This monograph discusses a national fair housing audit, known as the Housing Market Practices Survey (HMPS), undertaken by the National Committee Against Discrimination in Housing in spring 1977 under a HUD contract. It first focuses on the audit as a research technique, describing its historical antecedents, uses by Government agencies, and objections on ethnical grounds. The report summarizes the objectives and methodology used in the HMPS which conducted about 3,264 individual tests in 40 metropolitan areas equally divided between rental agencies and real estate brokers. This produced a systematic comparison of relative treatment accorded matched pairs of black and white housing seekers under tightly controlled circumstances. The HMPS provided definite evidence that blacks were systematically treated less favorably with regard to housing availability, treated less courteously, and were asked for more information than whites. Discrimination tended to be subtle and sophisticated, rather than the overt type found in previous decades. The report reviews the salient findings of the HMPS, with attention to racial steering as well as discrimination. It also describes research undertaken in the process of designing the HMPS study and other HMPS - related research projects, such as analyses of the determinants and effects of racial discrimination in housing, tests on the feasibility of telephone auditing, and investigations into socioeconomic discrimination. Tables, references, and a list of fair housing audits that have published statistical findings are supplied.
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