Discrimination as an Object of Measurement

The response to these claims is that neither burden nor entrapment occurs because- * The housing rental and sales agents involved are carrying out a normal business activity in responding to one of many potential clients. * The Supreme Court has ruled that such testing does not impose an inappropriate burden on the activities of rental and sales agents.1 * Congress has conferred on all "persons" a legal right to truthful information about available housing, 42 U.S.C. § 3604(d), a right made enforceable through the creation of an explicit cause of action in § 812(a) of the Act, 42 U.S.C. § 3612(a). * The tester passively responds to and records the information received about a potential housing opportunity advertised by the sales or rental agent. Research findings can indirectly prompt pattern and practice investigations, however, by both governmental and private enforcement agencies.2 The Office of Policy Development and Research (PD&R) of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development took the lead in expanding the role of paired testing in housing discrimination research with the initiation in 1977 of the Housing Market Practices Survey (HMPS), the first national audit of racial discrimination in housing sales and rentals.