Experiencing Residential Segregation: A Contemporary Study of Washington, D.C

Explicit considerations of race and unlawful racial discrimination persist as critical factors in the continuing segregation of urban housing markets. On the basis of a telephone survey of Washington, D.C. area households, the authors find that current black households were almost twice as likely as white households to not get their first choice when they moved into their current homes, more than one-fourth of black householders report that they or someone they know experienced discrimination in their efforts to obtain housing or housing finance within the past three years, and whites are more than four times as likely as blacks to believe that equal opportunity exists in the current housing market. These relationships persist after controlling on several socioeconomic characteristics (income, education, housing tenure) of households. Several policy options are recommended for ameliorating racial segregation in urban housing markets.