Discrimination Against Persons with Disabilities
On July 25, 2005, HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson released
the study Discrimination Against Persons with Disabilities:
Barriers at Every Step. He also released a companion
report, Discrimination Against Persons with Disabilities:
Guidance for Practitioners, that uses the lesson from
the research study to give guidance to practitioners on how
to do disability discrimination testing.
These are the last in a series of reports specified by Congress
to use paired testing to measure the level of discrimination
in the United States. The three previous reports showed the
level of discrimination experienced by African Americans,
Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans when they inquired
about a unit advertised for sale or rent. The series of studies
is commonly referred to as the Housing
Discrimination Study 2000. Under contract to HUD, the
Urban Institute conducted the research for all of these studies.
Barriers at Every Step
The report, Barriers at Every Step, shows the level
of discrimination faced by two groups in the Chicago metropolitan
area:
- Persons who are deaf and use a telephone relay service
to inquire about a rental unit and
- Persons using wheelchairs who visit a rental provider
in person.
The Urban Institute’s analysis of 200 paired tests
have the following three key findings:
- Landlords who advertised units for rent refused to speak
to deaf persons in one-of-four calls, while non-disabled
callers were given information about the units.
- For both deaf persons and wheelchair users that were able
to get some information, they did not receive the same level
of encouragement as non-disabled persons in a quarter of
the tests.
- The majority of landlords agree to requests of reasonable
accommodation and reasonable modification. Nonetheless,
about 19 percent of landlords refused a request for a reasonable
accommodation and 16 percent said they would not permit
a reasonable modification.
Testing Guidance for Practitioners
This report draws upon experience of the Disability Discrimination
Study (DDS) and offers practical information to advocates,
enforcement and regulatory agencies, and other interested
parties about the possible uses of disability discrimination
testing as an investigative tool to aid in the enforcement
of the fair housing laws. The guide is not intended to be
a definitive “how to” manual that describes a
singular approach to conducting tests for discrimination against
persons with disabilities. The purpose of this guide is to
offer general guidance, insights, and resources for organizations
interested in conducting disability discrimination testing.
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