Racial Discrimination in Housing Markets during the 1980s: A Review of the Audit Evidence

Abstract

Seventy-one fair housing audits em ploying interracial teams of matched investigators who posed as home seekers are reviewed. The audits re veal that racial discrimination con tinues to be a dominant feature of metropolitan housing markets in the 1980s. Black auditors seeking homes for sale faced a one-in-five chance, blacks seeking rental dwellings faced a one-in-two chance, and Hispanics seeking rental dwellings faced a one- in-three chance, on average, of being discriminated against.