In a 2000 Kaiser Family Foundation survey, 11% of the lesbian, gay male, and bisexual respondents said they had personally experienced discrimination in renting an apartment or buying a home. Data obtained from a nationally representative sample of LGBT adults shows that 3.8% of this population reports experiencing discrimination in the housing market at least once. 6.5% of gay males alone experience discrimination in the housing market, making them the target group of the highest rate of housing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

This study from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development found that same-sex couples experience less favorable treatment than heterosexual couples in the online rental housing market. In particular, cis-gendered couples receive significantly fewer responses to e-mail inquiries about advertised units than heterosexual couples. Surprisingly, in jurisdictions that have state-level protections against housing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, same-sex couples are given slightly more adverse treatment than those in jurisdictions that do not have such protections.

Each correspondence test in this study involved sending 2 emails to a housing provider, each inquiring about the availability of the electronically advertised unit, with the only difference being the sexual orientation of the senders of these e-mail inquiries. Unfavorable treatment was measured based on the housing provider’s response to the e-mail, with the main focus being on whether each tester:

  1. received a response to their e-mail inquiry
  2. received more than 1 response
  3. was told the unit they inquired about was available
  4. was told to contact the housing provider
  5. was invited to inspect the unit of interest

Same-sex couples are significantly less likely than heterosexual couples to get favorable responses to e-mail inquiries about electronically advertised rental housing. The bar graphs above indicate that heterosexual couples were favored over gay male couples in 15.9% of the correspondence tests and over lesbian couples in 15.6% of the tests. The net measures of discrimination show that heterosexual couples are more likely than their cis-gendered counterparts to receive an initial e-mail response to a housing inquiry. At this preliminary stage of the rental housing transaction, barriers indicate a rejection of the tester based solely on the sexual orientation information provided in the e-mail rather than on any characteristics related to qualification for the housing, thus preventing basic access to rental units.

Key Findings of This Study 

  • same-sex couples experience discrimination in the online rental housing market
  • adverse treatment primarily takes the form of cis-gendered couples receiving fewer responses to the e-mail inquiry about an advertised unit than heterosexual couples
  • states with legislative protections show slightly more adverse treatment for gay men and lesbians than states without protections
  • lower bound (net) measures of discrimination yield similar results, although the magnitude of the difference in treatment between heterosexual and same-sex couples is less (2.2% for the gay male-heterosexual tests and 1.3% for the lesbian-heterosexual tests) than for the gross measures of discrimination and is only statistically significant in the gay male-heterosexual tests

Conclusions of This Study 

In states with legislative protections against housing discrimination based on sexual orientation, heterosexual couples were consistently favored over gay male couples in 16% of tests and were favored over lesbian couples in 15.9% of tests.

In states without such protections, heterosexual couples were favored over gay male and lesbian couples at rates that were 0.6 percentage points less than those in protected states (15.4% and 15.3%, respectively). What’s more, the net measure of discrimination for gay male couples relative to heterosexual couples (3.1%) was statistically significant only in jurisdictions with state-level protections. 

How about in New York City specifically?

New York is in fact one of the states with state-level protections against housing discrimination based on sexual orientation. The Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act (SONDA) prohibits discrimination on the basis of actual or perceived sexual orientation in employment, housing, public accommodations, education, credit, and the exercise of civil rights. SONDA was passed by the New York State Legislature and signed into law by the Governor in 2002, became effective on January 16, 2003, and has since protected individuals who are discriminated against on the basis of sexual orientation. SONDA defines sexual orientation as “heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality, or asexuality, whether actual or perceived”. Hence, the law protects individuals that are targeted either based on their actual sexual orientation, or based on what the discriminator believes their orientation to be. SONDA prohibits discrimination on the basis of actual or perceived sexual orientation in various areas, including in publicly assisted housing and in private housing accommodations and commercial space.

The results of this study are shocking in that states with legislative protections prohibiting housing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation (such as New York) do not show lower levels of adverse treatment. This unexpected finding, however, may be accounted for by potentially low levels of enforcement, housing provider unfamiliarity with state-level protections, or the possibility that protections exist in states with the greatest need for them, meaning that the levels of discrimination in those states would be even higher if not for such prohibitory laws against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

This study employed paired e-mail correspondence tests rather than in-person paired tests, and it allowed for only 1 e-mail interaction with each housing provider. Because the observations made in this study are at the very threshold of the rental transaction, the estimates of discrimination presented in this study likely underestimate the extent to which heterosexual couples are favored over same-sex couples in the rental housing market. The incidence of consistently favored treatment of heterosexual couples relative to gay male and lesbian couples revealed in this study (15.9% and 15.6% respectively) closely mirrors the incidence of consistently favored treatment of white homeseekers relative to black and Hispanic homeseekers (21.6% and 25.7% respectively).