The Dynamic Process of Racial Steering in U.S. Housing Markets
Housing discrimination has long been thought to contribute to the persistence of racial segregation, yet evidence indicates that explicit forms of housing discrimination have waned. We argue that past work has not fully considered the role of racial steering in maintaining segregation. To explore patterns of steering, we use the 2012 Housing Discrimination Study along with Census data on the neighborhood racial and socioeconomic composition of housing units shown to testers. We leverage the experimental design of the audits to examine how neighborhoods of homes shown to auditors change dynamically throughout the search process and to assess the conditions under which steering is most likely. As with past research, we find no evidence of steering in Asian-White or Hispanic-White audits. However, we find consistent evidence that Black testers are steered away from White neighborhoods and toward Blacker ones, particularly for female homeseekers and those with children. We also find that steering occurs relatively early in the search process and is heightened when searches begin in racially-homogenous neighborhoods. These findings support arguments that the steering of Black homeseekers serves as a modest but stubborn mechanism by which segregation is maintained, and highlight the intersectionality of race and gender in determining outcomes.