Legal Discrimination and the Reproduction of Racial Inequality in the Contemporary Houston Housing Market

• In Event: 183 - Regular Session. Racial and Ethnic Inequality 2

Abstract

Prior research on racial discrimination in the housing market has often focused on the disparate treatment of racial minorities or on one branch of the housing market (e.g. lending), missing the dynamics of disparate-impact discrimination and how the contemporary housing market as a whole may be implicated in racially-discriminatory processes. In this article, I draw on close to one year of ethnographic research on the housing market in Houston, Texas to ask how the Houston housing market is organized and what its organization demonstrates about the mechanisms responsible for disparate-impact discrimination. I find that the completely legal, normative process of generating and maintaining residential real estate business is racially stratified, as are the mechanisms underlying business-building strategies and the practices associated with such strategies. Further, I find that a real estate market arranged along racial lines accrues disproportionate social and economic benefits to white stakeholders and neutral to negative impacts for black and Latino stakeholders. After a discussion of findings, I suggest future directions for research and concrete policy recommendations that seek to broaden the reach of the Fair Housing Act’s affirmative mandate and mitigate the discriminatory impact of a racially-organized housing market.

Author

• Elizabeth Korver-Glenn, Rice University