Searching for Fair Housing
97 Boston University Law Review 349 (2017)
U of Chicago, Public Law Working Paper No. 575
Kreisman Working Papers Series in Housing Law and Policy No. 34
75 Pages Posted: 11 Apr 2016 Last revised: 13 Apr 2017
Date Written: April 12, 2017
Abstract
There is a blind spot in the scholarly and legal treatment of housing discrimination: the racial biases of home seekers. Search strategies routinely incorporate information about neighborhood racial composition, either as a proxy or as a direct preference. Although search heuristics can powerfully entrench and perpetuate (or, alternatively, disrupt) segregation, it is widely assumed that the way that families search for homes is none of the law’s business. This paper questions that assumption and, more broadly, examines how home seeking fits into a societal conception of fair housing that assigns positive value to integration.
Keywords: Fair Housing Act, Section 1982, discrimination, housing, integration, segregation, disparate impact, affirmatively further
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