In 1988, Congress amended Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 (the Fair Housing Act) to prohibit discrimination based on disability in the sale, rental, and financing of housing. Disability is legally defined to encompass both physical and mental disabilities. The amendment, which was officially ratified in March of 1989, makes it illegal for landlords to refuse to rent or sell a housing unit to someone because of a disability, to impose different application or qualification criteria, or to require different fees, terms, or conditions than those required of ambulatory homeseekers (homeseekers without a disability). Additionally, housing providers are obligated to make reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities, as long as the changes do not result in any undue burden or cost on the housing provider. Housing providers are also required to allow renters with disabilities to make reasonable structural modifications at their own cost to the interiors and exteriors of units and to public areas that would give them “full enjoyment of the premises”, including:

  1. installing an entryway ramp
  2. widening doorways and entrances
  3. installing grab bars in bathrooms
  4. lowering kitchen cabinets
  5. installing visible fire alarms
  6. installing doorbell flashers

Finally, the law mandates that new multifamily housing complexes built for first occupancy after March 13, 1991 be designed and constructed so that they will be accessible to homeseekers that require the use of a wheelchair for mobility.

Disability discrimination complaints have reportedly become the single most common complaint received by federal and local agencies under the Fair Housing Act since people with disabilities were added as a protected group. In 2011 alone, 55% of the 1,799 fair housing complaints received by HUD, 47% of the 7,551 fair housing complaints received by local Fair Housing Assistance Program agencies, and 44% of the 17,701 fair housing complaints received by member organizations of the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) throughout the US were based on allegations of disability discrimination.

One study of discrimination against disabled homeseekers found that adverse treatment of people with disabilities occurs even more frequently during the initial stages of the housing search than does adverse treatment of African-American or Hispanic renters, making it that much more difficult for people with disabilities to find an accessible, affordable, and decent quality housing unit in a tight housing market.

Before presenting the results of this case study, it is important to differentiate gross and net measures of discrimination. Gross measures represent the share of all tests for which the control homeseeker is favored over the homeseeker who is deaf or uses a wheelchair. Gross measures, however, typically overstate the frequency of systematic discrimination because nondiscriminatory random events are responsible for some portion of the observed treatment. Therefore, this study instead reports net measures of discrimination, or the proportion of tests that favor the control group minus the proportion of tests that favor people with disabilities for a given treatment indicator. The net measure is preferred because it provides a direct estimate of the degree of disadvantage in the rental markets for people who are deaf or people who use wheelchairs compared with ambulatory homeseekers. The net measure generally understates the rate of systematic discrimination, however, so this is an important idea to keep in mind as you analyze the data that follows.

 

Discrimination against Deaf or Hard-of-Hearing Homeseekers

This graph shows that deaf homeseekers experience adverse treatment on a variety of measures of discrimination. Housing providers are less likely to communicate about housing with testers who are deaf than with control testers. When both testers are able to contact a real estate agent, testers who are deaf are told about fewer available units but quoted lower rents (which you will notice below). At the end of the call, both testers are equally able to make an appointment to meet with a housing provider.

A housing provider was confused by a call from a tester who was deaf. After the communication assistant explained the call, the provider said that she didn’t take those kinds of calls, apologized and hung up.

 

 

In one test, the housing provider told the control tester that the application fee and one-half of the first month’s rent would be waived on the available unit, which would save the renter $543. The deaf tester called the same day and spoke to the same housing provider. The housing provider told the deaf tester about the same unit and the waived application fee, but not about the rent discount.

Providers offer deaf homeseekers rents that are less by about $8 per month compared with homeseekers who are hearing. Interestingly, housing providers are 4.6% more likely to quote higher unit fees to the hearing tester. Over all of the paired tests that were conducted, average fees quoted for the hearing tester were $36 higher. However, housing providers were 4.8% less likely to inform deaf homeseekers about move-in incentives. Over all of the paired tests that were conducted, the value of incentives for testers who are deaf was $74 less than the value of those offered to hearing homeseekers. Finally, a low percentage of testers were given the choice between a security deposit and a surety bond, and housing providers were 1.3% less likely to give that choice to deaf homeseekers. This data creates a discrepancy as to whether deaf homeseekers are the victims of negative or positive financial discrimination. Since the average yearly net cost to hearing homeseekers is slightly higher than the cost owed by deaf homeseekers, the discrimination experienced by deaf renters is arguably more positive than it is negative. This begs the question: is positive discrimination a result of sympathy of the housing provider for the condition of the tester, or a lack of trust in the homeseeker’s ability to pay his or her rent, especially given that many individuals with disabilities are presumed to be jobless?

A tester informed the housing provider that he was deaf before asking about the advertised apartment. The provider said she was too busy but could e-mail the tester. After the tester provided this e-mail contact, the call ended.

The big picture of discrimination against people with disabilities in the housing market is not clear-cut:  Do Deaf Homeseekers Experience Positive or Negative Financial Discrimination? 

When well-qualified homeseekers who are deaf or hard of hearing contact housing providers using assistive communication technologies to inquire about recently advertised rental housing, providers are less likely to respond to their inquiries. In 45.7% of the tests in which control testers reached a housing provider and the testers who were deaf did not, housing providers hung up on the testers who were deaf. During some of the other tests, deaf testers documented that they were able to reach someone, but the real estate agent claimed to be too busy for the call or that no leasing agent was available to help. When housing providers do respond, they tell homeseekers who are deaf about fewer available housing options than comparable homeseekers who are hearing. The study found that the tester was outright refused service in 1 of 4 calls made by testers who were deaf using the teletypewriter (TTY) system to inquire about advertised rental units. When housing providers accepted the calls of deaf testers, the testers received significantly less information about the rental application process and fewer opportunities for followup contact than did comparable testers in the control group who made telephone inquiries.

The only factor that contributes consistently to variations in adverse treatment of deaf homeseekers is the type of communication technology employed by these testers to contact housing providers. Housing providers are significantly more likely to accept calls from homeseekers who are deaf and use VRS (Video Relay Service) technology than from those who use IP Relay Service or IP CTS. Users of IP Relay Service and IP CTS successfully contacted housing providers 7.9% less often than their hearing counterparts, while the contact rates for VRS users were only 2.9% less often than their hearing counterparts. This means that differential treatment for VRS users is 5% less than it is for IP CTS users, and VRS users are at much less of a disadvantage in the housing search. This is to be expected due to the delays involved in using technologies that rely on typing messages (like IP CTS) as compared with VRS, which relies primarily on sign language of the deaf tester and results in little or no delay in communication.

These findings indicate that deaf or hard-of-hearing homeseekers run into problems at the early stages of the home search process, which include communication with a housing provider and learning about available units.

 

Discrimination against Homeseekers that require Wheelchair Assistance

During the call to make an appointment, a housing provider apologized to a wheelchair tester for not having any units to show; the next available unit would not be ready unit late May. The wheelchair tester asked to see a model unit instead, but the housing provider said it was rented and could not be shown. The wheelchair tester was unable to make an appointment.

When the control tester called, the housing provider said that one unit was ready to lease and offered to meet with the tester. During the site visit, the housing provider told the control tester about a unit on the 1st floor that was available immediately and about a 2nd unit available in May. The housing provider showed the model unit to the tester and said the actual unit would be ready to show the next day.

This graph reveals that only about 44% of advertised rental units randomly selected for paired testing led to a unit that was believed to be accessible for people who use wheelchairs. If this finding is indeed representative of the ratio of accessible and inaccessible rental units on a national level, then fewer than half of all the units available for rent across all United States metropolitan areas are accessible, and therefore habitable, for wheelchair users. This disturbing statistic portrays the great difficulty that wheelchair-using homeseekers experience when searching for an available unit to rent and explains why so many individuals who use wheelchairs are unsuccessful in their housing searches when the rental market is tight.

44%, however, represents an average of all the metropolitan statistical areas in which testing occurred. In New York, the percentage of accessible housing for wheelchair users deviates greatly from this mean approximation. In regions of upstate New York like Syracuse and Rochester, the percentages of accessible housing are much worse than this average figure, with only 16.2% and 19.1% of housing units considered accessible to people that use wheelchairs. In a large metropolitan area of New York like New York City, however, the average estimate of accessible housing is substantially lower than the actual proportion of accessible housing available in New York City, which is approximately 82.9% of the total housing stock and represents one of the highest ratios of accessible housing availability nationally. This may be because most of the rental units in New York City could have been built or renovated after 1991 to comply with the new accessibility requirement.

When inquiring about advertised housing that appears to be accessible, renters who use wheelchairs are treated less favorably on several key indicators than equally qualified renters who are ambulatory. Housing providers are less likely to make an appointment with homeseekers who use wheelchairs and are less likely to tell such homeseekers about a suitable unit when they do make an appointment. When people who use wheelchairs are informed of a suitable, available unit that is thought to be accessible for inspection, they are less likely to be shown the unit.

Housing providers appear to quote lower rents for homeseekers using wheelchairs, but also lower amounts of incentives than are told to ambulatory testers. On average, providers told testers using wheelchairs about rents that were $9 less per month than the rents quoted to ambulatory testers. Ambulatory testers were offered average incentives that were $53 higher than for testers using wheelchairs, but these greater incentives were not sufficient to offset the difference in rent, suggesting that wheelchair users are subject to positive financial discrimination, much like people who are deaf or hard-of-hearing.

Housing providers show homeseekers who use a wheelchair housing that is in slightly worse condition than the housing they show to ambulatory homeseekers. Homeseekers using wheelchairs saw 2.7% more problems per unit than comparable ambulatory homeseekers. The problems documented included peeling paint, broken windows, and exposed wiring. Providers were 2.8% more likely to show a unit without any problems to control testers. This might be part of the reason why homeseekers with disabilities are frequently quoted lower rents than ambulatory homeseekers.

When wheelchair-using homeseekers ask about modifications that would make the available housing more accessible to them, housing providers either fail to provide a clear response to, or explicitly deny, more than 25% of the requests. However, the approval rate for modification requests varies by the type of modification.  The pie charts provided above give a few examples of modifications that homeseekers who use wheelchairs might ask for and the approval rates of such modification requests. Housing providers’ approval rates varied from > 80% for requests to install bathroom grab bars and lever door handles to < 50% to lower kitchen cabinets and replace carpets. One hypothesis is that the modification requests that require more work receive higher denial rates, but the data obtained from this study does not provide clear rationales for the response differences to various modification requests.

Do Homeseekers That Require Wheelchair Assistance Experience Positive or Negative Financial Discrimination? This video may help you decide. Stay tuned until the end for our special guest star, who makes his opinion on this issue very clear.

When a tester that uses a wheelchair asked to view an available apartment, the housing provider said it could not be shown because it was occupied. The housing provider did show an apartment to the control tester, however, and the control tester noted that the apartment was accessible.

People who use wheelchairs encounter difficulties at several points in the housing search process, including finding accessible units, securing appointments with providers, being shown units, and getting a clear response to their requests to make reasonable modifications. Well-qualified homeseekers who use wheelchairs are more likely to be denied an appointment to view recently advertised rental housing located in buildings with accessible units than are comparably qualified ambulatory homeseekers. Those who do receive an appointment are less likely to be told about and shown suitable housing units that will accommodate their specific needs. In more than 25% of visits, people who used wheelchairs learned about fewer available units than did testers without disabilities. What’s more, testers who use wheelchairs were denied the opportunity to inspect ANY available unit 30% of the time.

Housing providers often made comments about housing accessibility, fair housing, and people with disabilities during the correspondence tests in this case study, usually to the tester that had a disability and required wheelchair assistance. An analysis of housing providers’ comments documented by testers showed that most comments tended to be neutral, informative, or helpful. Some agents remarked that their buildings posed accessibility challenges because they were constructed before the Americans with Disabilities Act was enacted. A housing provider from a newer building reassured a homeseeker that accessibility should be a nonissue because the property was built just 5 years earlier. Other comments included a conversation about special parking spaces or questions about whether the tester would be comfortable on the ground floor of the building where many accessible units are located. Agents commented that other renters in the building used a wheelchair, mentioned that a loved one used a wheelchair so they understood accessibility needs, or pointed out a unit with a wheelchair ramp at the entrance.

While we looked at the floor plan she (the housing provider) mentioned how one of her family members used a wheelchair and how the floor plan would be great because of the space of the apartment.

Other comments and actions weren’t so nice. One agent told a tester “Oh, you’re disabled…you don’t work”. In one case, a housing provider neglected to remove snow from the pathway the tester would have used to access the unit for inspection and refused to walk to the tester’s car to discuss the available unit. Another housing provider was convinced that the tester would be able to get out of the wheelchair to enter the building. Yet another housing provider commented that he had “never seen any disabled people for the building so this is new for him, especially someone who is severely disabled as I (the tester) appear to be.”

The housing provider made the comment that my husband probably helped me with my showers and other care needs, and told me that for liability reasons, any and all modifications would need to be made by me.

Discrimination against people who use wheelchairs, however, is relative. The case study found that the testers that used wheelchairs but were also assigned higher incomes or chose to look at higher rent housing experienced lower levels of discrimination and had less difficulty learning about and inspecting suitable units than wheelchair users that were assigned lower income brackets. This finding suggests that economic class may affect the likelihood of differential treatment of those with disabilities. However, in tight rental markets (those with lower vacancy rates) homeseekers who use wheelchairs are more likely than ambulatory homeseekers to be denied opportunities to inspect suitable units.

By limiting their housing options, discrimination against individuals with disabilities makes it even more challenging to find an accessible, affordable, and decent housing unit especially in a tight housing market. A 2009 report to Congress expressed that 25% of renter households with disabilities experienced worst case housing needs. The report defines such households as “very low-income renters who do not receive government housing assistance and who either pay more than 1/2 of their income for rent (extreme rent burden), live in severely inadequate conditions, or both”.