(HuffingtonPost.com) — Samantha Friedman and Gregory D. Squires It helps to be white if you are trying to rent an apartment in Dallas. At least those housing providers who advertise rental units on Craigslist clearly prefer to rent to white rather than African American or Hispanic households.
According to real estate industry sources and a 2010 survey by the Pew Research Center, more than half of all homeseekers today utilize the internet in their search for housing with Craiglist being the primary search engine. Between January and May of 2009 we submitted responses to a representative sample of 726 housing providers who advertised rental units on Craigslist in the Dallas metropolitan area. Each provider received similar e-mail responses from three “testers;” one with a white sounding name (Neil Baker or Matthew O’Brien), one with an African American sounding name (Tyrone Jackson or Tremayne Robinson), and one with a Hispanic sounding name (Jorge Rodriguez or Pedro Gonzalesr). (We also tested 739 housing providers in Boston with similar results.)
