Black women with criminal records are treated less fairly than their white counterparts when looking for housing in Washington, D.C., according to a new study.
The Equal Rights Center tested 60 housing providers in D.C. and Northern Virginia by having black and white women apply for rental properties. The women applying for housing disclosed that they had either a “college-age felony arrest for drug possession from at least seven years ago” or a “larceny conviction from at least 11 years ago that was related to a long-term abusive relationship.”
Neither is considered “directly related to a tester’s ability to be a good tenant” or be a threat to the safety of other tenants or the property itself.
The D.C.-based nonprofit discovered that 47 percent of the tests found landlords favored the white female potential tenant, compared to 11 percent of tests that showed the black female applicant was favored.
Another 28 percent of the tests “revealed a criminal records screening policy in place that may have an illegal disparate impact on the basis of race” under the federal Fair Housing Act.
“Testing results show that criminal records screening policies and practices are serving as proxies for racial discrimination in housing,” ERC Executive Director Melvina Ford said in a statement. “Housing providers must immediately cease engaging in illegal housing discrimination on the basis of race, whether it is intentional or unintentional.”
In one of the study’s examples, a housing provider in D.C. told a black applicant that “anyone with a felony on her or his record would be declined,” but told a white applicant that a “third party conducted a background check and made a decision on behalf of the property” based on the type of crime and time of crime committed. The housing provider went on to tell the white woman “they could probably work with” her and that “they might be able to work something out.”
In D.C., blacks make up 49 percent of the overall population and 90 percent of the inmate population. Nationwide, black women are also twice as likely to be sent to prison than white women, according to a study from the Vera Institute of Justice and the Safety and Justice Challenge.
Ward 5 Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie in April put forth a bill, the Fair Criminal Record Screening for Housing Act of 2016, that would limit the conditions under which landlords could consider criminal records. He called the recent findings of the ERC report “troubling but unfortunately not surprising.”
“The bill would prohibit housing providers from inquiring into or requiring disclosure of an applicant’s arrest record during the application process and would restrict the provider’s inquiry into an applicant’s prior convictions until after making a conditional offer of housing,” McDuffie told the Washington Examiner of his bill. “Any offer after that point could only be withdrawn for specific, limited reasons. It’s my intention that the bill’s passage by the end of this year will remove barriers to securing stable housing for individuals with criminal histories, a particularly vulnerable population.”
