Local organization joins statewide effort to combat housing discrimination

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New York state will provide $250,000 to nonprofit organizations, including one in Syracuse, to fund audits to combat housing discrimination.

Fair housing testing uses trained, undercover testers, who pose as individuals looking to buy or rent a property, to determine if sellers, landlords or brokers act in a discriminatory way toward certain groups of people.

“We hope that it’s the start of more long-term funding from the state and a more substantial commitment to fair housing enforcement and particularly to testing, because it is one of the most effective ways for identifying housing discrimination in the community,” said Sally Santangelo, the executive director of CNY Fair Housing, a Syracuse nonprofit that is receiving some of the funding.

CNY Fair Housing provides research, education and outreach to prevent housing discrimination and also conducts fair housing audits.

The organization also provides about 60 presentations a year to train renters, as well as landlords on what housing discrimination is and how to identify illegal behavior, Santangelo said.

“We’re happy the state is investing in fair housing enforcement and particularly the work of private fair housing organizations, who are really the on-the-ground fair housing enforcement entities that were the ones working within our communities really seeing the bulk of fair housing cases in the states,” Santangelo said.

The organization also investigates rental, sales, insurance and financing complaints and provides legal representation to victims of housing discrimination.

John Yinger, a Syracuse University trustee professor of economics, public administration and internal affairs, used to work for an organization that conducted fair housing audits.

When Yinger worked as the research director for the Urban Institute, a think tank in Washington D.C., part of this role was to create the survey questions that testers filled out, he said.

The testers, who often represent renters from different groups being studied, are sent out in response to a property listing, Yinger said. The testers ask if the listing is available and what similar listings are available. After the interaction, the testers fill out a survey describing how they were treated, he said.

“I think it’s very effective,” Yinger said. “It’s a polished tool, both for enforcement purposes and for research purposes.”

Testers can also be used to audit correspondence, Yinger said.

“A correspondence audit doesn’t observe nearly as much behavior. Mainly you observe whether they get a response,” Yinger said. “You don’t learn as much, but you can learn it in far more places and you still find discrimination even just in responses to email inquiries.”

The “Long Island Divided” study, a three-year project from Newsday, employed about two dozen undercover testers to audit housing in Long Island. Some parts of the state, such as Long Island, are listed among the top most segregated metro areas in the country, said Olivia Winslow, who worked on the project.

“This was a process,” Winslow said.

During the 2020 Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing Syracuse and Onondaga County, a report by CNY Fair Housing, five impediments to equal housing opportunity were listed, along with recommendations on how to fix these issues.

These impediments included lower rates of homeownership for people of color than for white and non-Hispanic households in Syracuse and limited public transportation, which restricted where residents chose to live.

“We hope the state continues to build on this program and we want to do this work,” Santangelo said. “We’re eager to do this work and we’re excited to address the cases of systemic discrimination that we know are still happening in our community.”