By Lizzie Devitt
Housing can be linked to a wide variety of systemic inequalities, including health outcomes. Like many issues, these consequences and inequalities have been exacerbated during COVID-19, as people are spending more time in their homes than ever before.
On December 10th, Duke in DC hosted a virtual congressional briefing with two Duke professors, Kay Jowers and Christopher Timmins, along with their colleague, and Duke alum, Lala Ma from the University of Kentucky to discuss the interconnectedness of one’s home and other life outcomes.
The briefing covered the confluence of compounding factors including housing precarity (housing affordability, housing quality, and other conditions related to housing), racial injustice, COVID-19 and environmental injustice that can effect an individual or family’s overall wellbeing. Professor Jowers noted, “This year we also saw huge attention to racial injustice and environmental justice movements… we know that all of these underlying issues also play a role in the pandemic.”
While research on housing discrimination over the last several decades indicates that rates of discrimination appear, on the surface, to be decreasing overtime, Timmins’ research explains that this is not necessarily true. “We examined the characteristics of the houses people are being offered, not just the number,” said Timmins, “Relative to an average neighborhood the African American tester was offered a home with 23.8 more assaults in the neighborhood compared to the white tester.”
His research reports that Black homebuyers are also more likely to be offered a home closer to a superfund site and have higher levels of exposure to air toxins, and this probability is even higher for single Black mothers.
Timmins also cited his research, done in collaboration with Peter Christensen at the University of Illinois, regarding discrimination in rental markets. “In all the cities we looked at, when a white renter received a response for an apartment availability, the minority identity (either Black or Latinx) received a response 68% of the time.”
Timmnis thanked the National Science Foundation (NSF) for supporting research on housing markets and also stated, “the Department for Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is the source of a lot of our data… which we use for measuring discrimination in housing and real estate markets.”
Housing discrimination, which contributes to a variety of differences in housing quality, also has direct implications for natural disaster resiliency. Low-income housing is often hit hardest by severe weather storms and may lack the resources to properly rebuild. Lala Ma spoke directly on these issues by citing additional research on floods and climate change.
“Flood exposure may differ by socioeconomic status and if so, policies to address flood risk will have a heterogeneous impact,” explained Ma “policies that are aimed to mitigate some of these losses are going to be really important for strategies to adapt to climate change.”
Certain policies enacted at the federal, state and local levels during COVID-19 have effectively addressed some of the socioeconomic issues mentioned above. Jowers specifically spoke about the federal utilities and rent moratoria and their effectiveness in helping families.
“Using these kinds of measures,” Jowers explained can, “allow people to come back to equilibrium when there’s been a major disruption in their lives.”
Posted 12/21/20