually look at the machinery
underneath it all. Yeah. Because usually when
we talk about housing, the conversation is so
surface level. We talk about interest rates.
We talk about location, location, location. We
talk about, I don't know, the paint color in
the kitchen. Right. But today we are talking
about access. We are talking about who gets in,
who gets kept out, and... And maybe most disturbingly,
and this was the part that really stuck with
me, what happens to people once they are actually
inside? We are talking about housing discrimination.
It's a massive topic. And it's one of those things
where if you were to just walk down the street
and ask the average person to define housing
discrimination, they'd probably give you a very
specific, almost vintage cinematic answer. They
have a picture in their head. Oh, absolutely.
The slam door, the do not enter sign, the landlord
shouting on the porch. It feels like a scene
from a black and white movie or a history textbook
about the 1960s. Exactly. And don't get me wrong,
our sources show that definitely still happens.
It's not gone. The slam door is real. It is not
gone. But, and this is the key. What we're going
to find out today is that if that is the only
thing you are looking for, you are going to miss
about 90 % of what is actually happening in the
housing market right now. The reality is so much
more complex, so much more subtle, and frankly,
just much more pervasive than just a single rude
landlord. It's the difference between a sign
in the window and like a silent algorithm. That's
it. Or a quiet administrative decision that no
one ever sees. Precisely. Our mission for this
deep dive is to move beyond those obvious refusals.
We really need to look at the structural patterns,
the sources we have today, and this includes
detailed sociological classifications, government
reports from HUD in the U .S., and international
data from the OECD. They paint a picture of a
system that dictates not just where people sleep
at night, Right. But how they accumulate wealth
and what their economic trajectory looks like
for their entire lives. It's the difference between
just having a roof over your head and actually
building a future. I think that's the stake we
need to set right at the top here. Yes. This
isn't just about comfort. It's about destiny
in a way. It is. So we're going to look at the
mechanisms of how this works. The how. We're
going to look at the different types because,
spoiler alert. It is not just about getting in
the door. It happens once you're inside, too,
which creates a sort of trap. And we have some
data coming up later in the discussion regarding
gender that I... I honestly found shocking. I
had to read it three times to make sure I wasn't
misinterpreting the charts. It completely challenges
the common assumptions we tend to hold about
who gets favored in the housing market. It really
does. It's a bit of a paradox, and it raises
some really, really difficult questions about
homelessness and, frankly, about our societal
blind spots. I'll get there. We will get there.
But first, we need to lay the groundwork. Okay,
let's unpack this. Let's start with a baseline
definition. When we look at the source material,
specifically the breakdown from the sociological
definitions provided, what are we actually talking
about when we say housing discrimination? Because
it feels like a term that gets thrown around
so loosely in political debates, but we need
the technical definition here. Okay, so let's
tighten it up. At its core, based on the source
material, housing discrimination refers to patterns
of discrimination that affect a person's ability
to rent or to buy housing. But here is the key
distinction. This disparate treatment is based
on group characteristics. So we're talking about
race, age, gender, marital status, or the source
of their funding like. whether they're using
a housing voucher or their own cash. And interestingly,
the sources also mentioned it can be based on
the place where a person currently lives. Yes.
That seemed unique to me. I hadn't really thought
about that angle. Right. It's that bias against
someone based on their address, which often acts
as a proxy for those other characteristics. Ah,
I see. So if a landlord sees an application coming
from a specific zip code or a specific housing
project, they might apply a bias based on that
location, assuming... It signals class or race
or economic stability. It's a way of discriminating
against a demographic without explicitly naming
the demographic. Exactly. You're judging the
address, not the person. Which creates this vicious
loop then. You live in a disadvantaged area,
so you can't get into a better area because of
where you live. So you just stay in the disadvantaged
area. Exactly. And this isn't just about hurt
feelings or, you know, the inconvenience of having
to apply to a few more places. The source material
is very clear about the stakes here. This discrimination
leads to two major sociological outcomes, spatial
inequality and racial segregation. Spatial inequality.
OK, that sounds like a jargon term you'd hear
at an urban planning conference. But let's break
that down. What does that actually mean for the
person listening right now? It means that where
you are geographically located, your physical
place on the map determines your access to resources.
So schools, jobs. All of it. Think about it.
Better neighborhoods generally have better funded
schools. They have better access to high paying
jobs. They have cleaner air. They have appreciating
property values. Right. If discrimination sorts
people into specific areas, if it creates segregation,
it directly exacerbates wealth disparities. So
if you're locked out of neighborhoods with appreciating
property values or good schools or jobs, you
aren't just losing a house. No. You're losing
economic momentum. You're losing the ability
to pass wealth on to your children. You're losing
trajectory. It is about the trajectory of your
life. It is the difference between buying a house
that doubles in value over 10 years and buying
a house that stagnates or even loses value. It's
not just shelter. It's an asset class. And if
you're barred from the good asset classes, you
fall behind. You fall behind. Period. So if the
stakes are that high, we need to know who is
manning the gates. Who are the people pulling
the levers here? Who are the gatekeepers? Well,
the most obvious one, and the one the sources
identify as the primary actor, is the landlord.
Makes sense. The owner. They hold what the text
calls positional power. They have the scarce
resource, the housing unit, and they have direct
access to you. They're the ones who say yes or
no. But they aren't the only ones, right? It
feels like the system has to be bigger than just
one guy with a set of keys. No. And this is where
the web gets wider and more bureaucratic. You
have real estate agents who decide which houses
to show you and which ones to hide from you.
You have insurance providers who decide which
homes are insurable. And crucially, you have
banking and lending institutions who decide who
gets the capital to buy the home in the first
place. Right. The money. All of these entities
act as gatekeepers. It's like a chain link fence.
If any one of those links, the bank, the insurer,
the agent decides to hold firm, you aren't getting
through. Exactly. If the insurance provider refuses
to insure a home for a specific type of family
or in a specific neighborhood, well, the landlord
might not rent to them. or the bank certainly
won't finance them. So it's an ecosystem. It
is an ecosystem of denial. A landlord might be
perfectly willing to rent to you, but if the
bank won't give you the loan or the insurance
company redlines the block, you're still out.
It really highlights how many hurdles there are.
I mean, it's not a single sprint. It's an obstacle
course. It is. And that brings us to the first
major category of discrimination we need to discuss.
The sociologists mentioned in our source material.
Vincent Racino, Diana Karafin, and Griff Tester
have a really useful way of classifying this
to help us understand the mechanics. They split
discrimination into two camps, exclusionary and
non -exclusionary. Okay, let's start with exclusionary.
This sounds like what it says on the tin. It
is. It's pretty straightforward. Exclusionary
discrimination involves actions that seek to
prevent people from obtaining housing in the
first place. So this is the getting in the door
phase. Exactly. This is what stops you from becoming
a tenant or an owner. And this is where we see
the explicit stuff we touched on earlier. Yes.
Explicit refusals. This includes things like
harassment during the application process, verbal
abuse, or proactive requests and advertising.
You know, ads that might explicitly say no minorities
or specify exactly who they do want, which effectively
bans everyone else. Which, frankly, sounds like
something from 50 years ago. I think most listeners
would assume that kind of overt racism is illegal
and therefore gone. Right. But the sources imply
this is still a mechanism that exists. It absolutely
exists, though often in more private channels
or like whisper networks. But you are right.
The laws have made that harder. So discrimination
evolves. It has to. It gets smarter. It shifts
to what the sources call the implicit or stealth
tactics. And I think this is where it gets really
interesting and really frustrating for the victim,
because implicit discrimination is designed to
be deniable. Right. It's the I'm not discriminating.
I'm just conducting business defense. That's
it. Give us some examples of what that looks
like in the real world. OK, so one major tactic
is lying about availability. This is a classic.
A landlord tells a specific applicant, oh, I'm
so sorry, that unit just got taken this morning.
We haven't taken the sign down yet. But if a
different applicant, someone from a different
demographic group, maybe a different race, walked
in 10 minutes later, suddenly that unit would
be available again. That is so insidious because
how would you know? You wouldn't. Unless you
had a friend go in right after you or unless
you were part of some kind of sting operation,
you just walk away thinking it was bad luck.
You think, oh, I was too slow. Exactly. It gaslights
the victim. It internalizes the failure. You
don't leave angry at the system. You leave disappointed
in your timing. Another implicit tactic is lying
about rental qualification standards. This is
where they move the goalposts. How does that
work? Well, they might tell one person, okay,
for this unit, you need a credit score of 800,
three months rent up front, and three references.
An impossible standard for most people. Right.
They make the barrier so high that they know
the person will likely fail or just walk away.
But for another applicant, the preferred applicant,
they might say standard credit check and one
month deposit. So they aren't... Technically
saying no. Oh. They're just making yes impossible
for that specific person. Precisely. It's a soft
ban. And then there's a really big one. Steering.
Yes. Steering. I wanted to highlight this because
the source material brings up a very specific
pernicious form of this involving finances. This
isn't just about showing someone the wrong neighborhood.
It's about messing with their money. This is
a critical point. Consumer advocate groups conducted
a number of studies on this. What they found
was that minority borrowers who actually qualified
for affordable traditional loans. So people who
did everything right. People who did everything
right, had the credit, had the income, had the
stability, they were often steered toward high
-priced subprime loans. Wait, let me make sure
I understand this. So they qualified for the
good loan, the safe loan with the low interest
rate. Yes. But the lenders push them toward the
risky, expensive one. Correct. Why? I mean, is
it just pure malice? Well, often there were financial
incentives for the brokers to sell the riskier
products, things like yield spread premiums and
whatnot. But the effect was predatory discrimination
based on race. The source explicitly says these
were loans that they would never be able to repay.
So it's also setting a trap. It is a financial
trap. This is a form of exclusion that pretends
to be inclusion. Right. We're helping you. Oh,
we are giving you a loan. We are helping you
buy a house. But it's a loan that is designed
to fail. It leads to debt. It leads to foreclosure.
It's not just denying housing. It's granting
access on terms that guarantee you will lose
that housing eventually. And presumably destroy
your credit in the process, which makes it even
harder to get housing next time. Of course. It's
a machine that generates failure. It becomes
a cycle. And we also have to mention insurance
refusal here again. It's another. key gate if
you can't get insurance you usually can't get
a mortgage So if an insurance company decides
they don't want to underwrite in a certain neighborhood
or for a certain demographic, that is an effective
ban on ownership, even if the bank said yes and
the seller said yes. It really just emphasizes
how many hurdles there are. You have to clear
the landlord, the bank, the insurance agent,
and any one of them can trip you up. And that
is just to get the keys. That is just exclusionary
discrimination. Right. And that leads us to the
second category. Which was a massive. aha moment
for me when I was reading the research because
I think most of us assume you know once you sign
the lease once you have the keys in your hand
and your boxes are in the living room you won
you're in you beat the system you're safe and
that is such a dangerous assumption because discrimination
doesn't stop at the threshold this is what the
researchers call non -exclusionary discrimination
so define that for us what does that actually
look like non -exclusionary discrimination refers
to differential treatment, harassment, or the
disparate application of terms and conditions
for those who are already housed. Okay. It occurs
within an established housing arrangement. So
you are in, but you're being treated differently
than your neighbor. Exactly. And I would argue
this can be psychologically worse in some ways.
How so? Well, think about the power dynamic.
If a landlord denies you at the door, you walk
away, and maybe you never see them again. You're
angry, sure, but you're free. Right. But in this
case, as the text notes, the victim is legally
bound to the home. You have signed a lease. You
can't just walk away without a huge financial
penalty. And you have regular ongoing contact
with the perpetrator. Right. This is the person
who holds the keys to your apartment. You see
them in the hall. You send them a check every
single month. You are essentially trapped in
a business relationship with someone who is discriminating
against you. It creates a profound feeling of
powerlessness, anxiety, and stress. You're trapped
in a contract with someone who is actively mistreating
you. It attacks your sense of safety in your
own sanctuary. Let's run through the specific
manifestations mentioned in the text. How does
a landlord actually do this? Because again, they
have to be somewhat careful not to be blatantly
illegal, right? Sometimes. Yeah. But often it's
in the gray areas. One common method is changing
the terms of the deal. Unfairly raising rent,
but only for a select group. So everyone else's
rent stays flat or goes up by a standard 2%,
but yours suddenly goes up by 10%. They're trying
to force you out. Exactly. Or privileges. The
text mentioned things like using facilities after
hours. Right. Like imagine you live in a complex
with a gym or a pool. Exactly. The landlord might
let some tenants use it whenever they want, maybe
look the other way if they bring a guest or stay
a little past closing time. But for the targeted
tenant, they enforce the rules to the letter.
Pool closed at 8 .00 p .m. sharply. Show me your
ID. Or they might be really lenient on pet policies
for some, but crack down on others. It's the
weaponization of the rulebook. That is a perfect
way to put it, yes. It's applying the rules selectively
to make life uncomfortable. And then there's
the maintenance issue. This one is brutal. The
failure to provide equal access to services.
The example given is deliberately delaying or
completely foregoing repairs. Like a broken pipe?
I can't imagine the stress of that. A broken
pipe. Imagine you have a leak. It's damaging
your stuff. It smells. It's causing mold. You
call the landlord. If you are a favorite tenant,
maybe the plumber's there in an hour. If you're
being discriminated against, maybe they don't
answer the phone. Maybe they say, we'll get to
it next week. Maybe they blame you for the break.
That's not just an inconvenience. That impacts
your health. That impacts the livability of your
home. It denies you the value of what you're
paying for. You are paying full rent for a broken
product. And then there is the more direct aggression.
We have to talk about harassment and intimidation.
And the sources mentioned that this isn't just
the landlord's game, right? It's not just top
down. Correct. And this is important. While landlords
are the main actors because of their positional
power, neighbors play a significant role in non
-exclusionary discrimination. So even without
the institutional power to evict you. Even without
that, neighbors can make your life a living hell.
The text lists things like racial slurs, threats
of violence, coercion. It creates an uneasy environment.
That's the phrase the source uses. And I think
it's almost an understatement. It's about safety
and dignity. Yeah. If you are afraid to walk
from your car to your front door because of a
neighbor or because the landlord is harassing
you, you don't really have a home. You just have
a shelter that you're anxious to be in. And if
the person doing the harassing is the landlord,
someone in a position of authority. The victim
feels completely stuck. Who do you call? The
person attacking you is the person who owns a
roof over your head. It strips away your agency
completely. So we have exclusionary keeping you
out and non -exclusionary making you miserable
once you are in. That's the framework. Now, I
want to pivot here because usually when we talk
about housing discrimination, we have a certain
set of assumptions about who the victims are
and who the beneficiaries are. We tend to think
about this largely in terms of race, which is
obviously a huge, huge factor. It is the dominant
factor in much of the literature, absolutely.
But there is a segment in our source material
regarding gender that really throws a wrench
in the standard narrative. It's honestly, it's
surprising. It is. And we need to look at this
data carefully because it challenges our assumptions
about power and privilege in this specific context.
So what are we looking at? We're talking about
a meta -analysis conducted in 2018. This wasn't
a small study. They looked at 25 correspondence
studies across 15 OECD countries. And just to
remind everyone, correspondence studies are where
they send out fake applications to test the market,
right? Yes. It's an audit study. They send out
over 110 ,000 letters. They manipulate the name
of the applicant. to signal gender or ethnicity,
but keep the income, the credit score, the job
history, everything else identical. So it's the
gold standard for testing discrimination. It
is because it isolates the variable. So they
send out a John and a Jane or a David and a Sarah
with the exact same resume. What did they find
regarding gender? Okay, so get this. They found
that women are 30 % more likely than men to be
chosen for housing, all else being equal. 30%.
That is a massive margin. Usually in social science,
you're looking for these tiny little variances.
It is statistically huge. In the world of social
science, a 30 % preference is a landslide. It
implies a significant structural preference for
female tenants. So does this mean men are the
only victims? Or that men are the primary victims
of housing discrimination? I mean, how do we
square that? Well, we have to be careful with
the nuance here. It's not a zero -sum game. The
expert analysis shows there's an interaction
between sexism and racism. OK. The text specifically
says, and I'm quoting here, sexist discrimination
is stronger against men of ethnic minorities.
So it's intersectional. If you are a minority
man, you are facing a compounded penalty. Exactly.
You're getting hit by the racial bias and this
gender bias simultaneously. You are viewed as
the least desirable tenant by these gatekeepers.
However. And this is the part that often gets
overlooked. The data shows that even men from
the dominant majority suffer discrimination in
the rental market when compared to women. Why
do we think that is? I know the text doesn't
explicitly speculate on the landlord's psychology,
but the pattern is so clear. It implies a stereotype.
Landlords seem to view women as better tenants.
perhaps perceived as cleaner, quieter, more reliable,
or maybe less threatening. And men as riskier.
And conversely, they view men as riskier, maybe
louder, messier, more likely to cause damage.
It's a stereotype. It's a form of what some would
call benevolent sexism that benefits women in
this specific context, but penalizes men. Exactly.
You know, in the workplace, those same stereotypes
might hurt women. Oh, she's too quiet to be a
leader. But in housing, quiet is a premium asset.
So the bias completely flips. And this isn't
just about, you know, oh, it's a little harder
for a guy to find a cool apartment. This has
serious life or death consequences. We can't
talk about this without looking at the outcome.
It does. We have to connect this to the homelessness
statistics provided in the source. The numbers
are just. They're stark. Men make up the vast
majority of homeless people. The source cites
a 2019 French study that is truly grim. It found
that 90 % of homeless people who die in the street
are men. 90%. Yeah. That is staggering. It forces
us to ask a difficult question. Is structural
discrimination in housing selection significantly
favors women? That 30 % advantage we just talked
about. How much has that contributed to the fact
that men are so disproportionately represented
in the homeless population? It's a dot that needs
connecting, isn't it? If you are consistently
the second choice or the rejected choice for
an apartment, eventually you, you run out of
options. Exactly. If the gatekeepers we talked
about earlier, the landlords, are systematically
closing the door on men more often than on women,
the inevitable result is that more men will end
up on the street. It's a harsh reality that doesn't
get discussed enough when we talk about housing
equity. We focus on things like the pay gap,
but we rarely talk about this. housing gap. It
really complicates the narrative. It shows that
discrimination isn't a monolith. It shifts and
it changes depending on the context. Right. In
the labor market, we often see different patterns.
But in the housing market, specifically regarding
selection, the bias runs differently. And if
we really want to solve homelessness, we have
to look at that selection bias. So we've covered
the types of discrimination, exclusionary and
non -exclusionary, and the demographics, including
this gender paradox. Now, I want to zoom out
a bit. We've touched on studies from OECD countries,
but let's look specifically at the enforcement
and the global landscape. What is happening in
the United States specifically? OK, so in the
U .S., the legal framework is grounded in the
Fair Housing Act of 1968. This was a landmark
piece of civil rights legislation. Right. The
agency responsible for enforcing this is the
Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity,
which is part of HUD, the Department of Housing
and Urban Development. So the laws are on the
books. It is illegal to discriminate. But does
that mean it's fixed? Far from it. And this goes
right back to what we said at the beginning about
the slamming door changing shape. HUD conducted
a comprehensive study finding that the nature
of the beats has evolved. OK, so what did they
find? They found that the greatest share of discrimination
against Hispanic and African -American home seekers
is now being told units are unavailable. when
they're actually free. It's that stealth tactic
we mentioned. The bureaucratic no. Yes. Or being
shown fewer units than non -minorities. So if
a white tester goes in, the agent shows them
five houses in three different neighborhoods.
If a minority tester goes in, they show them
two houses in one specific neighborhood. Which
limits choice. It just completely restricts their
options. It's a bureaucracy of exclusion. It
limits mobility. It effectively decides for you
where you are allowed to live. And because it's
done with a smile and a handshake, it's incredibly
hard to detect. And looking beyond the U .S.,
this isn't just an American problem. The source
material highlights that this is a global issue.
It is, absolutely. We have data from Canada,
for instance. In Ontario, housing discrimination
is treated under the Ontario Human Rights Code.
The framing there is very much about human rights
housing as a right, not just a commodity. And
Turkey. The notes mentioned some recent developments
there. Turkey has seen more recent developments.
They established the Human Rights and Equality
Institution in 2016. This body is specifically
charged with enforcing fair housing laws. It's
interesting to see that institutional timeline.
I mean, 2016 is relatively recent. It shows the
nations are still waking up to the need for specific
dedicated bodies to handle this because general
laws aren't enough. You need enforcement mechanisms.
You need teeth. You need teeth. You need a body
that can actually investigate and penalize. So
whether it's the Ontario Human Rights Code, the
U .S. Fair Housing Act or this new Turkish institution,
the battle is fundamentally the same. The core
issue is universal. It is the power imbalance
between the provider, the landlord, the bank,
the insurer, and the seeker. As long as that
imbalance exists, and as long as there is bias,
whether it's conscious or unconscious, explicit
or implicit, discrimination will find a way to
manifest. It's like water. It finds the crack
in the wall. So what does this all mean? We've
covered a lot of ground today, if you had to
boil it down. We have. Yeah, if we try to synthesize
this deep dive, a few things really stand out.
First, that distinction between exclusionary
and non -exclusionary is just. It's crucial.
Absolutely. You have to understand that the battle
isn't over once you get the keys. Exclusionary
keeps you out through explicit bans or that stealth
steering and lying about availability. Right.
But non -exclusionary discrimination, the harassment,
the neglected repairs, the unfair rent hikes,
that makes you miserable once you are in. It
traps you. It attacks your peace of mind. Second,
the tactics themselves have evolved. Right. We
aren't seeing as many whites -only signs. We
are seeing subprime loan steering. We are seeing
unavailable units that are actually empty. Discrimination
has gone underground, which makes it harder to
fight, but just as damaging. And third, that
gender data really does flip the script. It really
does. The fact that women are 30 % more likely
to be selected for housing forces us to rethink
power dynamics in this specific market. And the
connection to the massive disparity in male homelessness,
you know, 90 percent of deaths on the street
in France being men, that cannot be ignored.
It seems like housing discrimination acts as
a kind of filter. That is the perfect word for
it. It is a filter for wealth instability. When
you steer someone to a subprime loan, you aren't
just giving them a house. You're giving them
a financial time bomb. When you refuse to fix
a pipe for a specific tenant. You are eroding
their mental health and their physical environment.
You are systematically disadvantaging them. It
prevents people from building the foundation
they need to succeed in every other part of life.
I mean, if your housing is unstable, your job
suffers, your health suffers, your family suffers.
Precisely. It is the bedrock. And when the bedrock
is cracked by discrimination, the whole house
metaphorically and literally is unstable. This
has been an eye -opening look at something we
encounter every single day. Our neighborhoods,
our apartment complexes, our cities. It definitely
makes you look at a for -rent sign a little differently,
doesn't it? It does. You realize the invisible
machinery behind it. It does. And I want to leave
our listeners with a thought to mull over. We
talked about that gender gap, the 30 % preference
for women in housing selection, and how it might
link to the fact that the vast majority of homeless
people are men. It's a correlation that demands
more attention. So here's the question. If the
data shows that structural housing discrimination
favors women significantly in selection, yet
we rarely discuss it in the public square, what
other invisible biases are shaping the demographics
of our cities and specifically our streets? That
is the question. What else are we not seeing
because it doesn't fit the story we think we
know? Something to think about. Thanks for joining
us on this deep dive. Always a pleasure. Camp
asking questions. See you next time.