Study highlights need to continue to address residential segregation

Media coverage suggests that segregation is disappearing but a recent University of Washington study shows less progress toward integrated neighborhoods.

“We pay a lot of attention to this proliferation of multiethnic neighborhoods but they are still only a small part of the overall inter-neighborhood mobility picture for blacks and whites,” said Kyle Crowder, a professor of sociology at the University of Washington and lead author of the study. “Blacks tend to originate in neighborhoods with very high concentrations of blacks and when they move, they tend to move to other places that have very high concentrations of blacks. Their typical destination is not a multi-ethnic neighborhood. The same is even more true for whites.”

Crowder’s study, titled, “Neighborhood Diversity, Metropolitan Constraints, and Household Migration,” considers mobility patterns of 44,808 black families and 57,415 white families, some of whom moved several times between 1977 and 2005, the period covered by the analysis.

Hank Lerner, PAR’s Professional Practices director, said this research doesn’t mean that Realtors® should direct clients to a neighborhood based on their race.  “While these statistics suggest that certain types of people may tend to move into certain types of neighborhoods, your clients aren’t statistics,” Lerner said. “Regardless of these results, you’re at risk for a fair housing violation any time you make assumptions about your clients’ needs based on a protected class, so be sure to ask need-based questions about things like price range, size, how close they want to live to their employment and/or other family, and other issues people consider when purchasing a home.”

Crowder said the study doesn’t reveal how individual householders tend to end up in areas with high concentrations of their own race. “Steering might be one of the things that drives this process, there are also other factors that might play a role,” he added. “Included among these are potential racial differences in knowledge of various neighborhood options.”

“Our study tells a somewhat pessimistic story but it’s also a realistic story,” said Crowder, who coauthored the analysis with Jeremy Pais, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut, and Scott J. South, a professor of sociology at the University of Albany, SUNY. “It’s a story that counters this idea that we should stop paying attention to residential segregation. The truth is, when it comes to eliminating residential segregation, we still have a long way to go. This becomes particularly clear when we look at the high percentage of black families from predominately black neighborhoods and the even higher percentage of white families from predominately white neighborhoods who wind up in homogeneous communities when they move.”

According to the study, metropolitan area characteristics likely to limit residential integration for blacks and whites include: high levels of existing residential segregation and poverty as well as a significant percentage of the population living in the suburbs. “Lower levels of these characteristics promote integration,” Crowder said. “Additionally, mobility into more diverse neighborhoods is more common in metropolitan areas with large supplies of new housing and relatively large concentrations of racial and ethnic minorities.”

Crowder said the study highlights the need for policymakers to continue working on ways to address residential segregation. “Residential segregation influences such things as the concentration and the propagation of crime as well as racial disparities in health and in exposure to pollution,” Crowder said. “When people say, ‘Segregation is going away’ and ‘We don’t need to worry about it anymore,’ those are messages that people will latch onto quickly. Unfortunately, those types of statements are just untrue.”

Crowder encourages Realtors® to be aware of these dynamics. “There may be some soft steering going on or assumptions of what you think clients will want,” he said. “It’s a person’s choice where he or she wants to live but a homebuyer needs to be aware of all of her or his options to make a choice. It’s important to make them aware of properties in a variety of neighborhood to allow them to consider a neighborhood that they might not be aware of let them decide where they want to live,” Crowder said.