In 1988, the Federal Fair Housing Act of 1968 was amended to protect pregnant women and families with children from discrimination in the housing market. In addition to prohibiting the outright denial of housing to families with children (the same kind of door-slamming discrimination that was practiced against racial minorities), the Fair Housing Act restricts housing providers from subjecting families with children to special conditions or requirements, such as paying additional fees, being forced into special sections of a building, limiting access to recreational features of an apartment complex, and terminating tenancy for discriminatory reasons. Before such protections existed, it was not uncommon for landlords or property managers simply to bar children under 18 years of age or restrict the number of children permitted in housing units. Landlords and property managers could legally discourage or reject applicants with children. One study found that more than 25% of the nation’s rental housing units barred children less than 18 years old from living in them by adopting adults-only policies. In addition to these adults-only/no-child policies, rental housing managers were found to:

  1. restrict the ages of children permitted in units
  2. cap the number of children permitted in a unit
  3. discourage the sharing of bedrooms by children of the opposite sex
  4. restrict buildings or floors of buildings in complexes where children were permitted
  5. charge higher rents or require larger security deposits from renters with children

Today, too little is known about the extent and forms of discrimination against families with children that have persisted since the passage of the Fair Housing Amendments Act of 1988. Local fair housing groups and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development regularly receive complaints about this form of housing discrimination. Familial status claims made up 45.7% of all discrimination claims filed with HUD in 1990. The number of familial status complaints fell in 7 years to just 18.2% of the complaints filed with HUD in 1997. The National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) annual reports on fair housing complaints suggest that families with children continue to face discrimination today (14% of HUD complaints in 2010 and 12.5% in 2011). In fact, discrimination against families with children is cited as the 3rd most common form of complaint filed with fair housing groups.

Researchers have proposed 3 reasons why landlords may discriminate against families with children:

  1. They perceive an increased risk of liability and incur additional costs when providing various safeguards and other precautionary measures.
  2. They incur higher operating costs because of children’s “destructive nature”.
  3. They want to retain the ability to be more selective and exclude families with children when rental housing markets are tight.

Although it was conducted back in 1985 prior to the implementation of federal protections for families with children, a paired-testing study performed by Galster and Constantine documented outright denials to women with children on telephone interviews and also found that these same women were treated less courteously than childless female testers during in-person housing appointments.

Residential occupancy standards may restrict where families with children are able to live. Residential occupancy standards are limits on the number of people permitted per dwelling unit based on the size of the unit. The Fair Housing Amendments Act permits state and local governments to set “reasonable” residential occupancy standards for health and safety. This study found that 1-bedroom units were more likely than units of 2 or more bedrooms to have no-child policies. Additionally, large shares of 2-bedroom units were closed to families with children: nearly 25% were unavailable to families with 1 child, 33% were unavailable to families with 2 children, and 60% were unavailable to families with 3 children.

Another interesting factor that may influence the incidence and extent of discrimination against families with children is the racial composition of neighborhoods. In predominantly white neighborhoods, the share of units that excluded families with children was two-thirds greater than the share in predominantly African-American neighborhoods.

All of the practices mentioned above present additional challenges for families with children and further restrict their ability to secure safe, affordable housing. Occupancy standards may restrict families with children from the smallest and most affordable units in the rental market, further reducing the total number of units available to families with children or forcing families to make tradeoffs in the location or quality of the units.

This graph reveals that discrimination against families with children in the housing market usually takes the form of families with children being told about and shown fewer available housing units by their housing provider compared compared to childless families. This significantly constrains available and affordable housing options for families with children.

For clarity: 2 Households with children and 2 Households without children fall into the $2,000-$2,500/month rent bracket, and 1 Household with children and 2 Households without children fall into the > $2,500/month rent bracket.

As can be seen in the 2 graphs above, about 25% of childless renter households spend less than $500 a month in rent, but less than 1 in 5 (18%) of renter households with children have rents that low. The differences in rents paid by families with and without children may be the result of a preference of households with children to occupy larger (and thus more expensive) units, but they may also be the outcome of landlords steering families with children to larger housing units. 

Families with children are more likely to be rent burdened (spending > 30% of their income on rent) than households without children. However, renter families with children are about as likely as families without children to be extremely rent burdened (spending > 50% of their income on rent). This finding is surprising given that larger families live in larger housing units, which tend to be more expensive.

These two graphs illustrate the lack of affordable housing available to families with children. As stated earlier, landlords are guilty of “steering”, the practice of driving families with children to larger rental units that come with larger price tags. Steering is one of the more discrete forms of discrimination that have replaced the blatant “door slamming” discriminatory practices that went unregulated prior to the 1988 amendment to the Fair Housing Act of 1968. Steering can spell desperation and disaster for families with children. Both graphs on housing unit availability by bedroom size shown above convey a consistent decrease in the amount of housing units available to rent with a larger number of bedrooms. Because families with children are often steered towards larger rental units with multiple bedrooms, they are not only steered towards larger rents, but also towards severely limited housing options.

These visual representations show that in every category, families with children face harsher financial realities in the rental housing market. On average, families with children are quoted monthly rents that are $14 higher than those rents that are quoted for childless renters. Families with children are also subjected to paying $26 more in monthly fees than families without children. Families with children can also expect to be quoted higher security deposits and units fees for rental housing units according to the data accrued in this study. Another significant financial disadvantage faced by families with children concerns whether homeseekers are informed about some kind of financial incentive. Compared with renters who have children, those without children were told about incentives in 5.5% more paired tests.

 

Key Findings of This Study 

Homeseekers with or without children are equally likely to secure an appointment with a rental agent and learn about at least 1 available housing unit. In other words, the study found no evidence of outright refusals to meet with or rent to people with children. Compared with their childless counterparts, however, prospective renters with children were shown slightly fewer units and were told about units that were larger and more expensive to rent. After adjusting for number of bedrooms, however, the overall rent, fees, and financial incentives did not differ for homeseekers with and without children. Differential treatment was greater in tests targeting 1-bedroom units (vs larger units) and tests involving 2-child families (vs 1-child families). Compared with 1-child families, 2-child families were shown slightly fewer housing units, and those units that they were shown came in at slightly higher rents. Additionally, when comparing the experience of renters with and without children, larger differences were observed for the paired tests involving 1-bedroom units than those involving 2 or 3-bedroom rental units. These larger differences are observed for 4 outcomes:

  1. the ability to obtain any information over the phone about an advertised unit
  2. whether the tester is told about any unit being available
  3. whether the tester is told about the requested-size unit being available
  4. the average number of units of the requested-size unit being available

Another surprising trend of discrimination against families with children holds that discrimination against homeseekers on the basis of familial status is greater for homeseekers that are racial minorities and/or female. In the days leading up to the 1988 Fair Housing Amendments Act, many argued that no-child policies actually served as a pretext to deny renters on the basis of race, sex, or marital status. In examining state and federal housing complaint data, the argument was made that discrimination based on familial status intersects with other factors, specifically parents’ race, sex, and marital status. African-American renters were disproportionately effected by familial status discrimination, representing 84% of all familial status cases. In particular, African American women represented 57% of the 173 serious familial status cases.

The overall study finding of families with children being shown fewer units and being steered to somewhat larger and more expensive units constrains the housing options of homeseekers with children. The good news, however, is that net rates of housing discrimination against families with children were low. This news came as a great surprise (albeit a pleasant one) to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development that managed this research study. HUD expected to find stronger evidence of discrimination against families with children in the rental housing market given the volume of complaints that are made annually about discrimination in the housing market on the basis of familial status.

These reportedly low figures of discrimination against families with children may reflect some of the key limitations of this study. The study focused on documenting discrimination when financially well-qualified families apply for rental housing and only at the first stage of a family’s search, the point at which an appointment with the rental agent is scheduled and available units are viewed. This study does not measure discrimination that may occur during a family’s rental tenure or even if the family succeeded in obtaining a lease, when in fact families with children may encounter discrimination throughout a rental relationship. A recent study of evictions in 1 US city found that the presence of children in the household nearly tripled a tenant’s likelihood of receiving an eviction judgment relative to other households with similar rent liabilities. Fair housing groups corroborated this pattern of post-transaction discrimination by reporting that many of the problems that families with children face actually occur when families are occupying units. 

This research study also examined familial status cases from 2000 to 2014 by type of complaint recorded in TEAPOTS (the Title Eight Automated Paperless Office Tracking System) to determine whether discrimination was occurring before occupancy or after families with children had moved into their units. The TEAPOTS data showed that cases of family discrimination in rental housing occurred as prospective tenants tried to obtain a rental and after they moved in. On average, 26% of rental cases involved discriminatory advertising, 46% involved discriminatory refusal to rent, and 55% involved discriminatory terms, conditions, and privileges. As the scatterplot below shows, nearly all complaints on discriminatory terms, conditions, and privileges that were filed in 2013 were for problems that occurred post-occupancy.

Consequences of Discrimination Against Families with Children in the Housing Market and the Affordable Housing Shortage 

Families with children unfortunately face significant challenges in the rental housing market. Many families with children rely on the rental housing market to meet their basic housing needs. In communities where this market is tight, many families struggle to find housing that is safe, affordable, and conveniently located near schools, transportation, and employment. This study sought to determine the extent to which housing discrimination contributes to these challenges.

Stable and affordable housing is critical to a child’s wellbeing. Having a high-quality affordable home enables families to spend a greater portion of their incomes on nutritious food, health care, and other things that promote good health. It also contributes to greater residential stability, which limits the stress and trauma associated with frequent or unwanted relocations, and prevents homelessness. Research before the Fair Housing Amendments Act suggests that the effects of exclusionary policies for families with children resulted in employment-related problems, such as increased travel and decreased access to jobs in adjacent cities, fewer or no school choices, higher rent burdens on families, and emotional distress associated with having to move more frequently. Other outcomes included longer housing searches, forced moves, overcrowding, lower housing quality, forced separation from family members, and more nontraditional living situations. Furthermore, housing discrimination may harm children if it contributes to housing instability and frequent moves. Moves resulting from unplanned or involuntary circumstances (such as evictions) and moves that occur as part of a pattern of frequent mobility have negative effects on child and family welfare, including increased school absenteeism and a higher incidence of neighborhood problems that include vandalism, muggings, drug use, and gang violence.

Safe and stable housing also contributes to better educational outcomes. Children experiencing residential instability have worse academic and social outcomes, including weaker vocabulary skills, more problem behaviors, higher grade-retention and high school dropout rates, and lower adult educational attainment than their residentially stable peers. Elementary school children are especially susceptible to worse academic outcomes. Residential instability is not only related to poor academic development, but also poor social development.One study of low-income families living in Boston, Massachusetts, Chicago, Illinois, and San Antonio, Texas, found that certain housing and neighborhood characteristics were associated with better reading skills and fewer emotional and behavioral problems among children. These characteristics included high cost, few housing problems and low neighborhood disorder, moderate residential instability, and homes that were mostly owner-occupied and private rentals.

Another study found that not only are evictions mundane in inner-city African American neighborhoods, but also that women are evicted at much higher rates than men. In inner-city black neighborhoods, women are not only overrepresented on leases but also are disadvantaged in relation to male leaseholders from similar neighborhoods. Women typically earn lower incomes and pay higher rents than their male counterparts. To make matters worse, many women’s incomes are fixed, making them particularly vulnerable to unanticipated expenses. Their children can also cause landlords problems: damaging property, annoying neighbors, and attracting unwanted attention from state agencies, all of which can only increase their chances of being evicted from their homes.