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Volume 3 Number 7
July/August 2006
In this Issue
Outcomes of Permanent Housing Programs for the Homeless
Fair Housing: What the Public Knows and Supports
Exploring Subprime Mortgage Lending and Alternative Financial Services
Does Owning a Manufactured Home Make Sense?
In the next issue of ResearchWorks
Fair Housing: What the Public Knows and Supports
How well do you know your fair housing law? Given below are the scenarios used in two HUD-sponsored surveys that tested what the public knows about fair housing law and the extent to which people support its tenets. The surveys polled a nationwide,
representative sample of adults in 2000–2001, and again in 2005. With the first poll, HUD was able to establish a baseline of the public’s knowledge and attitudes about housing discrimination. With the second, HUD was able to discern any changes in public awareness. Compare your knowledge with that of the American public by deciding if the following eight
scenarios are legal (L) or illegal (I):
An apartment building owner who rents to people of all age groups decides that families with younger children can only rent in one particular building, and not in others, because younger children tend to make lots of noise and may bother other tenants. L or I? An apartment building owner is renting to a tenant who uses a wheelchair. The building is old and does not have a wheelchair ramp, and the tenant wants a small wooden ramp constructed at the building door to more easily access the building. He asks the owner if it is okay to build the ramp. The tenant says he will pay all the costs, and agrees to have the ramp removed at his own expense when he leaves. The owner, however, believes such a ramp will not look good on his building, and decides he does not want it constructed on his property. L or I? An apartment building owner places a notice on a community bulletin board to find a tenant for a vacant apartment. This notice says, ‘Christians preferred.’ L or I?
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Public support for fair housing increased from 66% in 2000-2001 to 73% in 2005.
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In checking references on an application for a vacant apartment, an apartment building owner learns that the applicant has a history of mental illness. Although the applicant is not a danger to anyone, the owner does not want to rent to such a person. L or I? An apartment building owner learns that an applicant for a vacant apartment has a different religion than all the other tenants in the building. Believing the other tenants would object, the owner does not want to rent to such a person. L or I? The next question involves a family selling their house through a real estate agent. They are white, and have only white neighbors. Some of the neighbors tell the family that, if a non-white person buys the house, there would be trouble for that buyer. Not wanting to make it difficult for a buyer, the family tells the real estate agent they will sell their house only to a white buyer. L or I? A white family looking to buy a house goes to a real estate agent and asks about the availability of houses within their price range. Assuming the family would only want to buy in areas where white people live, the agent decides to show them only houses in all-white neighborhoods, even though there are many houses in their price range in other parts of the community. L or I? An Hispanic family goes to a bank to apply for a home mortgage. The family qualifies for a mortgage but, in that bank’s experience, Hispanic borrowers have been less likely than others to repay their loans. For that reason, the loan officer requires that the family make a higher downpayment than would be required of other borrowers before agreeing to give the mortgage. L or I?
If you identified all eight scenarios as illegal, you not only scored 100%, but also did better than the average American, who correctly identified only six of these scenarios as illegal. This was true for about half the respondents in both surveys. As for the individual scenarios, in comparison to the earlier study, more people in 2005 were aware that it is illegal to limit
a search to a white-only neighborhood or to treat families with children differently, but fewer people knew that using the words “Christians preferred” in
an advertisement is illegal.
Although knowledge of fair housing law did not improve, public support for it did. The portion of the public expressing support for the law in six or more of the scenarios rose from 66 percent in 2000–2001 to 73 percent in 2005. Even though improvement in support for fair housing law is positive, the researchers in this project remind us that a quarter of the population
remains unsympathetic to fair housing law.
Full reports on the two surveys — How Much Do We Know? (2001) and Do We Know More Now? Trends in Public Knowledge, Support and Use of Fair Housing Law (2005) — are available free online at http://www.huduser.org/publications/hsgfin/FairHsngSurvey.html or from the HUD USER Clearinghouse for a nominal fee by calling 800.245.2691, option 1.
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