Rice expert available to discuss discrimination in Houston’s housing market

David Ruth
713-348-6327
david@rice.edu

Rice expert available to discuss discrimination in Houston’s housing market

HOUSTON — (Sept. 17, 2018) – Racial stereotypes coupled with institutional rules can exacerbate discrimination in the housing market, according to new research from Elizabeth Korver-Glenn, a scholar at Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research. Korver-Glenn is available to discuss the research with members of the media.

“Although it may appear that society has changed a great deal since the Fair Housing Act of 1968, the reality is very different,” Korver-Glenn said.

Her paper, “Compounding Inequalities: How Racial Stereotypes and Discrimination Accumulate across the Stages of Housing Exchange,” recently appeared in the American Sociological Review. The research draws on fieldwork and more than 100 in-depth interviews with real estate agents, developers, mortgage lenders, appraisers, landlords, housing consumers and other stakeholders in Houston’s housing market.

The research revealed the following:

• Racial discrimination can occur in both vague and obvious ways. For example, even if someone doesn’t use explicitly racial language, which is illegal, Korver-Glenn said, they may still use words that signal race. For example, one realtor she interviewed said, “People ask me all the time, ‘Is this a black neighborhood? Is this area black?’ All. The. Time. And it’s hard! I just tell them to drive around … (and I say) ‘Oh, look! There’s a tires and tamales, all under one roof.’ (As though she’s pointing this out to a client.) ‘Oh, okay.’ (client responds).”
• Institutional rules can accelerate prejudice and discrimination. For example, when applicants apply for loans, they fill out forms that indicate race, ethnicity and sex, Korver-Glenn said. This information is used to make loan decisions and can influence an underwriter’s determination of risk through widely shared stereotypes about income and race, she said.
• Inequality collects across interactions. “During the process of buying a home, a buyer interacts with many people, and each interaction presents an opportunity for one person to evaluate another person,” Korver-Glenn said. “Often, this evaluation happens through the lens of racial stereotypes, and it is not just an isolated incident, it is many incidents linked throughout the process.”

“I’m hopeful that this research can inform policy interventions aimed at changing the institutional rules that enable stereotyping and discrimination to persist,” Korver-Glenn said. “I also hope that my work informs how future studies attempt to capture contemporary forms of discrimination quantitatively.

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Related materials:

Kinder Institute website: https://kinder.rice.edu/

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