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Study Says Apartments Discriminate
Against Blacks
By CHRIS KAHN, Associated Press
© May 15, 2002
ROANOKE -- A study by a fair-housing advocacy group suggests that blacks
are regularly discriminated against when applying for apartments in
predominantly white neighborhoods of the Roanoke and Hampton Roads
areas.
Housing Opportunities Made Equal, which released its
latest findings today in Roanoke, said that 60 percent of large,
professionally run complexes surveyed in Hampton Roads gave preferential
treatment to white applicants. In Roanoke, 44 percent gave preferential
treatment to whites.
"We're still dealing with stereotypes left
over from an earlier generation," said Constance Chamberlin, president
of the Richmond-based nonprofit agency.
Between fall 1999 and
summer 2000, HOME sent white and black test subjects to 70 apartment
complexes in Hampton Roads and 54 apartments in the Roanoke area. The
white and black applicants would usually arrive at similar times, and
the black applicant always had a slightly better income and credit
history.
In Hampton Roads, apartments sometimes declined to offer
a black applicant an apartment, then offered an apartment to the white
applicant who showed up later that day. When no apartment was available,
one apartment complex told the white applicant that vacancies would be
available soon while declining to inform the black applicant.
In Roanoke some black applicants were quoted higher rental rates and
security deposit fees than their white counterparts for the same unit.
The results were similar to national audits in the 1970s and
1980s conducted by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development,
which found that blacks were discriminated against about half the time
when searching for apartments.
Gloria Jacobs, president of the
Virginia Apartment Management Association, said she has never seen any
discrimination among association members. VAMA and its local chapters
sponsor several fair-housing seminars each year, she said, in which
apartment managers can learn about federal fair housing laws.
"Basically it's 'treat everyone the way you'd like to be treated,'"
Jacobs said of the seminars. "If everyone followed that, there would be
no problems."
Two separate audits by HOME found that many
housing units surveyed in Hampton Roads, Roanoke, Lynchburg,
Charlottesville and Fredericksburg were not accessible to people with
disabilities. Only three of the 41 sites surveyed had entrances big
enough for wheelchairs, reinforcements in bathrooms for grab bars, and
other features required by the fair housing laws.
"This is something
that people don't talk about very much," Chamberlin said. "But if
people don't have access to a lot of the (housing) market, then the
apartment costs available to them will probably be a lot higher."
HOME said state officials need to do a better job stifling housing
discrimination and making sure apartments meet federal accessibility
guidelines. The agency also recommended that the General Assembly
sponsor a more comprehensive study that would include how landlords
treat prospective Asian American and Hispanic tenants.
On the Net:
http://www.hud.gov/
http://www.phonehome.org/
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